Recently I sat down with Justin DeMarchi for his DUO conversations with founders. He asked a simple question: why did you build Georgia? Here is the short version of my answer.
Where Georgia Started
A few years ago I sat through a negotiation training and left a little shocked. What surprised me was how few of us had ever been taught any of it. Every conversation has a purpose. People talk for a reason. Once you see that, you can guide a hard conversation without being manipulative.
Knowing it changed nothing on its own, though. I only got better when I practised.
I spent most of my career inside large industrial and distribution companies, and later in consulting on pricing and sales. I watched good people lose deals, margin and trust in the same few moments: the price question, the follow-up nobody sends, the concern nobody raises. The product was usually fine. The conversation was where it went wrong.
In 2025 I turned that into Georgia.
What Selling Georgia Taught Me
My first idea was to sell Georgia to HR. HR turned out to be almost impossible to sell into: unless training is imposed, it is very hard to make people buy it. So I went to the people who already had a budget and a reason: sales trainers. Today we build custom scenarios with them, and with the teams who use Georgia every week.
The sales trainers we work with never give a script. They teach technique and a way of reading the situation, because every conversation is a little different. That is also how I think about my own offer. It is never finished. I keep changing how I talk about Georgia as I learn from every call, and I wrote more about that idea in Your Startup Value Proposition Is Never Finished. If you are a founder, this is also why we built Georgia's practice for founders.
Why I Still Practise
I use Georgia myself. On some products I get horrible grades. The feedback never judges my style. It tells me something I can fix on the next call, like "you sound very clear, but you pitch early."
That is the practice I want every team to have: short, honest, and done before the real conversation.
Watch the Conversation
Justin and I also talked about competitors, why big companies said no and small ones said yes, and why your offer is never finished. You can watch the full 25-minute interview and read the highlights on Justin's DUO page.
If you want to see how teams practise their hardest conversations, book a Georgia demo.
Julia Georgi, founder & CEO of Georgia