Playing to your strengths and strengthening your brand identity with Seismic's Doug Winter
This week on How to Win: Doug Winter, co-founder and CEO of Seismic, a sales enablement platform that helps teams become more productive and engage with buyers in more compelling ways. Founded in 2010, Seismic has expanded globally, with offices in North America, Australia, and Europe. Today, Seismic boasts 1300 employees and a $280M ARR run rate. In this episode, Doug shares how Seismic achieved success by committing to keeping their specific subset of customers extremely happy, and by staying true to their brand identity. I share my thoughts on understanding your strengths as a founder, why maintaining a strong network will help in the early days of growing a business, and the power of a crystal clear brand identity.
Key Points:
- Doug explains how Seismic's founders saw a market opening (00:55)
- How Seismic created a category and helped define a new word (02:43)
- How the founders played to their strengths and industry experience (04:37)
- My thoughts on founders playing to their strengths, and a quote from Unqork's Gary Hoberman (06:38)
- How Seismic achieved product-market fit (08:35)
- I explain why you need to be the best at something specific if you want to win (09:28)
- "Contacts become contract" and a quote from YC's Michael Seibel (11:08)
- Why Doug believes the saying "only the paranoid survive" (13:11)
- How Seismic usurped the category leaders by acquiring them (14:36)
- My thoughts on creating categories and subcategories with a quote from Prof. David Aaker (16:05)
- Why Seismic is so focused on keeping their customers happy to avoid commoditization (19:14)
- Doug's thoughts on staying true to your brand identity (20:47)
- I explain the importance of prioritizing brand identity (21:50)
- Seismic's acquisition strategy (25:00)
- My thoughts on strategic acquisitions with a quote from LegalZoom's John Suh (26:27)
- Wrap up (31:35)
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