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Strategic Communications Advisory For Visionary Founders
Actionable
Takeaways
Focus on mandatory, universal use cases to ensure scalability:
Narrativa discovered that patient safety narratives—reports required for every clinical trial when patients experience adverse events—offered the perfect scalable entry point. Unlike one-off custom projects that looked attractive but weren't universally needed, these regulatory-mandated reports guaranteed market-wide adoption potential. Jennifer explains: "If we created this use case for a patient safety narrative, then guess what, everyone has to use it. It's an opportunity to scale quickly across every drug trial in the market."
Leverage regulatory catalysts as market entry accelerators:
COVID-19 created an unexpected opening for AI adoption in pharma by demonstrating the critical need for speed in drug development. The pandemic forced pharmaceutical companies to recognize that their traditional 10-16 year timelines needed acceleration, with 40-60% of that time spent on paperwork rather than actual research. This regulatory pressure became a powerful sales catalyst that opened previously resistant organizations to automation solutions.
Identify business model disruptions to understand your real customer:
The team initially targeted Clinical Research Organizations (CROs) as their primary market, assuming they'd want efficiency gains across multiple accounts. However, they discovered CROs were actually disincentivized to adopt their solution because they bill sponsors hourly for report writing. AI automation that reduces hours from days to minutes destroys their revenue model. This insight led them to pivot directly to pharmaceutical sponsors and biotech companies who benefit from faster, more accurate reporting.
Use industry events for trust-building rather than traditional marketing:
In the highly regulated pharmaceutical industry, relationship-building trumps conventional marketing tactics. Jennifer invested heavily in speaking at industry events and nurturing personal relationships—calling prospects to check on their families, taking them to dinner, and positioning herself as a trusted advisor rather than a vendor. This approach proved essential in an industry where professionals see themselves as saving lives and need to trust anyone handling patient data.
Target resource-constrained segments with urgent timelines:
Biotech companies emerged as ideal customers because they operate like well-funded startups with finite resources and urgent timelines. They're typically VC or PE-funded with limited time to develop molecules before selling to larger pharma sponsors. This creates natural urgency for efficiency tools that can accelerate their development process while maintaining the data accuracy required for eventual acquisition.
Position AI as augmentation during the transition period:
Early adoption required careful messaging about AI as a "medical writing sidekick" rather than a replacement. Jennifer learned this lesson when speaking to a room of 200+ medical writers who initially viewed the technology as an existential threat. The breakthrough came when one writer understood that automation could have given him more time for family moments—attending soccer games and ballet recitals instead of working late on reports.
Conversation
Highlights
How Narrativa Cracked the Pharma Market by Turning AI Skeptics into Believers
When Jennifer Bittinger walked into that pharmaceutical conference in late 2021, she thought she was about to deliver a routine presentation about AI automation. Instead, she found herself facing 200 medical writers who looked at her “like I was their mortal enemy and was literally getting rid of all their jobs.”
This wasn’t how the co-founder of Narrativa, an AI content automation platform that has raised $2.4 million, had envisioned breaking into the pharmaceutical market. But that hostile reception would ultimately teach her one of the most important lessons about selling AI to traditional industries: positioning is everything.
In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Jennifer shared how Narrativa evolved from a general content automation tool to becoming essential infrastructure for pharmaceutical companies looking to accelerate clinical trials. Her journey reveals crucial insights about market timing, customer segmentation, and the art of positioning disruptive technology in conservative industries.
The Unexpected Pharma Pivot
Narrativa’s path to pharmaceutical dominance began with a phone call in 2019. Three Spanish co-founders—David Llorente, Alberto Moritia, and Javier Garcia—had been successfully using natural language generation to create financial content since 2015. They could “literally take any type of data, whether that is proprietary data or public data and turn it into different types of text content,” Jennifer explains.
But then several major pharmaceutical companies approached them with an intriguing question: “We see you guys are really great at turning data into text. Could you use the same platform technology to automate clinical trial regulatory documents like for drug trials?”
The team knew they were venturing into heavily regulated territory, but they decided to explore the opportunity. What they discovered would reshape their entire business model.
The Hidden Opportunity in Pharma’s Paper Trail
As Jennifer began meeting with executives at Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and Sanofi, a startling pattern emerged. These companies were spending 10-16 years bringing drugs to market, but when she asked how much time was dedicated to actual research versus paperwork, the answer was shocking.
“They said, oh, it’s at least 40 to 60% of that time is just paperwork,” Jennifer recalls. The pharmaceutical industry had built an elaborate system where breakthrough medical research was being slowed down by an avalanche of manual documentation.
This revelation coincided with a global catalyst that would crack open the traditionally resistant pharmaceutical market: COVID-19. “Because of COVID and how quickly the pharmaceutical companies like Moderna and Johnson and Pfizer had to, you know, get these vaccinations out, right, and in production and into the market so quickly, it really opened everyone’s eyes in pharma to say, wow, we need to speed up the clinical trial process.”
