Defying Expectations with Scribe's Jennifer Smith

This episode focuses on Jennifer Smith, CEO and co-founder of Scribe, discussing her journey of personal growth and entrepreneurship in the tech industry.

1. Embrace challenges as opportunities for growth and innovation in your career.
2. The importance of self-reflection in determining personal and professional paths.
3. Building a business should be about passion for the problem you are solving.
4. The significance of adapting to feedback and pivoting strategies in startup environments.
5. Encouragement for women in tech to pursue ambitious goals despite societal expectations.

1: Early Inspirations

Jennifer recounts her early career and the shift from consulting to tech, spurred by inefficiencies she observed in operational processes. Jennifer Smith: "I remember people would pull out these really thick binders...I always thought, gosh, if these people had just had a way to share what they had figured out."

2: The Genesis of Scribe

The foundation of Scribe was influenced by the repeated need for a platform to capture institutional knowledge, a gap Jennifer identified through extensive industry engagement. Jennifer Smith: "I talked to over 1200 CIO CTO type folks...and they'd basically say, look, my company runs on institutional know-how."

3: Personal Motivations and Reflections

Jennifer discusses the personal introspections that led her to start Scribe, focusing on what genuinely made her proud rather than following conventional expectations. Jennifer Smith: "What am I gonna look back on and say, gosh, I'm glad I spent my time doing that."

4: Overcoming Challenges

Insights into the challenges faced during the early stages of Scribe, including significant pivots based on customer feedback. Jennifer Smith: "We just want the core of what has now turned into scribe today...We are just doing this core scribe thing and we're going to go all in."

1. Identify what truly drives you and align your career accordingly.
2. Regularly engage in self-reflection to reassess goals and motivations.
3. Stay open to feedback and be willing to adapt your strategies.
4. Build a supportive network that encourages and believes in your vision.
5. Maintain resilience and focus on long-term goals during challenging times.

As an entrepreneur, you sometimes have to go against the grain and defy expectations. But how can you keep yourself motivated? For Jennifer Smith, founder and CEO of Scribe, it’s the pride of building an amazing product that keeps her going through the difficult moments.
When Jennifer first started her career in consulting, she had no idea that one day she would end up in tech. As she flew across the country and worked at multiple organizations, she saw a gap in the market for a tool that helped document processes, knowledge, and expertise. That's how Scribe was born.

Jennifer has been underestimated in her journey as a founder. She believes that she is the one who can push herself the furthest and has been told by well-meaning people in the past that her ambitions were not achievable.

Join us for each episode with hosts Suchi Srinivasan & Kamila Rakhimova from BCG to hear meaningful conversations with women and allies in digital, business, and technology.

People

Jennifer Smith, Suchi Srinivasan, Camila Rakimova

Companies

Scribe, Boston Consulting Group

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

Jennifer Smith

Content Warnings:

None

Jennifer Smith

Ultimately, the question that really drove me is, I said, what's gonna make me proud at the end of my career? What am I gonna look back on and say, gosh, I'm glad I spent my time doing that. And to me, it ultimately came down to building something. I didn't really care whether it was my thing or someone else's thing, but to me it was being part of building something with a group of people that I really liked and respected and feeling like we really tried and if we succeeded, built something that endured beyond us.

Suchi Srinivasan

This is in her element. A podcast from BCG. I'm Suchi Srinivasan. And I'm Camila Rakimova. Each episode we have meaningful and vulnerable conversations with women leaders and allies in digital, business and technology.

This week, we're speaking to Jennifer Smith, CEO and co founder of Scribe, an AI powered documentation platform. Personal growth and self improvement have been key themes throughout Jennifer's entrepreneurship journey. Here's my conversation with Jennifer. My name's Jennifer Smith. I'm the CEO and co founder of Scribe.

Jennifer Smith

We are a software startup here in San Francisco. So Jennifer, you didn't start your career wanting to work in tech, though you are, of course in tech now. Can you describe a little bit the journey that got you to scribe? I'll tell you the story, and it'll sound like it all flows together, but there's a great Steve Jobs quote that you can connect the dots only when you look backwards. And that's very much the case with me.

You know, I grew up in a small town in upstate New York. I didn't know anyone who worked in tech or had started a company. I went to school and I said, what are all the smart kids here doing? And they were all going to investment banking or consulting at the time. And I did a summer at a investment bank that some of you who are old enough might recognize, Lehman Brothers, and we know what happened to them.

