About Julia
Completed her BA in Environmental Science & Policy and Architecture at Smith College
Regional Decarbonisation Leader at the World Economic Forum
Together with her father, Camillo, she is the co-founder of Libellula, a collective of family farmers in the hills just outside of Rome making regeneratively farmed extra virgin olive oil.
TedX speaker: “Our Food Stories Matter. Here’s Why”
Key takeaways that made us go ‘a-ha’
Focus on the purpose of your business, to attract the right customers and community to support it
Look out for turning points that help you identify whether or not to pursue and continue working on an idea
“I was still in college when we founded the business…the turning point was when we won an award for the business…it wasn’t until I submitted the business plan to a local entrepreneurship competition that I realised that there is something more here”
“I decided to commit a full year [post college]….that was my commitment to myself. If I can do it for a full year, then I can decide where to go from there”
Being hands on and talking to your customers directly is a key part of an early-stage founder’s journey
“I was really scrappy and went on road trip to test and continue refining the idea with people”
Working a full-time job while running a business can be complementary to each other
“I am working for a policy-related organisation on climate change…I wanted to feed the work I was doing with Libellula by working with them to amplify the work I was doing as an entrepreneur”
Set milestones for yourself, to assess whether your mission has legs and to keep yourself motivated to grow the business.
“Being able to get into 5 stores that wanted to sell our olive oil…that’s what really got me excited”
Don’t take your pedal off operations, you need to make sure your foundations are strong as you continue to grow
“For me, the biggest learning curve was how do you really operationalise a business to meet growth…we can’t just keep growing for the sake of growing”
Finding a co-founder is not just a logical but also an emotional decision. Find someone who you enjoy working with and look up to
“For us (me and my dad) to be on speed dial as co-founders is enriching to my daily life…every year, it’s not just work for the sake of it, but also working people that enjoy working with”
Diversify your income to different customer segments. Get creative on use cases for your product
“If a company wants to give a gift in the form of an olive oil bottle to their employees, we can send it through….we don’t just have 1 income stream, we still have stores and corporates that we work with”
Storytelling is powerful, tell it well and tell it early
“With the newspaper article written on our company, it brought us 10+ new customers and lots of traffic to our website…and most of these customers are still with us today”
Julia’s advice to women who want to build businesses on their own terms
“Build a team that you enjoy working with…being a founder, you will meet many hurdles and the thing that keeps me going is having a team that I can trust and seek council from, and who can just pick you up when you feel overwhelmed…those who can really be there to support you.”
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