Seismic: From Struggling with Positioning to Hitting $300M ARR
Doug Winter is the co-founder and CEO of Seismic, a sales enablement platform that helps organizations better engage with customers and grow revenue.
In 2010, Doug and his co-founders launched their bootstrap business out of a basement in San Diego with the vision of helping companies solve their content management problems.
Initially, they decided to focus on a solution for sales and marketing teams, but at the time, sales enablement wasn't a product category, so they really struggle to position their product in the minds of their customers.
In this episode, we unpack that story and share Doug's journey, including:
- Why Doug and his co-founders decided to bootstrap the business for the first couple of years instead of fundraising — and why that turned out to be the right decision.
- Why they decided to target enterprise customers from day one instead of working their way upmarket, and the challenges they faced as a startup selling to large organizations.
- How they’ve grown Seismic from a bootstrapped business to a SaaS company doing over $300 million ARR, with 2,200 customers and $450 million in funding.
I hope you enjoy it.
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Book Recommendation
- “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change” by Stephen R. Covey