I ended up going to McKinsey and was there for a good chunk at the beginning of my career, and I spent a lot of time there in the operations practice. So flying around the country 200 days a year or something, going to places like Salt Lake City and Tampa and Ohio and trying to figure out how to make these operations centers more efficient. And I remember people would pull out these really thick binders with laminated pages of step by step guides, and I would talk to the agents in these centers and they'd say, you know, I was told to memorize this and do this, and my job was to work with them to figure out the better ways they'd figured out and update these really thick binders. This was 15 years ago, so everything was still analog back then. I hope, at least now it's digital.

And I always thought at the time, like, gosh, if these people had just had a way to share what they had figured out, they could have had really big impact on this center. And I said, well, that feels obvious. Someone will surely do something about that someday. And I kind of moved on with my life. And then I found myself in venture capital.

And we obviously talk a lot in Silicon Valley about how to sell software, but I got really curious about why people buy software the other side. And so I talked to over 1200 CIO CTO type folks, and I would just ask them, what keeps you up at night? What are you interested in? What are you trying to solve for? And I kept hearing the same theme come out.

People would use very different words, but they'd basically say, look, my company runs on institutional know how. I've got people who show up every day at work and their fingers on keyboard from 09:00 to 05:00, and then they leave. And I gotta hope they come back the next day and all of that knowledge about what they do and how they create value lives in their heads and walks out with them. And I don't really have any way to capture it. And so I just got really interested in this problem and was like this, to me, feels like such a lost opportunity for the way that the whole knowledge workforce is spending their time, and no one was solving it the way that I wanted to.

And so I ended up starting a company. That's a fascinating book journey in terms of the decades in between, and how you pivoted back to the same problem statement, and no one had solved it, as you said, in the interim, which is just amazing. So hats off to you for doing that. Could you reflect a little bit now on the personal side of that journey, some of the challenges you might have faced along the way, some inflection points? Yeah.

I took some time off in my early thirties after venture and was thinking about this problem and trying to decide what I wanted to do. And it's crazy to say this, but for the first time in my life, I asked myself a very simple question, what do I want? And that sounds crazy, right? That I was in my, you know, it took 30 years for me to think about that, but I realized the questions I had always been operating under were a sense of should, what should I be doing? What do people like me typically do?

What do other people expect of me? What's a well recognized trodden path? And so I would literally take a notebook and I would go to the park in downtown San Francisco, and I would just sit there and try to journal all day long and think about what do I enjoy, what makes me happy? And ultimately, the question that really drove me is I said, what's going to make me proud at the end of my career? What am I going to look back on and say, gosh, I'm glad I spent my time doing that.

And to me, it ultimately came down to building something. I didn't really care whether it was my thing or someone else's thing, but to me it was being part of building something with a group of people that I really liked and respected and feeling like we really tried and if we succeeded, built something that endured beyond us. That's awesome that you were able to sort of walk away from the should ahoy, just said that what you should do, which is the burden of everybody else's expectations, almost said, and unsaid societal norms, whatever, be all of that and got to the what do you want? And also giving yourself the permission to want it, and then spending the time in the self reflection to be able to generate that awareness. That's actually so beautiful to hear that.

Suchi Srinivasan

You know, you talked about what scribe that you founded. Now, the unmet need it's addressing, founding a company and taking it on its journey of growth is a long game. It's not for the faint of heart. So to say. I know we're going to talk a little bit about all the challenges and the blocks that are coming your way and how you're handling them, but talk to us about a little bit about your motivation.

Right. What keeps you going on, what must be inevitably a tough journey here. Yeah, I'd say first and foremost, you have to be really excited about the problem that you're solving. And I have a lot of friends who come to me and say, oh, I'm thinking about starting a company. What do you think?

Jennifer Smith

We have a long conversation, first about banishing should from how they're thinking about their life and their decisions. And then I ask them, like, is this something you're excited to spend at least a decade on? And if the answer is no, then this is not the right problem space for you. I had a professor in business school who said, find the thing about yourself you're always apologizing for and then find a way to make money on it. And for me, it's that I'm obsessed with efficiency.

It's just literally the way that I'm wired. It like, really upsets me to see people use their time in efficient ways because to me it just feels like such a waste of human potential. And that's really what we're solving for here, right, is how do we make it so that people are spending their time doing the thing that is uniquely them, they're uniquely talented on the thing, they love doing the thing that's very human. And how do we use software to just automate and get rid of the rest? And to me, I feel like if we're successful, that's just such a huge force multiplier on quality of life for people nine to five.

