Seismic: From Struggling with Positioning to Hitting $300M ARR – with Doug Winter [328]
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.
