Step-by-step guidance on early product discovery—including how to run experiments, define personas, and avoid common validation traps.
You’ve Got the Idea—
In celebration of the release of After the Idea: What It Really Takes to Create and Scale a Startup, I’m gifting my first 100 buyers a free journal with guided prompts for each chapter in the book. These prompts will help you think through all aspects of starting and scaling your venture.
STEP 2
Claim Your Journal + Prompts
Inside After the Idea, you’ll get:
Real-world tools to align with cofounders—from values-based decision frameworks to preempting conflict and managing founder dynamics.
Tactical advice for building your first team—who to hire when, how to define roles, and how to communicate expectations before chaos hits.
Templates and examples to operationalize culture—so it’s not just words on a wall, but a set of behaviors that scale.
Practical insights for navigating startup operations—from finances and contracts to team structure and go-to-market strategy.
What to watch for at every inflection point—from hiring your first product lead to knowing when to scale, raise capital, or step away.
Hard-won lessons from the field—via founder stories, classroom insights, and Julia’s playbook from Akamai, VMware, and DigitalOcean.
…and much more
“This terrific new book achieves that rare literary hat trick: it’s insightful, riveting, and practical.”
About Julia
Julia Austin is a seasoned executive with a strong track record for implementing cutting-edge products for rapidly scaling companies from very early to mature stages. After several decades of leading technology organizations with small teams in the early years that grew to thousands of employees at notable successful startups such as Akamai Technologies, VMware, Inc. and DigitalOcean, Julia shifted her career to focus on sitting on boards, advising, investing in and coaching startup founders and teaching entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School (HBS).
