Omer (00:11.440)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host Omer Khan and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights to help you build, launch and grow your SaaS business.
On this episode I talked to John Ferrara, the founder and CEO of Nimble CRM.
John is a serial entrepreneur who started his first company in 1989 with just $5,000 and went on to sell it for $125 million around 2001.
A year after selling his startup, he was diagnosed with a tumor in his head life and his priorities quickly changed for him.
Thankfully, he made a full recovery and went on to launch another startup.
In 2009 he set out to build a social sales and marketing CRM product, Nimble CRM in a very crowded market.
He had the vision of creating a product that you could live in for your email, social media and other communication.
But that plan didn't work out so he had to pivot.
He also built great integration with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, but after a while LinkedIn cut off their API access and Facebook severely restricted theirs, so he had to do a mini Pivot again.
In other words, even though he had a very successful exit with his first startup, it hasn't made it any easier for him to build his second company and he's faced a lot of challenges like any of us would face or are dealing with right now.
But he's kept going and recently after years of trying, has built a partnership with Microsoft which could be massive for his business in the next couple of years.
He was one of the very first guests on this show in 2014 and I'm delighted to have him back and had a chance to catch up up with him on the ups and downs of his business over the last three years.
So I hope you enjoy the interview.
Today's guest is the Founder and CEO of Nimble, a social sales and marketing CRM for individuals and teams.
Nimble combines the strengths of traditional CRM classic contact management, social media, sales intelligence and marketing automation and into a powerful social selling solution.
Nimble was founded in 2009 and to date has raised $12 million in funding.
Recently the company was accepted into the Microsoft Accelerator program which gives B2B enterprise ready companies unprecedented access to Microsoft's partners, customers and business connections.
Prior to launching Nimble, my guest co founded Goldmine, one of the first contact management apps in 1989.
He bootstrapped with $5,000 VC funding and grew that into a very successful venture which he went on to sell for $125 million.
He was also one of the first guests on this show.
He was on episode number three.
So today I'd like to welcome back John Ferrara.
John, welcome to the show.
Or welcome back, Omer.
Jon Ferrara (03:11.630)
It's a real pleasure to be here with you today.
I think that you and I share a lot of passion and commonality well beyond the business aspects of our lives.
And I'm super excited to join you and your community again.
Omer (03:24.260)
Yeah, me too.
Thank you for making the time to do this.
So let's start by figuring out a little bit about what gets you out of bed every day.
Is there a favorite quote that you can maybe share with us?
Jon Ferrara (03:35.300)
I went through a health journey when I was 41, and it was a tumor and facing death and going through the journey of sort of a spiritual rebirth.
I came to the conclusion that we're on this planet to grow our souls by helping others grow theirs.
And this is just a synthesis of probably just my life journey up until that point and also the things I was going through.
And so the quote that I would share is the Zig Ziglar quote, which is that you can achieve whatever you want in life by helping others achieve their goals.
And that's it.
And I think that's why what you and I are doing right now is so important, because by the conversation we're having, we're going to inspire and educate others about how they might be able to achieve their passion, plan, and purpose in life.
And that's why we're here.
Omer (04:26.880)
That's awesome.
So I gave the audience a little bit of a overview of Nimble.
But for people who are not familiar with the product, can you explain a little bit more about what Nimble is and how is it different to other CRM products out there?
Jon Ferrara (04:45.770)
Well, you alluded to the fact that I had helped pioneer contact management and CRM before Outlook or Salesforce existed with a product called Goldmine.
And Goldmine came about because of my.
My own personal need of building relationships that helped me to achieve the goal of connecting and achieving my business goals.
Ultimately, what makes Nimble different is that today CRMs aren't customer relationship managers, the customer reporting managers that most CRMs are really designed for management reporting.
And I like to joke, but it's true.
The reason they call it Salesforce, you have to force salespeople to use it.
Nobody in their right mind would use a serum if they weren't beat on to do it yet.
We all need to manage our network and our brand, and that Today we all do that in Gmail, G Suite, iCloud, Office 365, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn or combination thereof.
And that your network is your net worth.
And today you don't manage it effectively because it's just in too many places and it's too hard to do so.
The number one reason that we built Nimble was to help you build your brand and your network and achieve your goals in life.
And it can be used for individuals as their golden Rolodex or personal CRM Personal.
