Ignite VC: Scaling from Seed to Growth, GTM Strategy and Founder Advice from Karen Page | Ep226

Episode notes

Most startup advice breaks down right when it’s needed most, in the messy middle, after the first signs of traction and before real scale. This is the phase where dashboards look decent, investors get excited, and founders quietly wonder if they’re about to make the wrong irreversible decision. Karen Page has lived in that middle for decades. Before becoming a General Partner at B Capital, Karen helped scale Box from its early days, built one of the most influential partnership ecosystems in SaaS, and later led enterprise go-to-market strategy at Apple. Today, she sits on boards and works directly with founders navigating the exact moment where momentum can either compound or collapse. This episode isn’t about hype cycles or shortcuts. It’s about how companies actually grow. Scaling is a mindset shift, not a milestone One of Karen’s core observations is simple and uncomfortable. The skills that get a company from zero to one are not the same skills that get it from one to ten. Early traction rewards speed and conviction. Scale rewards clarity and judgment. Founders who struggle during this transition often don’t lack intelligence or ambition. They lack perspective.