Our story
We run a workshop. We got tired of the software.
Workshop1 wasn't born in a boardroom. It was born at 6pm on a Friday, manually copying a job card into an invoice while a customer waited at the counter.
You know the feeling. It's 7:30am and you're already behind. Three voicemails from overnight. A customer wants a quote for a timing belt on a 2017 Mazda CX-5 and you're flipping through a parts catalogue while the phone rings again. The whiteboard says you have six jobs today but only four bays. Someone called in sick. The parts order from yesterday still hasn't arrived and the supplier isn't picking up.
By lunchtime, you've created three quotes by hand, sent two invoices to the wrong email, and spent twenty minutes looking for a customer's service history across three different systems. At the end of the month, you hand your accountant a shoebox of receipts and a spreadsheet that doesn't quite add up. You know there's margin leaking somewhere, but you can't see where.
“This isn't a failure of workshop owners. It's a failure of the software industry to build something that actually works for them.”
An industry stuck in the 1990s
The software running most Australian workshops was designed before the iPhone existed. In an industry that fixes the most technologically advanced machines humans have ever built, the business software hasn't meaningfully changed since the 1990s.
Not because workshop owners don't deserve better. Because the people building the software don't understand workshops, and the people who understand workshops don't have the technical background to build something genuinely new. The result is a market full of compromises: clunky interfaces layered on top of decades-old architecture, sold by companies that haven't shipped a meaningful update in years.
Meanwhile, every other industry has moved on. Restaurants have Toast. Dentists have Dentally. Hotels have Mews. Trades have ServiceM8. Each of these was built by people who understood both the industry and modern software engineering. The automotive aftermarket — a $24 billion industry in Australia alone — is still waiting.
Three people who could actually fix it
We met working at one of Australia's largest tech companies — building the kind of infrastructure that powers enterprise systems at scale. Reliable. Secure. The kind of engineering where downtime isn't measured in minutes, it's measured in millions.
Then one of us bought a workshop.
Within weeks, Charles was stunned. He'd spent years building systems that processed millions of transactions seamlessly — and now he was running a business on software that crashed during peak hours, couldn't sync with his accounting tool, and required him to manually copy data between five different screens to create a single invoice.
He showed it to James and Daniel. Their reaction was the same: disbelief, then excitement. Not excitement because the problem was interesting — excitement because they knew they could solve it. They had the engineering discipline, the product instinct, and now, through Charles, the daily reality of running a workshop. It was the combination no one in the industry had.
Six months later, Workshop1 was running in a real workshop — handling real jobs, real customers, and real money. Not a prototype. Not an MVP. A product that a business depends on every single day.
The journey so far
From enterprise engineering to workshop software.
2023
Met at enterprise tech
2024
Bought the workshop
Mid 2024
First line of code
Early 2025
Beta launch
Mid 2025
First external customer
Now
Building in the open
Met at enterprise tech
Bought the workshop
First line of code
Beta launch
First external customer
Building in the open
What happens when you start from scratch
Most workshop software companies are maintaining code that was written before cloud computing existed. They can't fundamentally rethink how their product works — they can only add features on top of a foundation that was never designed for the modern world.
We had no legacy code. No technical debt. No decisions made in 2005 that we had to live with in 2025. So we asked a different question: if you were designing workshop management software today — with AI, with real-time data, with the engineering practices that power the best software companies in the world — what would you build?
The answer is Workshop1. AI that reads your enquiries and creates bookings. Quotes that build themselves from a vehicle description. Invoices that generate from completed jobs and collect payment via SMS. Insights that tell you what's happening in your business right now — not what happened last month. And all of it connected, so data flows through once and never needs to be entered again.
This isn't AI sprinkled on top of old software. This is what workshop management looks like when you design it for 2026, not 1996.
Our mission
Give every workshop owner back the time they lost to bad software.
That's it. Not disrupt. Not revolutionise. Just give you back the hours, the clarity, and the confidence that the right tools should have provided all along.
The team
Three founders. One workshop. Zero patience for software that doesn't work.
Charles Mitchell
Founder & CEO
Charles runs the workshop. Not in the past tense — present tense. He's the founder who still has grease under his fingernails on Monday mornings. After years building software at scale for one of Australia's largest tech companies, he bought a workshop expecting the software to be sorted. It wasn't. Every tool was a compromise. Every workflow was duct tape. The moment he found himself manually copying job card details into an invoice at 6pm on a Friday with a customer waiting — that was the moment Workshop1 became inevitable.
What I do at Workshop1
Runs the workshop. Talks to customers. Sets product direction.
James Liu
Co-Founder & CTO
James spent a decade building systems that handle millions of requests per second at one of the world's largest cloud platforms. The kind of infrastructure that powers banks, airlines, and government services. When Charles showed him the software running most Australian workshops, his first reaction was disbelief. His second was: we can build something ten times better in a fraction of the time. He was right. James architects Workshop1's backend — the same engineering rigour that powers enterprise systems, applied to an industry that deserves it.
What I do at Workshop1
Architects the platform. Ships infrastructure. Keeps things fast.
Daniel Park
Co-Founder & Head of Product
Daniel has shipped products used by millions — design systems, AI features, and developer tools at companies most engineers would recognise instantly. He thinks about software the way a mechanic thinks about an engine: every component should earn its place, nothing should be wasted, and the whole thing should just work. Daniel leads product and AI at Workshop1, obsessing over the details that make the difference between software you tolerate and software you actually enjoy using.
What I do at Workshop1
Designs the experience. Builds AI features. Obsesses over details.
How we build
The principles behind every line of code and every product decision.
Built from the shop floor
Every feature is tested against real jobs, real customers, and real deadlines. We don't build what sounds good in a pitch deck. We build what actually helps when there are three cars on the hoist and the phone won't stop ringing.
Ship fast, ship often
We deploy multiple times a week. Not because we're reckless — because our engineering practices let us move at a pace that legacy competitors can't match. Modern architecture, automated testing, zero-downtime deployments. The way software should be built.
AI-first, not AI-added
We didn't bolt AI onto an existing product. We designed Workshop1 from day one around the question: what does workshop software look like when AI handles the cognitive overhead? The answer changes everything.
Enterprise-grade, workshop-simple
The infrastructure behind Workshop1 is the same calibre you'd find powering a bank or an airline. The interface is simple enough that you can train a new hire in an afternoon. We believe these two things are not in tension.
Obsessively customer-led
We don't have a sales team. We have a workshop. Charles talks to owners every week — not as a vendor, but as one of them. Every feature request goes into the same backlog. The loudest voice in the room is always the customer.
Transparent by default
We build in the open. Our roadmap is public. Our pricing is simple. We don't lock you into contracts or hide fees in the fine print. If you stay, it's because the product earns it — not because leaving is hard.
Why Workshop1 is different
We're not a software vendor selling to workshops. We are a workshop building software.
Come build with us
We're building Workshop1 with a small group of Australian workshops who believe their software should work as hard as they do. If that sounds like you, we'd love to have you.