Doug Winter: The GTM Story of Seismic (Nearly $400M ARR)

Welcome to another episode of Unicorn Builders. In today's episode, we're speaking with Doug Winter, CEO & Co-Founder of Seismic, a sales enablement platform that has raised $450 Million in funding.

Here are the most interesting points from our conversation:

• Early Vision of Sales Enablement: Doug describes how Seismic identified the gap in content management for sales and marketing, focusing on building a cloud-based solution when the market was still hesitant about the cloud.
• Riding Salesforce’s Wave: Seismic leveraged the trust and groundwork laid by Salesforce to gain customer confidence in cloud-based solutions, especially in the early days when skepticism was high.
• Category Creation Challenges: Doug highlights the lengthy and patient process of defining and popularizing the sales enablement category, a journey that took over five years to gain widespread industry recognition.
• Large Enterprise Focus: From the outset, Seismic targeted large enterprises instead of smaller startups, a strategic decision that shaped their growth trajectory and helped secure substantial deals, including their first million-dollar customer.
• Customer-Centric Growth: The company's growth strategy is rooted in a deep focus on customer satisfaction, leading to increased cross-selling opportunities and long-term partnerships with enterprise clients.
• Strategic Marketing Evolution: Although the founding team was more sales-focused, Seismic invested in brand building and targeted events to establish a strong presence, eventually leading to significant milestones like the Forrester Wave recognition.

 

 

//

 

Sponsors:

Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership.

www.FrontLines.io

 

The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe.

www.GlobalTalent.co