Learn more and connect with Julia Turnbull:

• Julia’s LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-turnbull/
• Award Winning Agent - https://agent.ai/profile/grantfunding
• Bonbillo - https://www.bonbillo.com/

When you look at Julia Turnbull’s journey, it’s easy to see why she became one of our Agent AI Community Award Winners. Her career has spanned grassroots entrepreneurship in Mexico, impact finance across Latin America and Africa, and leadership at MIT Sloan Executive Education. The throughline? Helping founders find the resources they need to build and scale.

Now she’s taken that experience and turned it into something new: an AI agent that helps startups discover grant opportunities.

“I started kind of learning more about what we now call or think of as entrepreneurship before it necessarily became the discipline that it is now.”

That early curiosity has carried through her work with founders around the world. She saw a recurring pattern: entrepreneurs are big on ideas but often struggle with structure, especially when it comes to financing.

“We need ideas. But I think really giving people a structure—frameworks, goals, things to work towards—is critical. The only thing worse than not having any funding is having the wrong kind of funding.”

Turning Expertise into an Agent

Julia partnered with the BonBillo team to translate years of tacit knowledge into an accessible, scalable tool. The result: an agent that helps entrepreneurs quickly surface grant opportunities aligned with their industry, stage, and geography.

For Julia, the act of building was just as valuable as the end product:

“It’s one thing to explain knowledge to other people all day—it’s another to explain it back into an agent. Building it forced us to decide what was really most important.”

This is a lesson for all builders: encoding expertise requires ruthless prioritization. Agents aren’t just about replicating your knowledge; they’re about distilling it down to what’s most useful for others.

A Tool for Focused Discovery

The grant discovery agent doesn’t try to do everything. Instead, it gives founders a clear starting point in a notoriously messy landscape.

“Startup founders are busy… this is a tool for people to take off the blinders and see what else is available. It’s really a research tool, giving early-stage teams a high-level overview of what’s out there.”

The practical takeaway for builders: the best agents succeed by removing friction and freeing up time for their users.

Agents as Team Members and Bridges

Julia also sees agents not just as productivity tools, but as enablers of new networks and opportunities.

“Think of AI as a tool and as a bridge. These agents can become team members and do some of the thinking or the work for you, but they’re also an entrée into new networks and opportunities.”

For builders, this is an important shift in perspective. The real power of an agent isn’t just in the tasks it performs, it’s in the connections it creates.

Wisdom to Build By

As the conversation wrapped, Julia shared a piece of advice she’s heard from many founders over the years:

“Fall in love with the problem, not the solution. The solution may change, but really think about the people you’re solving for… and you’ll be successful.”

It’s a reminder that resonates across the builder community. The most impactful agents, like the most impactful startups, begin with a deep understanding of real problems and the people experiencing them.

Supporting Julia and Building Together

Julia’s agent is already being used by startups to uncover grants they might otherwise miss. She and the BonBillo team are continuing to expand the vision, curating the broader “funding stack” for early-stage companies.

You can support Julia by trying out the agent, sharing feedback, and passing along success stories. As she puts it, hearing how tools are used in the wild is what makes the work worthwhile.

Her story is also a challenge to all of us: What problem are you falling in love with as a builder?