But more importantly, it could be used for a company to achieve the company's goal.
Because I believe that companies achieve their goals by building relationships at scale.
And that serum systems aren't really about relationships, they're about reporting.
And so that's why we got back in and built Nimble.
Omer (06:24.910)
Love it.
So before we sort of dig into Nimble a little bit more and sort of tell the story of how you started that business, let's go back to goldmine because number one, it's a really interesting story in terms of how you took $5,000 and turned this into, you know, $100 million plus business.
But secondly, there's also a lot of interesting lessons I think you learned along the way which have now helped you on the journey that you're taking with Nimble.
So I think it's a great context, but just start by telling us a little bit about how that business started.
Jon Ferrara (07:01.620)
So I was in sales for a technology startup and they gave me this is in 1988 and they gave me leads, which really weren't leads.
They were pieces of paper with phone numbers of IT people in large corporations in my city.
And they said, go get them.
And back then there was no contact management.
You had email and you had network scheduling but no contacts to connect it to.
And there weren't any existing sales and market automation tools.
Basically people managed all that in spreadsheets.
I looked for a tool that would help me to manage these conversations that I was doing.
I essentially picked up the phone and cold called people, made notes on that piece of paper, put appointments in my day timer and did my forecast in a spreadsheet once a month.
And that was Salesforce Automation.
Because I had a computer science background, I worked my way through college in a computer land store.
I knew every software program on the market at the time.
And there's only three to 500 business applications on the market at the moment.
And I knew that there wasn't a program that integrated email, contact, calendar and sales and market automation.
So I quit my job and started a company called Goldmine.
Now imagine, my partner wrote the code and I had to go out and sell and market it.
How do you sell something to people that they don't even know that they need?
Because networks just started and network software just started.
So how do you sell people a CRM if the category doesn't exist yet?
What I did is I contacted the trusted advisor of my prospect, the person that sold them the network.
Because Goldmine was basically a car to drive on the network to get value out of that networked PC.
I got them to use it because people sell what they know and they know what they use.
They started to recommend it and resell it.
That's how we started the company.
Without ever taking a dime.
We were able to get up to 50 or $100,000 a month in revenue.
And all was fine and dandy until Microsoft came in and ate Novell.
Because Microsoft doesn't innovate, they iterate.
They wait for somebody else to build the market and then they come in once it's big enough to apply their muscle.
And their muscle is billions of users, hundreds of thousands of resellers.
And they basically ate Novell with NT Server.
And so what we did is we shifted from primarily selling Goldmine on top of Novell to building a version of Goldmine that required NT Server for the operating system, SQL Server for the database, and IT Exchange Server for the email transport, which were all brand new programs that nobody was really buying yet.
And since we required them and we had hundreds of thousands of customers and tens of thousands of ours, we were immediately successful and got the attention of Microsoft, who then started to push us in the market.
And this relationship helped us to scale to nearly $100 million in revenue and made us the number one ISV for Microsoft.
And that's how we built Gold Mine.
Omer (09:54.690)
That's great.
And I think if people want to kind of get more of information on that story, they can always go back to episode three and hear more about the Goldmine story.
So, kind of moving on.
You came up with the idea for Nimble, I believe in around 2008, 2009, yeah.
Jon Ferrara (10:13.730)
So I started to use social media in 2007, 8 and 9, and I saw I was going to change the way we work, play, buy and sell.
And I started to look for a relationship manager that enabled me to connect the conversations I was having in Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to contacts, which led me to evaluate contact management.
And in those days, you either had Exchange Server and Outlook or GMAIL which was a cloud based email, contact and calendar platform.
And it wasn't really functional as a contact manager because in Gmail or G Suite, email contact and calendar are three separate tabs.
So when you go to a contact record, you don't have context, the history of interactions on email and calendar that you and the team have had, let alone their social background or the social conversations.
And then I started looking at CRM and saw that it wasn't about relationships, about reporting.
And I thought to myself, this is a business opportunity.
And I started hearing notes in my head and I said, you know what, I'm going to go build this.
And so I gathered a team together in 2010, we released Alpha in 2011, Beta in 2012, turn the paywall on in 2013.
And, and we really got a lot of traction because we essentially pioneered social serum and social selling.
And we were a little early to the market in regards to people understanding the adoption of social and its application to business.
