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

What if the best venture investors aren’t pattern matchers at all, but former operators who’ve spent decades stitching companies together, one partnership at a time?

Karen Page’s career reads less like a résumé and more like a relay race, sales floors to startups, startups to Big Tech, Big Tech to venture, with the baton always being go-to-market clarity. From helping scale Box in its formative years, to shaping enterprise partnerships at Apple, to now backing and advising founders as a General Partner at B Capital, Karen has seen how companies actually grow, and why most stall before they do.

In this episode, Karen breaks down what founders often miss when moving from early traction to real scale, and why “one plus one equals three” is more than a cute partnership metaphor, it’s a survival skill.

About the guest

Karen Page is a General Partner at B Capital and one of venture’s most operator-shaped investors. She was a founding executive at Box, where she built the partnership ecosystem and launched Box.org, later leading enterprise partnerships and GTM strategy at Apple. Today, she sits on and advises boards across SaaS, fintech, and digital health, helping founders turn early momentum into durable growth.

In Todays Episode We Discuss:

00:01 Welcome and Karen Page’s background

02:30 Early career in sales and building GTM foundations

04:20 Discovering partnerships as a growth lever

06:00 Scaling Box through ecosystem strategy

08:10 Exposure to venture while fundraising at Box

10:00 Transition from operator to investor

12:00 Why B Capital and building the early-stage fund

14:30 How Karen works with founders and boards

17:00 What great founders do differently as they scale

19:45 Evaluating investors and building the right board

22:00 Boardroom trust and decision-making under pressure

25:20 AI as a platform shift versus cloud and mobile

28:00 Go-to-market evolution in an AI-first world

31:00 Pricing, value creation, and capital efficiency with AI

34:00 Product-led growth versus sales-led at scale

36:30 Vertical software and overlooked markets

39:30 Talent, culture, and scaling leadership

43:00 How venture and startups will evolve

46:30 Timeless GTM principles and founder lessons

Memorable moments:

“Most of the time I’m an airplane, looking across the landscape. Every once in a while, I have to be an ant.”

“Clarity always wins. You can change channels, tools, and tactics, but if you can’t explain your value, nothing else matters.”

Karen’s journey is a reminder that venture isn’t about predicting the future, it’s about pattern recognition earned the hard way. Sales calls. Missed hires. Inflection points that only look obvious in hindsight. The same instincts that helped her connect companies at Box are now helping founders connect ambition to execution.

Different title. Same puzzle. Same question, how do you make one plus one equal three.

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