And so the problem set is really motivating to me. And I love talking to customers, I love talking to users about what that looks like and why it's important and how it shows up for them and how we can solve that for them. And then, you know, in a day to day, it comes down to really two things for me, my team and our users. I get messages from users every day that'll say, hey, Jennifer, you don't know me, but I just wanted to send you a note and tell you scribe has been a game changer for me. It's actually very surprising to me the language they use, because at the end of the day, we're creating software that automatically creates process documentation.

It's not the most emotional topic. Yes, that's right. But people use very emotional language. They'll say, I cried when I saw this. This has been life changing for me.

I just want to tell you what this has meant to me. And to me, that is such a huge source of inspiration. And we have a Slack channel within our company where we take all of these points of feedback, positive and negative, and we pipe it in so everybody can see it. And so any moment when I'm like, losing energy in the day, I will just hop over to that slack channel and it's just incredibly motivating to me. And then, like many people, my team, I work with an incredible group of people, and so I get a ton of energy from just meeting with them and seeing them sounds cheesy, but like, overcome challenges and grow as professionals and, like, seeing what they're getting to do.

And that really, that just fires me up. It's a shared experience, right? It's a journey and it's a shared experience with your team. So that's a very basic, I think, human need. So it's lovely to hear where you are today with scribe and the kind of emotional impacts that you are having on your users.

Suchi Srinivasan

I love that story. You must have faced a million challenges along the way to get it to this point. You've had successful funding, clearly bringing your team together, getting your software in the hands of users. Talk to us a little bit and give us a sense for the type of challenges you had to overcome. Maybe those times when you, I don't want to say we're doubting, but weren't the highest energy points, right.

And you had to dig deep to overcome them. Give us a sense for what those look like. Yeah, I mean, there are challenges every day, small to large to existential, that you face in starting a company all the time. And I don't know, picking one is hard, but maybe one of the more poignant moments early on, we started off with what is scribe today? Or sort of the nugget of scribe today, but we built a bunch of other stuff around it too, because I had these ideas about what I thought customers needed and what I wanted solve for them.

Jennifer Smith

And then I started getting feedback from them where they were like, no, we don't actually want all that other stuff. We just want the core of what has now turned into scribe today. And so we did a very hard pivot with the company and we said, okay, we're dropping all of that as of tomorrow. We are just doing this core scribe thing and we're going to go all in. And scribe at the time was not even connected to the Internet.

I don't know how to describe how early and janky it was at the time. And so it felt very strange and unnatural to say, we're going to place all of our bets on this thing. Let's go. I had investors and friends who said to me, like, you are literally throwing away the company. I don't know what you're doing.

There's no more future. I give you a few more months. This is a bad decision. And I just say to them, look, I'm talking to customers every single day. There's an asymmetry of information here and I know what they're telling me.

I know the problem I'm trying to solve for them and I know that they're telling me this solves their problem and so I'm going to do it anyways. I hope you trust me and you'll be there on the other side. If not, we're good either way. No hard feelings. But that was at the time, it didn't actually feel as scary as it may sound.

In retrospect, because you don't have another choice when you're trying to find product market fit as a company. You just gotta be doing anything you can that you think is solving a real problem for people and that they're gonna care about. And if you're getting feedback that that's not it. Like, you need to be pivoting and changing really quickly. Cause you have a limited amount of time right where you can find that product market fit.

And so it didn't feel well. I look back now, and I'm like, wow, that could have gone a different direction. It didn't really feel that way at the time. It just felt like, okay, this is what we got to do. Let's do it.

Suchi Srinivasan

That's awesome. I love how you synthesize the essence of finding that product market fit, that early stage startup journey through that. And I also love just, I know you make it sound really easy, but I'm sure it wasn't. But trusting your gut and trusting your customers feedback. Right?

So if you were to net it all out a little bit here, what advice would you give to young people who might want to embark on this founder journey, you know, and start their own company? Some words of wisdom. First, I'd say pick up. Be sure this is what you want. Maybe step one, let's make sure it's not a should.

Jennifer Smith

If this is a should to you, because, I don't know, a parent told you that you should start a company because they started a company, or something like, that's not a good reason. Okay, so let's make sure it's an intrinsic reason for why you want to do this. And then I would say, find a problem space that you're just obsessed with. I had a lot of smart friends who said, I want to start a company because it's something I think I should do. And, all right, let me look rationally.