But once that really started to happen, we just took off and we had 100,000 subscribers and got investors like Mark Cuban and Dharma Shah and Google.
And it was really an exciting time
Omer (11:51.010)
when you had this idea, what kind of validation did you do?
Were you going, was it purely a sort of an intuitive decision that you, you felt that there was something there or did you go out and sort of do some testing in the market?
Jon Ferrara (12:05.250)
Well, a combination of both really.
The issue with validation is that the market didn't understand social and its application to business at the time that I founded Nimble.
So people thought that Facebook was a place to hook up with a high school sweetheart, that LinkedIn was a place to get a job, and that Twitter is a place for a bunch of propeller heads to share what code they're writing.
And so I had to build a platform and teach a process, social selling before people understood what it was.
So I had to pioneer that, just like I had to pioneer contact management and CRM for teams back in the goldmine days.
But, but there was a evolving group of influencers in and around social media that I began to have conversations with.
And if you could think about it, Goldmine was grown by identifying the influencer of my core prospect and building relationships with them and getting them to adopt it and then recommend it.
In the Nimble time, there weren't cloud resellers yet, so most of the people adopting Google and the cloud software were self adopting.
And so there weren't resellers to go after like the goldmine days.
But I went after the influencer of my prospect in and around the areas of promise of the product.
So thought leaders and sales, marketing and social media and I began to share their content to build my brand.
And the Nimble brand hashtag in the category appropriately pound sales, pound social, pound marketing and attributing their name in order to start conversations with people interested in being better, smarter, faster in those areas, sales, marketing, social media.
But that also started conversations with the influencer which I then used the opportunity to start a conversation and do a face to face gotomeeting.
And then ultimately they became users and evangelists over my product.
And so if you think about it, Goldmine was built by Influencer marketing.
Back then it was the Nova reseller.
Nimble was built by Influencer marketing, but those were the influencers in social sales and marketing and, and we used Nimble to basically identify them, engage with them, nurture them and grow them.
Omer (14:17.960)
Some people listening to this might say it's okay for John.
He had a very successful exit with Goldmine.
He launched Nimble, he had the funding and the Google ventures and the Mark Cuban's behind him and he's built another successful company and getting into Microsoft Accelerator, which we'll talk about in a little while and why that's such a massive opportunity there.
But you know, I think a lot of people look at that and say, well, he's not dealing with some of the issues that we are right.
That we're struggling with, trying to get to product market fit or figuring out how to grow the product.
And I know in reality that you've had just as many challenges as anybody else and as you'd mentioned earlier about some of the personal things and your, your health issues, you had some massive things to deal with.
So before we talk about Microsoft Accelerator, I'd love to learn from you over, you know, since 2009 and starting this Nimble business.
What are some of the things that didn't work out as planned?
What are some of the, the mistakes or the tough lessons that you've learned along the way?
Jon Ferrara (15:32.290)
Well, Omerv, first off, when I started Nimble, nobody knew who John Ferrari was.
I'd been out of the tech business for 10 years and many people had forgotten Goldmine.
So I had to rebuild my brand and build the Nimble brand.
In fact, I had to go get the Nimble.com domain and set all that up.
And that was a journey and it was a lot of work.
But I do believe that my experience historically gave me a head start in building and establishing Nimble and certainly my Credibility as an entrepreneur, open doors that may not be available to others.
But once I got in those doors and I began to build this platform, and the platform was validated and helped to be evolved by these influencers, I hit a bit of a wall.
Part of the wall was being an early adopter, basically an early teacher of social serum and social selling before they existed.
But once it started to gain traction, parts of the promise of what I built the platform for didn't work out in the way that I envisioned with Goldmine.
People lived in Goldmine because it was Outlook and Salesforce combined of its generation.
And people live in Outlook and they kind of live in their CRM.
So I built Nimble so that it was a combination of email contacting, calendar and social sales and marketing.
And people loved the fact that it integrated Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and Gmail G Suite and automatically synchronized their contacts and the signals from all those places.
In fact, LinkedIn gave me all of their public and private API.
So I was able to build LinkedIn Sales Navigator before it even existed.
And it was an amazing platform.
But no matter how much we build into Nimble, we couldn't engineer all the evolutions of the corresponding platforms that we were integrating with Gmail, G Suite, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, because these platforms continue to evolve.
