What-if certainty 3/5 debate potential 2/5

Stone: Grammarly should have documented why enterprise strategy could fail

Dorian Stone · Scaling from Consumer to SMB to Enterprise with Grammarly Head of Organizations Revenue Dorian Stone · Jan 20, 2022 · at 18:56

Dorian Stone, Head of Organizations Revenue at Grammarly, reflects on the pitfalls of early optimism when transitioning from consumer to enterprise B2B sales.

0:00 / 0:34exact quote · 34.5s
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“I think it's probably in retrospect probably would have been better if we'd even taken a stronger stance to write down the reasons why our current strategy to go into B to B and to go into enterprise would not work rather than allowing ourselves To be over optimistic based on the momentum we saw with professionals in our individual business, as well as the early days and results that we got as we first launched Grammarly business. I think if we take in not a pessimistic lens, but I think if we take in a more critical and objective lens while maintaining a positive attitude about our growth and our future, I think we would have actually pulled some learnings forward.”

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