Her VCs said she killed the company. 6 years later, it's worth $1.3B. | Jennifer Smith, Founder of Scribe

Jennifer went from VC to founder and immediately broke every rule in the book. When she pivoted Scribe from an automation tool to a documentation platform, her investors told her she had just killed the company. She ignored them. 

Instead of polishing her product, she launched a "janky" offline MVP on Product Hunt to test for real market pull. Scribe is now used by 95% of the Fortune 500. 

In this episode, Jennifer reveals the brutal truth about ignoring "smart" money, why you should run PLG and Enterprise sales simultaneously from Day 1, and how to tell the difference between pushing a boulder up a hill and chasing one down it.

Why You Should Listen

• Why you sometimes need to ignore your investors to save your startup.
• The "Boulder Test": The definitive gut check for knowing if you have true Product-Market Fit.
• How to validate a massive opportunity with zero marketing budget.
• Why the conventional wisdom about choosing between PLG and Enterprise Sales is wrong.
• How to turn executive hiring interviews into free mentorship sessions.

Keywords

startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, product market fit, PLG strategies, MVP testing, enterprise sales, go to market strategy, early stage growth, finding pmf, founder stories

00:00:00 Intro 

00:02:21 1,200 Customer Interviews as a VC 

00:22:07 How to Hire for Excellence 

00:30:18 The Pivot from Automation to Documentation 

00:39:17 Launching a "Janky" MVP on Product Hunt 

00:49:09 The Boulder Test for Product-Market Fit 

00:52:50 Doing PLG and Enterprise Sales Simultaneously 

01:03:12 Ignoring Investors to Save the Company

Send me a message to let me know what you think!