I help people build, and move forward when the future is unknown.
Julien Salanave. Professor of practice in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at ESSEC Business School in Singapore.
Former VC and serial tech company founder.
Source: worlduncertaintyindex.com — monthly, GDP-weighted, to July 2026.
What is yours to do, once the machine can do the rest?
Every module I facilitate now opens on that question.
AI is a teammate. Design the work around it.
Students who work this way pick what's worth building, build it in a week, and put it in front of a customer by Friday. That's what I'm putting into the Bpifrance Accélérateur Asie with ESSEC, and into ESSEC Spark APAC — a sixteen-week validation-to-launch track for alumni.
Teaching
Three subjects. One argument.
Ownership, courage, self-discipline, resourcefulness. The vocabulary changes with the course. The demand on the student holds.
01 / Zero to one
Entrepreneurship & innovation
- Finding the wedge narrow enough to win
- Testing your idea while it is still cheap to change
- Talking to the customers who can actually buy
- Shipping something real inside the course
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02 / The money
Venture capital
- Outcomes arrive as a distribution
- Where the asymmetry actually lives
- What would have to be true
- Reading a term sheet like an operator
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03 / The room
Adaptive leadership + AI
- Leading out past the edge of the map
- Deciding while the facts are still moving
- Designing a team around its machines
- Staying calm and grounded in public
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Track record
I funded it. I built it. Now I teach it.
1
Venture capital
Apax Partners, then Newbury Partners. Where I learned that the upside is a distribution, and that most of the work is deciding what would have to be true.
2
Serial founder and CEO
Upnext Research, then Orée. Where I learned what that distribution feels like from the inside, on payroll day.
3
Professor, and still building
ESSEC Business School, Singapore. Director of the Entrepreneurship & Innovation Institute, of ESSEC Ventures APAC and of the ESSEC & Mannheim Executive MBA APAC track.
Office hours
Thirty minutes. Bring the actual problem.
The messier the problem, the better this works.
- Who
- Students, alumni, founders.
- What
- One problem you are working on.
- How long
- Thirty minutes sharp.
- Where
- Zoom. The link comes with the booking.
- Before
- Send the deck, the model, the code.
For schools, accelerators and companies
Working together
Talks and keynotes
Entrepreneurship, venture capital, and what AI actually changes about the work. Built for the room you put me in.
Program design
From a two-day sprint to a sixteen-week build-and-launch track. I've designed and run both, and I stay through delivery.
Juries and advisory
Selection committees, incubator mentoring, institute partnerships. Direct feedback, given in front of the founder.
Tell me the cohort, the constraint and the date: hello@profjulien.ai, or find me on LinkedIn.
Writing
Notes, when they're ready.
Short pieces on entrepreneurship, leadership, and what AI actually changes. The first ones land here.
Until then it goes out on LinkedIn.
On deciding with the facts you already have
What a VC reads behind the deck
The week an AI-native team outgrows the meeting