Julie Murat is the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Bridge for Billions, a pioneering social enterprise transforming how entrepreneurship is nurtured worldwide. Guided by the belief that purpose is the true “boss,” Julie has helped scale Bridge for Billions from a four-person founding team to an international organization supporting over 6,000 early-stage entrepreneurs across 131 countries. Passionate about democratizing entrepreneurial opportunities, she champions innovative models like Conecta, empowering local entrepreneurship support organizations to drive systemic change. Julie’s leadership philosophy centers on aligning long-term impact with financial sustainability, fostering a collaborative, purpose-driven culture, and ensuring the well-being of her teams. Through strategic partnerships with global players like the UN, Coca-Cola, and Accenture, she advances inclusive economic growth and community development. Deeply committed to reshaping entrepreneurial ecosystems, Julie continues to build bridges that connect visionaries, resources, and communities—laying the groundwork for a more equitable future of innovation.
The Social Digest: You often say, ‘We didn’t create a purpose because we had a company. We created a company because we had a purpose’. How does this guiding philosophy shape your day-to-day decisions and team culture at Bridge for Billions?
What I mean by that is that the purpose is the “raison d’être” (reason for being) of the company, we often also say “the purpose is the boss”. Concretely in the day to day it means that it is like a compass that guides our decisions, whether it’s on business models, public or private partners we work with, countries where we expand… We want the purpose to be the major decision making factor for each team member, and that often means thinking a bit longer term than usual. Of course other factors have to be taken into consideration like financial sustainability of the organization, but we always factor in impact and purpose alignment.
The Social Digest: Bridge for Billions has supported over 2,000 entrepreneurs across 90 countries through digital incubation programs. What unique challenges have you encountered when scaling affordable, high-impact support to early-stage founders globally?
By now we have supported over 6000 entrepreneurs from 131 countries. One of the key challenges has been around the balance between a global, proven methodology and adapting to local contexts. Another one has been our lack of ability to achieve systemic change on our own, we need to do it via collaboration with others. This is what shaped the evolution of our model from “direct programs) (Bridge for Billions supporting entrepreneurs directly) to Ecosystem Building (Bridge for Billions working with local Entrepreneurship Support Organizations or ESOs). Now we do more and more of the second model like with our Conecta Latin America and Conecta Africa projects (soon coming to Europe starting with Spain), and we are seeing the immense need to support ESOs themselves on strengthening their revenue streams, streamlining their operations, improving their impact monitoring and evaluation, etc.
The Social Digest: You co-founded the organization in 2015 with Pablo, Jaime, and Jessica, and have since grown to nearly 50 team members. What leadership lessons have emerged in managing this transition from small co-founding team to a full-fledged social enterprise?
Each phase has its own beauty and its own unique challenges, the biggest lessons have been around keeping purpose and team values as the compass as we grow, building structure that bring clarity and organization in the team while still keeping a degree of flexibility, and more than anything else the need for personal growth and development for founders and leaders in the company, to accompany the increasingly complex demands of a bigger, more diverse and internationally spread team.
The Social Digest: In your trusted magazine interview, you reflected on the uncertainty inherent to social entrepreneurship and the value of asking ‘why’ repeatedly. Can you share an instance where this root-cause approach led to a crucial decision or shift in strategy?
We noticed that typically incubators support 15 to 20 entrepreneurs annually, only, leading to them often selecting the most prepared (business education, good connections, etc), often the most privileged. We asked ourselves “why” and identified that ESOs face similar challenges as the entrepreneurs they support, such as underfunding and lack of financial sustainability, struggle to acquire and retain talent, lack of digitized and automated operations, understaffing, overwork… We asked ourselves why and created the Conecta model to work with ESOs in strengthening their abilities so they could support more entrepreneurs every year and therefore together we can make a more systemic impact in the local entrepreneurship ecosystems.
The Social Digest: You’ve spoken candidly about the risk of burnout among social entrepreneurs and how coaching can help prevent it . What self-awareness tools or routines do you personally rely on, and how do you embed these into the Bridge team culture?