I'm going to sit with a whiteboard, and I'm going to try to analyze what are the markets that are underserved and try to rationally find an opportunity here. Some of them built good businesses, but I'll tell you, when I'm having drinks with them a few years in, they're like, I can't wait to sell this thing and be done with it because it's such a grind. You have to really love what you do. And I feel the opposite. I'm like, we're gonna have to pry this for my cold, dead hands.

Like, this is amazing. I feel so privileged that I get to do this and so I would find something really that you truly love and are really passionate about the problem space and the problem set that you're solving, because it probably also means you're gonna have a really distinctive insight on the way to solve it. The company that we've built with scribe is never the company you would have built if you just looked at the market head on and said, ah, this is what I'm gonna do. Because we looked at it sideways and we squinted at it and we really understood it and we played around with it and it sort of led to where we are now. And I'm biased, but I think a lot of times the best companies grow out that way.

Suchi Srinivasan

Yeah, that's awesome. And your passion for the space, may I just say, jennifer, is shining through literally every word in this interview and every statement that you make. So let's shift gears to a bit more personal stuff. I want to spend a little bit of time talking to you about expectations others may have of us and use two of your LinkedIn posts to frame that conversation. So, firstly, you mentioned recently that people often underestimate you, even though you have an incredible track record of proving them wrong.

So can you ground us a little bit here by first giving us some examples of this in action and get us started there? Yeah, I think, and, you know, I'm not sure I fully, like, recognized it at the time. A lot of it is more looking back where I say, like, gosh, I think I had higher ambitions than that person ever gave me credit for. You know, the path I'm on now is not a path I expected myself to take. And so it's certainly not a path that I think others around me expected.

Jennifer Smith

And I think there's a lot of sort of molding, again, of this should or expected path. I feel like there were kind of a number of examples where I would ask people who didn't know me that well, what do you think? What helped mentor me? Like, what should I be looking at? And they would guide me in particular directions.

And I'd sit and think on it and have to say, you know, I actually think I'm more ambitious than that. I think I want something more than that. And I could never quite put my finger on what that looked like. But I think I hit a point where I realized, like, nobody is gonna set a high, as high of an ambition as I have for myself. Like, it has to only come from me.

And so I need to stop asking people for what advice they have or what they think I should do that is fair. Right. You are your best judge and you know yourself best as to what you want and how you go there. But why do you think that happened? Why did people underestimate you?

Suchi Srinivasan

Or were you trying to say that they underestimated you more than perhaps your male colleague? I'm just curious here. I don't know. And one of the things that I've kind of like, learned in life is to not spend energy trying to understand other people, people's psychology, because you're wrong. I just assume I'm going to be wrong most of the time if I try to assume why people say the things that they do.

Jennifer Smith

You know, I've had some people who have said maybe more explicitly, they're like, I remember I had one friend in business school who was like, gosh, it's such a pity you're a woman, because he was like, you're really smart. Like, you might have actually done something really great, but, like, statistically you probably won't. And there's, I think, been some moments of that. But I think in general, if you think about the advice, even if people who are really well meaning and maybe don't have any bias, the advice they're going to give you is kind of like a regression to the mean, right? They probably want to see you succeed, and so they probably want to give you like, oh, here's a pretty well trodden path where, like, I think the odds are pretty high that, like, that you'll be good at this and that will lead to, like, a nice outcome on the other side for you.

And so I'm going to guide you towards that. That's actually an extremely rational way of looking at it. Right. What would you say to others, therefore, who might face a similar situation, perhaps even extreme ones of people telling them that they can't succeed or they may not be good enough? I think you seem very in control of your voice, very self confident.

Suchi Srinivasan

How would you encourage someone who's maybe on the receiving end of well meaning sometimes advice, but is not really the best for them? You want to listen, so I don't want to say don't listen to feedback at all because I think feedback is a true gift. And so what you need to do is listen to the feedback, which is less of the opinion about. And so what, here's what I think you can or can't do. You do want to listen to the, like I've observed in these instances, you really shine here or you need to grow here.

Jennifer Smith

But then in translating that into a, so what I would say you need to really listen to yourself or choose the set of people you surround yourself with. When I decided I wanted to start a company, I very purposefully changed my environment. So I said, I went and sat in a park a lot. So I had a bunch of alone time, and I sort of recentered myself. And then I chose the people that I spent time with, and I said, okay, I'm going to spend time with founders, I'm going to spend time with investors, people who think crazy, people who think a lot about the future, people who have really non traditional careers, and I'm going to not spend time with people who I think are likely to discourage me in a well meaning way.

