Showpad

PJ Broughton founded Showpad in 2011 on the back of his mobile development agency, In The Pocket, which he co-founded in 2010. The catalyst came when a client approached them with a specific problem: their sales team needed to stop using paper at trade shows and deliver presentations on mobile devices instead. As PJ dug into that customer's content challenges, he realized this wasn't a one-off problem. "It's not just a problem for this company. Like there's many companies that create a ton of content that are struggling with equipping reps relevant," he recalls. Companies everywhere were drowning in PowerPoint files scattered across hard drives, SharePoint folders, and Box, with no single source of truth for sales teams.

PJ and his team bootstrapped Showpad for the first two years, growing to about $400-500K in ARR before raising their first round. They launched in 2011 with a laser focus on mobile—the iPad and iPhone were still relatively new, and most competitors hadn't figured out enterprise-grade mobile applications. The key differentiator was a fully branded environment where marketing could create custom buyer experiences without needing to submit to app stores. "At that time, if you wanted to have your own app on your mobile device or iPad, you had to go to the app store and the whole submission," PJ explains. "Showpad, you could through a web interface, marketing could create their own buyer experience. It was something that at that time it sounds simple, but nobody had it."

From week one, bigger customers approached them. Rather than chasing SMBs, PJ and his team went after enterprise. They focused on solving problems for both marketing *and* sales, which made deals larger from day one. By the time they raised their first round in 2013—$1.5 million in euros—they were already working with companies that had significant content management challenges. The early win came from mobile-first positioning at a time when enterprise mobility was still a differentiator, giving them a "beachhead in the space."

Direct sales has been Showpad's engine. They don't do cold email anymore—"we've done it in the past. We've seen it's not highly effective." Instead, they focus on inbound leads that they nurture, then take a proactive approach based on engagement signals like activity levels, inviting prospects to webinars and events. With 280 people across offices in Belgium, San Francisco, Portland, Chicago, and London, they run a sophisticated sales machine: 35 quota-carrying AEs (shooting for $1M ARR per enterprise rep, $600K for mid-market), ~30 SDRs/BDRs across continents, and a global enterprise account team of 4 people managing ~100 named accounts. Their math works—LTV is around $200K, CAC is ~$50K, payback period averages 18-24 months, and they maintain single-digit annual revenue churn with 130% net revenue retention thanks to upselling existing customers.

Showpad scaled from $20M ARR to $30M ARR in just 13 months, representing 70% YoY growth. They've grown to 1,000 paying customers across 50 countries, with an average contract value of $30,000. Their three largest customers each pay over $1M annually; several others pay $500K-600K. They've raised $90M total capital, including a $1.5M seed, a $50M Series A in 2016 (which doubled valuation), and a recent $25M round despite not needing the money—a vote of confidence in their market position. PJ, now 36 and running 280+ people, credits patience and product-market fit focus with both marketing and sales as keys to their staying power in a crowded space.