After the Idea: Julia Austin on Building Startups That Last

Most founders obsess over the spark of an idea—but the real test begins after the idea.

Julia Austin knows this better than most. As an operator at Akamai, VMware, and DigitalOcean, an advisor to hundreds of startups, a faculty member at Harvard Business School, and now the author of After the Idea, she’s seen what truly drives sustainable growth.

In this episode of Strategy at Scale, Julia challenges the “move fast and break things” mindset and offers a grounded, evidence-driven playbook for building enduring companies. She shares how to spot real product-market fit, create a culture that fuels execution, and design systems that make scaling possible.

You’ll learn:

• Why the hardest part of entrepreneurship starts after the idea
• How to test product-market fit with scrappy, real-world experiments
• The link between clarity, culture, and long-term resilience
• What big companies often get wrong about innovation
• Why “slow down to move fast” might be the smartest strategy of all

Whether you’re leading a startup or driving innovation inside a large organization, Julia’s insights will help you scale with clarity, discipline, and purpose.

Thanks for listening! This episode is brought to you by Kaihan Krippendorff of Outthinker Networks, Verne Harnish of Scaling Up, and the team at Growth Institute.