Creativity is a core attribute of successful marketing. And translating creative ideas into digital content for the Web, social media and digital media requires specialised software. As a result, the market for content creation software is both booming and highly competitive.
According to Data Bridge Market Research, the $6 billion global content marketing software market is set to undergo a massive rise over the next several years, reaching $22.57 billion by 2028. The software providers in the highly fragmented category include giants like Apple and Adobe, followed by a host of mid-sized players and start-ups like Percolate, Uberflip, Newscred and Ceros.
Ceros Founder and CEO Simon Berg.
Ceros hopes to stand out in the crowd and join the ranks of the category giants by becoming synonymous with “creativity,” according to its founder and CEO Simon Berg. Founded in 2012, Ceros positions itself as a cloud-based experiential content creation platform that empowers marketers and designers to create rich, interactive content without code or traditional web development. This founder’s journey story is based on my interview with Berg.
“I've found myself here by accident to some degree. But over the years, I have become acutely aware that my ‘why’ is more important than my ‘what’. Why am I here doing this? Why do I get up every day and face the fear, the anxiety, the hard work and the emotions of being an entrepreneur? And the answer to that is that creativity matters,” says Berg who hopes to use his clarion call for creativity to be the engine of growth that will drive his company forward.
Berg knows something about reinvention. What started as a reprographic business in London, morphed into an ad agency and later transformed into a software company by Berg in 2012 when he moved the company to New York. Along the way Berg and company faced several existential moments over funding, surviving the Pandemic, as well as Berg’s own self-described “mid-life crisis.”
His journey to becoming the CEO of fast-growing software company in a fast-growing category is anything but typical. Berg left school at 16 years of age and went to work in his father’s rough and tumble reprographics business. “The business had three owners, one of whom was my father. They were equal partners. So, I kind of had all of the bad sides of being one of the boss's sons, but not the upside, because he wasn't in control of the company,” says Berg. He describes his father as “coming from nothing” so he never wanted his son to be treated any different. Berg then continued in that business for nearly twenty years as the business went through the many transformations happening in the publishing industry.
“During the last five years. I was the CEO because my father semi-retired, one of his partners retired and there was only one other guy left. So myself and a guy called David Brin were joint managing directors for about a year and a half. David was 60. And I was 30. I wanted to change the world. He wanted to save all the money. So, I convinced him to leave,” says Berg. As CEO, he then had on the job training in finance and cash management, but managed to successfully grow the business, acquire a few firms into what had become a 290-person full-service ad agency.
Along the way he discovered a new creative outlet through software product development. The genesis of Ceros was born in that agency with the introduction of software that turned static PDFs into interactive digital magazines. “When I sold the agency, I took Ceros with me, which then led me to America because everyone in England said ‘You're in the wrong country. Your energy, enthusiasm and positive vibes don't jive well with the somewhat negative, down troubled English ways these days, you should be in New York.’ So, I shipped myself to New York,” says Berg.
He started pitching VCs in New York and found a somewhat sympathetic ear in Ian Sigalow at Greycroft Partners who told him he liked Berg and his team and his vision for the product, but that his technology was outdated. Siglow had another company in his portfolio called Crowd Fusion who had great engineering but failed to commercialize their technology. So Siglow challenged Berg that if he could convince Crowd Fusion to buy Ceros and then make Berg CEO, he would give him the $2 million in financing he asked for.
“I think he thought it will never happen. And I thought, ‘Okay. Because I've come from nothing and I've got a chance to move to New York and be a technology CEO, I'm gonna figure this out. And through a combination of passion, drive, authenticity and a little bit of charisma, I got that deal done,” says Berg. Siglow remains on the Ceros board to this day.
Ceros has earned that investment and more. Today, according to Berg, the 350-person company will generate over $50 million in annual revenue. Its growth trajectory allowed the company to attract $133.5 million in financing, with a $100 million private equity investment from Sumeru Equity Partners. Other investors include Silicon Valley Bank, Greenspring Associates, Sigma Prime Ventures, Grotech Ventures, StarVest Partner, CNF Investments, and Ceros’s original investor, Greycroft Partners
The Sumeru $100 million investment for 57% of the company also didn’t come easily and was put off during the Pandemic, creating angst for Berg’s family and team and then finalised in July of 2020. “I think Ceros and I had a midlife crisis at the same time. Or at least a sort of an existential moment as to what I was going to do both as a business and as a human being about a year or so ago. If you go all the way back to my childhood and know that what really makes me a happy human being is creating. I like to inspire myself and others. I like to educate myself and others, and I'd like to empower myself and others to be more creative. And when I'm doing that, I'm the happiest human being you'll ever meet,” says Berg.
At 46 Berg questioned what he would do next. So, he had a long conversation with his executive team and told them if all they we're going to do is incrementally improve the metrics of this business, and slowly trudge their way to $100 million in software revenue over the next two or three years, then he didn’t want to do this anymore.
Berg and his team then talked about how big the company could be if they aligned their purpose that creativity matters and mission to unlock that creativity through technology. “We ended up with this amazing whiteboard of ideas about what we could be, and we found ourselves feeling very inspired,” says Berg.
So much so that Berg believes the company has developed the blueprint to building Ceros into a half-billion dollar plus annual revenue business. Whether or not it will succeed remains to be seen, but Berg’s reinvigorated vision for the company’s future and exuberance might yet make it happen.