Right. Because I had a lot of friends who, well meaning, were like, what are you going to do? You have great opportunity. You're going to throw it away. You're not going to be employable afterward.

I mean, there's all these very rational concerns that came from the path that I was headed on. And so I very purposefully said, I'm going to spend time only with people who, when I tell them my crazy thing, are going to say, good for you, you can do it. I believe in you, not people, again, very well meaning, who might try to discourage me from that. And so I actually just, I shifted radically who I spent time with because I said I can only be around people who are going to feed my energy and not put doubts in my head. All of these actions, none of them are easy, but I just love that you went about all of that in an extremely intentional way.

Suchi Srinivasan

Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Going back again to LinkedIn. So the second occasion, you made a post a few years ago about applying for funding for your company when you were eight months pregnant. And I found this post so inspirational.

But you had doubts about VC's funding a very pregnant founder. Can you talk to us a little bit about why? What is the stereotype here and what was going through your mind when we. Raised our Series A? We were approached by an investor who preemptively wanted to do our round.

Jennifer Smith

And the first question I had in my head was, oh, gosh, I hadn't planned to take capital for my company. Should I do that? And about 30 seconds later I was like, oh my gosh, I'm eight months pregnant. Nobody's gonna back an eight months pregnant founder. You can't tell on Zoom, right?

Doesn't know that I'm about to have my first child. And I think part of it came from, I'd been in venture capital before I'd seen very few female founders in general. I think there's some stat, like 4% of SAS founders who are venture backed are female. And I had never seen a pregnant one. And I had been in VC meetings where I had seen male VC's not even be able to say the word pregnancy.

And so I knew there was maybe some hesitation or concern among parts of people in VC. It turned out to be entirely unfounded because I pretty quickly, you know, called back the investor and I said, look, actually, this is something I think that would be really good for us. Here are the reasons. But just so you know, like, I'm eight months pregnant. You tell me if that kind of changes anything.

And he was like, cool, congrats on your family. Let's get back to talking about your business. The reason that I shared that post on LinkedIn is because I got an outpouring of messages from women who are, like, telling me stories about what their experience had been like being pregnant and either difficulties or amazing things that they had achieved during that time. And we just don't really talk about it. There are just very few examples of pregnant women.

Think about the image of a pregnant woman wearing a suit. Yes. We sort of think of it either as, like, you're a businesswoman or you're a mother, and you don't really see as much in between. And so it was very. This is very inspiring, actually, after I shared that post, to just get all these messages from women, like, sharing their stories and the amazing things that they did.

And so when I was pregnant with my second child, the first thing my team said to me, a guy on my team, he has a very good sense of humor. He's like, oh, so are we gonna raise another round again? I was like, no, absolutely not. You know, we ended up raising our serious b when I was eight months pregnant again. So again, I did the exact same thing.

Again, you did do the exact same. Thing after you said no. Jennifer, we've talked about a lot of different things and covered a lot of ground in the conversation today. Would you like to tell us now about a time when you felt you were truly in your element? I feel in my element doing what I'm doing now.

Whenever I am working with my team or talking to customers, it might sound quotidian, but that's what gives me the most energy. That's where I get a sense of flow state off of, like, a great brainstorming call with my team or a great one on one where I'm working with somebody and they have really grown in some way or a great customer call where I'm just learning so much about the way that they operate and we're able to help them in the way that they work. That gives me a ton of energy, and I think a lot about managing energy. I know there's so much ink that's been spilled talking about managing your time. And people ask me, how do you manage your time?

And, yes, there are things that I do, but I think a lot about how do I manage my energy and make sure that I'm doing things throughout the day that are filling my cup back up proverbially. And for me, it's just. It's those two things. It's time spent with customers and with my team. And at the end of the day, if I've spent my day doing most of that, I feel like I'm walking on air.

I feel like, gosh, I just. I really was in my element today. This is exactly what I want to be doing.

Suchi Srinivasan

Well, that's all for today. This has been in her element, a podcast from BCG. Join us next time to hear more meaningful and vulnerable conversations with women leaders and allies in digital, business and technology. Thank you so much for listening.

Camila Rakimova

Thank you so much for listening.

Suchi Srinivasan

Thank you so much for listening.