Seismic, a content management startup based in Encinitas, CA, has raised $4.5 million in a Series A round to build out its cloud-based platform, which pulls live data from various sources for use in charts, reports, graphics, other types of electronic documents.
The technology enables users to easily update their sales and marketing content. In a statement last week, the startup has been targeting corporate customers that operate their own networks.
“We view ourselves as a nice complement to business intelligence” technology, Seismic CEO Doug Winter told me recently by phone. “We’re kind of ‘the last mile’ of business intelligence, in terms of how we use the data.”
Seismic was founded three years ago by a group of serial entrepreneurs, and now has about 30 employees. Most of them are working at the company’s headquarters in Encinitas, about 30 miles north of San Diego, and in Boston.
Members of Seismic’s leadership team previously founded and sold the software services company Objectiva Software Solutions. Winter told me he joined Carlsbad, CA-based Document Sciences as COO, and helped lead a turnaround that led to the company’s acquisition by Massachusetts-based EMC in 2008 for $85.8 million in cash.
Seismic’s founders provided enough capital to fund the business, which has been operating on a lean business model, Winter said. Seismic has identified markets for its content management technology in healthcare, among wealth management firms, and in financial services and insurance, Winter said. The company doubled its revenue during the first half of 2013, and Seismic’s revenue is on track to double again before the year ends, he added.
A testimonial on Seismic’s website from an anonymous investment banker helps to explain the appeal of Seismic’s technology: “We hire fresh MBA’s by the dozen partially to handle the research and presentation prep work associated with pitching a new deal. Many of them wind up wasting a lot of time manually preparing pitch books… Copy…Paste…Repeat.”
In a statement from the company last week, Winter said, “Our technology enables professionals to easily create and deliver branded, marketing-approved, yet personally customized materials that integrate live data into approved content in real-time and across any device.”
The San Francisco venture firm Sigma West led the round, which was joined by unnamed private investors. Sigma West raised $124 million for its inaugural fund late last year, and is targeting its investments in enterprise software, consumer Internet, and storage startups.
