Julien Smith, Breather // Learn To Detect Patterns & Building A Venture Scale Startup
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Julien Smith is the co-founder & CEO of Breather. They provide an on-demand network of private meeting rooms designed for work, meetings and focus. They’ve raised over $80m to date and are on a strong trajectory of growth. Before that, Julien was a best selling author, speaker & podcaster. In this conversation, Julien and Bilal discuss how he thinks about pattern detection, how he used these frameworks to develop the idea for Breather & how you can apply this to your own work.

Full show notes & timestamps: https://www.creatorlab.fm/julien-smith-breather-detecting-patterns/)

Time Stamps:

• 1:52) - Who are you/what do you do
• 2:30) - Detecting patterns. Is that that what you’re good at?
• 4:10) - Scale & growth of Breather, how did Julien get there
• 6:43) - When Julien started Breather, how many units did he start with & how do they keep them secure?
• 8:09) - What does Breather's customer base look like? What are their customer segments?
• 8:58) - How big is this market? How do you estimate market size?
• 9:50) - Thinking about security for a physical space - digital vs analog locks.
• 11:30) - Growing up in Canada & what did Julien want to be when he grew up?
• 13:20) - Learning what you’re good at and 360 reviews 
• 17:10) - How Julien thinks about detecting patterns? Is this something we can learn to become better at?
• 20:25) - Is detecting patterns a skill or luck?
• 24:10 - Detecting patterns: is it a learned behavior? Discussing Charlie Munger and Warren Buffet. 
• 28:30 - the value of the expert generalist
• 30:00 - What sources of information do you follow? Books, podcasts, people, etc?
• 33:30 - What can people do to accelerate the process of growing and connecting with people they can learn from?
• 36:00 - Jeff Bezos story of the regret minimization framework
• 39:30 - What were some of the macro trends he identified to help start Breather? Are there certain macro trends that he sees right now?
• 42:20 - Cities + network effects + timing
• 46:02 - Bilal discusses idea for supper clubs platform
• 47:50 - Omnifocus app he uses for tasks
• 48:10 - Developing healthy habits? Streaks app
• 51:40 - What is Julien’s routine and a typical day? Morning pages. The creative habit. 
• 55:05 - What is motivating Julien right now?
• 56:30 - What does success mean to you?