Hello! I'm Julien Smith, co-founder and CEO at Practice, a platform that allows coaches to run the entire scope of their business in one place, from scheduling to invoicing. We re backed by Andrew Chen at a16z, Tony Robbins, Austin Rief, Brian Norgard, Greg Isenberg, Josh Buckley, Lenny Rachitsky, Emily Kramer, Nikita Bier, Shrug Capital, Sahil Bloom and a lot of other great angels. Previously, I co-founded Breather, which raised over $150m, and was its CEO for over 5 years to Series C. Breather was a network of private work spaces built for productivity and was used by millions; I ve been working my whole career to empower individuals, and the mission at Practice is no different. I m also a NYT best-selling author, having written Trust Agents, The Impact Equation, and The Flinch. The Flinch is probably my most famous book - it was one of the top downloaded and highlighted books on Kindle since the day it was published. It s about the moment of fear that holds people back from reaching their potential and has influenced a lot of startup leaders. I also coach a few first-time CEOs as a way of giving back to the startup space. Let s talk about startups, Practice, coaching, managing fear, and CEO-life! AMA
I've been pretty impressed at the amount of products people (including myself) have been able to create which got me curious... do vibe coders or AI-primary builders have a place in a company or team? My thinking is the more technically adept would work on the core-focus while vibecoders can assist with other tasks that shouldn't be the main devs focus...like a potential feature add, minor changes, or even exploring different ways of modifying the existing product. I'm curious what you all think, would you hire a vibe coder?
In the summer, one founder of a VC-backed startup approached me to manage his LinkedIn profile, through which he acquires clients (personal brand building).
It was a classic job interview, where the assumption is to create a conversion (you are active on someone's account, building their personal brand, as the account grows, people are noticing you, write to you, you arrange a call, and maybe close a sale)
I asked if there was a possibility of getting equity in this position, because the other positions they had advertised (whether tech, GTM, sales, some small percentage of equity) did offer even a small %...
The answer was "No, this position does not include equity."
Whether you're a solo builder or part of a fast-moving product team, documentation always seems to lag just behind reality. Is it the speed of product changes?
Getting engineers or PMs to consistently update docs?
Weird domain names are the unsung heroes of the internet. I used to own pollinate dot me. Basically I was drunk and thought a dating app based on people that liked to garden was a good idea
