Julien Smith
Co-Founder and CEO, Practice. On 1 show, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveauthor@julien ↗LinkedIn ↗practice.do ↗
Julien Smith is an entrepreneur who co-founded Breather, an on-demand flexible workspace network that raised over $120 million, before founding Practice, a management platform for coaches and solo operators. He is also a New York Times bestselling author known for writing The Flinch as well as co-authoring Trust Agents and The Impact Equation.
1shows
2appearances
24statements
2resolved
0supported
2contradicted
0%fully supported
Everything Julien Smith said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Smith: Founders outside Silicon Valley do not understand true startup intensity
“Most people feel like they understand what working at a startup is and what it's like to work in a tech company. But when, if they haven't been in one in Silicon Valley, they really don't know what it feels like. And they don't really know how to work that har…”
Smith: Founders cannot build a track record remotely
“You don't get a track record remotely and you, and by the way, track record can involve failures, but it has to involve smart failures and also network being in the same places as all these people it's being on podcasts.”
Smith will never be a CEO again if forced into an office
“And so if they if they want me to return to the office, I would legitimately not be a CEO again.”
Smith: Remote startups require Silicon Valley leaders but globally distributed teams
“Leaders from Silicon Valley-ish. Adjacent team, rest of the team can be anywhere.”
Smith: Founders unsure about product-market fit definitely do not have it
“You can ask people the question, do you have product markets in their business? And they'll be like, I think so. And you'll be like, you do not have it. Because it is such a crazy clear feeling when you have it that you're like, oh shit, this is it.”
Smith: Silicon Valley creates the future through generational tech compounding
“What they do have is they have generations of innovators... So we're talking about generations of technology innovators. That have built layers of technology on top of one another. And so they're gonna see the future much more clearly. And that's why they get …”
Smith: OpenAI has reached $1 billion in enterprise revenue
“There's the reason that OpenAI has a billion dollars in enterprise revenue today. Out of nowhere, quote unquote, out of nowhere.”
Smith: Core adult interests mirror what people cared about at age twelve
“I'm super convinced that the things I cared about in my twenties, I also cared about when I was 12.”
Smith: Mastery requires full immersion rather than part-time hobbyism
“You don't get really, really good at it by being a hobbyist, unless you're a hobbyist for 30 years, right?”
Julien Smith: Non-founders cannot truly understand an entrepreneur's experience
“Increasingly it's like you have your friends kind of have to be entrepreneurs. It's not like universally true, but they just like get you in a way that other people do not. And there is this mutual understanding. And again, like I'm making these weird analogie…”
Julien Smith: Stop idolizing hyper-successful founders as moral paragons
“And so I think if we like, we separate completely, and I know it's different, very difficult to do that. We separate the acts of success and the things that they have built completely from the person. That way we can be like, that's super cool that you built P…”
Smith: Consuming content cannot build a professional network
“The part that you cannot absorb on the cheap, and both you and I know this actually, and we do it, so it's important to actually, to say it, is that it cannot create network for you.”
Smith: Startup founders only need one big hit regardless of failures
“And if you have a lot of at bats, look, your batting average might be shitty, but it actually doesn't matter. You just need to be successful once. And if you're successful once and it's enough of a big hit, you're actually good. You're good forever.”
Smith: Sustainable creators use content as a marketing engine, not the business
“Those people that did succeed, they were able to separate themselves from the content. They were able to say, I run a business and my marketing engine is content versus I am the content. I am the engine and I am the business, which is just too much.”
Smith: Building outside tech hubs lowers costs but requires immense resilience
“The city itself is not telling you something, but the ethos of that city is saying things to you. And where we come from, the city is just like, yeah, hang out. Like everything's cool. You're going to be all right. You don't need to work that hard. And so it m…”
Smith: Acknowledging startup challenges builds credibility and prevents founder anxiety
“Now what I do is, is I say, here's the things that are going well, here's the things we need to work on. And I think that, that, that, that understanding that there's still something to work on. First of all, it gives an impression to me that Of me that people…”
Julien Smith: Founders only get about five shots to build something major
“One of the things you realize when you start a company Is you kind of only have a shot, a couple of shots, if it's going to work well. And if you, it is going to work well, like you've had, for example, Alexis O'Hanian on this show, it's like, you don't have l…”
Julien Smith: Only start businesses around your lifelong personal themes
“What are the things that I cared about today at my age, but that when I was 20, I still cared about. So those are the through lines. And I went through them and there's not a lot of them. And I said, those are the things, probably the only things that I can st…”
Smith: I was among the first 10,000 users on Twitter in 2006
“I remember being in the first 10,000 users in Twitter in 2006”
Smith's blog post on 'not giving a f*ck' drew 10,000 daily visits
“And so when I wrote this piece, all of a sudden I ranked number one for years for how to not give a fuck for years. And so, 10,000 visits a day or some shit would go to my website for this idea of not giving a fuck, right?”
Julien Smith raised about $200 million for his startup Breather
“About two hundred million dollars.”
Gary Vaynerchuk was the first angel investor in Breather
“I take the call from Gary, and he goes something like, I don't have time to advise, because I was just like, I was like, well, he even, like, does he really know me that well? Is he, and he's like, yeah, Julian has been around a super long time. Yeah, I'll def…”
Julien Smith: Non-tech friends prevent founders tying self-worth to startup performance
“These early longstanding friends of mine that I've had a really long time and that probably are the people that keep me grounded because otherwise my identity would have been too attached to, I run a startup. Oh My God. I'm, you know, like I'm the second comin…”
Julien Smith made millions online in his twenties doing 'nothing'
“Previous to our generation, you couldn't have like some 20 year old kid that's like, yeah, I made a couple million dollars on online, kind of doing nothing. And then I went on and did some other thing, but I was one of those people.”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Julien's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 STARTUP IDEASLEDGER | Co-Founder and CEO, Practice | 2 | 24 | 0% 0/2 | full record on the Startup Ideas Podcast → |