Building a social enterprise is twice as hard as a normal business, as we want to both be economically profitable and generate real impact being true to our purpose and values. We are often stretched between making a decision that is good for financial viability but has less impact, or one with more impact but doesn’t cover costs, or might overstretch the team. Also, the cause we are working on is often something we are emotionally invested in, really close to our hearts, and that can make it even harder to take perspective or rest. This is why human support is so critical, and it can be via coaching, or finding a supportive community of peers, or even improving team bonding and collaboration. Also making some space for emotions in the workplace, because we are still humans at work. Personally, I focus on trying to be aware of my needs in a given moment and respond to them as best as I can, whether by taking time for myself or seeking support from others; and inviting others to do the same. There has to be space for joy and connection, or it’s not sustainable (and not fun).
The Social Digest: Bridge for Billions collaborates with universities, governments, foundations, and corporations like Coca-Cola, UN, BMW, and Accenture. How do you ensure each partnership remains faithful to your mission while adapting to diverse stakeholders?
We connect on the level of purpose and vision. Uncovering the vision for change of each partner, sharing ours, and looking for the space where they overlap to build a mutually beneficial and impactful program and impact.
The Social Digest: You’re not only a facilitator and coach yourself but have also scaled digital incubation programs worldwide . What common themes or mindsets do entrepreneurs exhibit at the start of their journey versus after completing the program?
It’s different for each founder but there can be patterns. Most entrepreneurs tell us about the value of structuring their thinking thanks to our methodology based on active learning where they fill different canvases and activities instead of being a passive “content-consumer” mode (like it would be for a video.based course). They realize the value of validating assumptions with customers, competitors, partners etc instead of running on personal hypotheses. It’s a humility exercise.
The Social Digest: You’ve emphasized purpose, sustainability, and job creation as outcomes of strong entrepreneurial ecosystems. How do you track success beyond program completion—say, in community impact or economic inclusion—and how does that inform your future direction?
At the program’s conclusion, comprehensive surveys assess immediate outcomes like skill development, satisfaction, and business growth. These insights feed into detailed impact reports shared with partners and stakeholders. Our commitment to long-term impact continues with post-program follow-ups at 6 months, 1 year, and 2 years, tracking business survival, revenue, job creation, and more.
Through this process, we not only measure short-term outputs but also track lasting outcomes that contribute to thriving entrepreneurial ecosystems around the world. This rigorous, iterative approach enables continuous learning and program evolution, ensuring that each cycle is stronger than the last.
The Social Digest: Bridge has operated extensively in Latin America and Africa, working closely with local changemakers . What surprising insights have come from supporting entrepreneurs in these regions, and how have they influenced your practice globally?
Despite geographical differences, we’ve seen that early-stage entrepreneurs all face similar challenges: uncovering the value proposition of their offer, who are truly their customers, how to differentiate from the existing, how to communicate, have a financially sound plan, etc. So overall I would say challenges are more similar than they are different. That being said, there are of course big differences in business environment, culture, legal framework… One example that comes to mind from the IDEA program we ran in the Casamance region of Senegal with UNIDO is the role of having a supportive daily for women founders. Sometimes their family circle would discourage them from becoming entrepreneurs because of the risk it entails, so we involved the family with a special session to share the value and potential of entrepreneurship and get them more on the supportive side. Now with every program, especially in new markets, we operate with a local team and spend extensive time in the scoping and design phase to identify those needs and cater for them early.
The Social Digest: Looking ahead, what role do you envision Bridge for Billions playing in shaping the future of equitable entrepreneurship—especially as digital tools and social responsibility become increasingly central?
I see ourselves playing a role of facilitator and catalyst, uniting ESOs and all ecosystem players (public, private, financial institutions…) so they can learn from each other, collaborate, and together achieve wider and deeper impact.
To make a parallel with another sector, primary education María Montessori had a dream of education for all, and thanks to her the UN made free education a public right in 1948. Her model revolutionized the early education systems, it is visionary, replicable and deeply centered on the individual. We want to apply that same logic to transform the entrepreneurship support system and make a lasting change so it¡’s accessible to all and truly effective to create a more prosperous world via solutions creation and employment generation.
This interview was conducted by Manav Vala from The Social Digest on 5/07/2025. If you have any interview recommendations or have a story that you want to share with our readers, get in touch with our editor Vedant Bhrambhatt, at editor@thesocialdigest.com