The Art of Positioning AI as Enhancement
That breakthrough moment at the 2021 conference taught Jennifer a crucial lesson about introducing AI to skeptical audiences. After her presentation fell flat with the medical writers, she prepared for another hostile confrontation when an older gentleman approached her.
Instead, he delivered an unexpectedly powerful testimonial: “Jennifer, I wish I would have met you 10 years ago. If I would have had your software to automate all of these reports for me, I could have attended more soccer games and more ballet recitals and been at more birthday parties.”
This interaction crystallized Jennifer’s approach to positioning AI. “I made sure to say at least three or four times, I said, this is your medical writing sidekick, right? It’s your assistant. It’s going to help you write the full first draft generated in 30 seconds or less.”
The lesson was clear: frame AI as augmentation that gives people their lives back, not automation that eliminates their purpose.
Finding the Universal Use Case
One of Narrativa’s most strategic decisions involved focusing exclusively on mandatory regulatory requirements rather than chasing attractive custom projects. Jennifer identified patient safety narratives—reports required whenever clinical trial patients experience adverse events—as their entry point.
“If we created this use case for a patient safety narrative, then guess what, everyone has to use it,” she explains. “It’s an opportunity to scale quickly across every drug trial in the market.”
This focus on universal, mandatory use cases became a cornerstone of their go-to-market strategy. While other opportunities looked appealing, Jennifer learned to say no to projects that weren’t scalable across the entire market.
The Customer Segmentation Revelation
Initially, Narrativa targeted Clinical Research Organizations (CROs), assuming these service providers would want efficiency gains across multiple client accounts. This assumption proved costly.
“CROs, we have a few CROs, clinical research organizations that we service that are clients of ours, but majority of them are still billing the sponsor with an hourly rate,” Jennifer discovered. “AI completely demolishes that whole financial structure so they cannot bill with an hourly rate because they can use AI to get the whole report done in minutes instead of hours.”
This insight led to a fundamental pivot toward pharmaceutical sponsors and biotech companies—organizations that actually benefited from faster, more efficient documentation rather than being penalized by it.
Biotech companies proved especially receptive because “they are kind of like a startup. So biotechs have a limited number of resources. They are usually just VC funded, right? Or PE funded. So they have a finite amount of time to build out a molecule that they then have to sell to a sponsor.”
Building Trust Through Relationship Marketing
Breaking into pharmaceutical markets required abandoning traditional SaaS marketing playbooks in favor of relationship-building. Jennifer invested heavily in industry events, personal connections, and trust-building activities.
“I’ll take them out to dinner, I will call them on a 15 minute call and say, hey, how are things going? How can I help? You know, or how is your daughter, you know, who just graduated from college?” she explains. “You really have to take time to build those relationships and they’re going to come back to you because they know they can trust you.”
This approach proved essential in an industry where professionals handle life-saving patient data and “pride themselves on their work” as people trying to “save lives and change the world.”
The Power of Self-Service Marketing
While building relationships, Narrativa also discovered an unconventional marketing approach: using their own platform to dominate search results. “We have really used our own platform to generate a large number of articles that live on our website. So it really helps our SEO, our search engine optimization to grow quickly,” Jennifer notes.
This strategy allowed them to “come to the top on almost each search that someone has for, let’s say, regulatory documentation, automation” while spending “very little money on marketing.”
The Vision for Pharmaceutical Infrastructure
Looking ahead, Jennifer envisions Narrativa expanding beyond individual use cases to become comprehensive pharmaceutical infrastructure. “We’re looking to grow even larger and maybe even acquire several other complementary tech vendors, you know, into our solution, our product offering suite,” she explains.
The goal is creating “an end to end research and development pipeline solution. That’s what all of these large sponsors are asking for.”
Lessons for B2B Founders
Jennifer’s journey offers several tactical insights for B2B founders entering traditional industries:
First, position disruptive technology as enhancement rather than replacement, especially when targeting users whose jobs might be affected. Second, focus on mandatory, universal use cases rather than attractive custom projects that don’t scale. Third, understand how your solution impacts each customer segment’s business model—some apparent customers might actually be disincentivized to adopt your technology.
Fourth, leverage external catalysts like regulatory changes or crisis events to accelerate adoption in resistant markets. Finally, in industries where trust matters more than features, invest in relationship marketing over traditional demand generation.
Narrativa’s evolution from general content automation to pharmaceutical infrastructure demonstrates how strategic positioning, customer insight, and market timing can transform a startup’s trajectory. For founders building in regulated industries, Jennifer’s experience offers a roadmap for navigating skeptical markets and building sustainable competitive advantages.
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