So you're not going to live in Nimble.
You still have to go to those other platforms to begin to use some of the new features, et cetera, et cetera.
And more importantly, some of the APIs became unavailable to us.
So Facebook cut off the API because they want you to go to Facebook and consume the advertising.
And LinkedIn cut the API off after offering to acquire Nimble and have me come build Sales Navigator for them.
And then ultimately, they didn't want anybody to use the API.
They cut it off to all the CRMs and pretty much all the applications on the marketplace.
And they built Sales Navigator and they wanted you to buy that in order to use it within LinkedIn.
And so I had to rethink what was the promise of Nimble.
And in some ways, Omer, I felt like I had to walk through the desert like Jesus did and really reimagine what was going on.
And it was a struggle.
And in the process of that journey, I came to a realization that the core things that build relationships are the contacts you're connecting to, the conversations that you're having and the activities that you're driving from them.
Email, contact and Calendar is the operating system of your business, and that is in icloud.
Gmail G Suite and emerging in Office365.
And the other part of it is that I believe that your CRM or your contact platform, in fact I think we all need a golden Rolodex or personal CRM that it should build itself from the data you already have in and around you.
That's email, content, calendar, social and even the business apps you have.
And then work with you everywhere you work, providing context and insights and enabling you to take follow up action everywhere you are.
And that is the future of CRM.
So I came to that realization and at the same time I saw an emerging Microsoft.
So Office 365 didn't exist when we started Nimble and it wasn't really a platform player until most recently.
But when I saw it emerging a parallel went off in my head.
So Microsoft doesn't innovate, they iterate, they wait for somebody else to build the market.
Then they come into the market once it's big enough to apply their muscle, which is their billions of users and hundreds of thousands of resellers and tens of thousands of employees.
And they basically came into the market after G Suite built the market with Office365 and today they dominate that market.
There's about 7 million G Suite customers, there's 160 million Office365 customers and that's a fraction of the billions of customers that will be coming over.
And so Microsoft has eaten Gmail G Suite in the same way that NT Server ate Novell.
And we decided to go all in with integration with Office365 and our biz dev relationships with Microsoft.
And after building this version of Nimble that basically works with iCloud, Gmail G Suite and Office and then this widget that plugs into your Chrome browser and then works everywhere you work.
This enabled us to re establish Nimble as a player in the market, to go get our new funding and to sign a deal with Microsoft where they signed up as a reseller of Nimble globally.
Microsoft is selling Nimble through their resellers through a new platform called third party offers.
And this will enable us to ride this new wave of Microsoft just in the same way that Goldmine did.
Omer (21:03.010)
You know, it's funny that I used to work at Microsoft and I was there for many years and what you said about Microsoft going after markets when they're big enough is so true.
Personally.
Remember somebody presenting to some executives and talking about a product that had the opportunity in the next year to become $100 million business and they were very excited about that.
And I remember the response from this person, this executive, was really was, you know, you might be excited about a number like that, but we're not.
You know, it's kind of like there's such a huge scale with, with Microsoft that I think sometimes people forget about.
And, you know, I think that what you mentioned around how Office365 is growing is a great example of that.
So I just want to be kind of clear about what you said a little earlier.
You said that you were trying to build Nimble in a way where, like goldmine, it could be a place where people could live within.
And so in order to do that, you were building email contact calendar functionality within Nimble, and then realizing that that wasn't going to be the right strategy, you weren't going to be able to keep up with all of the functionality that was coming out from G Suite or Office 365 later on, or Twitter,
Jon Ferrara (22:26.030)
Facebook and LinkedIn as well.
Right.
It's not just email contact and Calendar.
So we had built in the social signals if somebody plus one likes, comments, retweets or otherwise engages with you on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, plus all the contacts.
And so we saw that no matter how much engineering we threw at Nimble, even if we had access to all the APIs, that you would still need to go back into Gmail, G Suite, icloud, Office, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Mailchimp, QuickBooks, whatever applications and processes that you're in.
So we decided to build Nimble to be the first relationship platform that auto magically works for you by building itself by integrating your email contact and calendar, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and your business contacts from 80 of the top SaaS, business apps, enriches it with people and company data and then lets you use it anywhere you work.
So that if I look at a name, I know who they are, where they're from, where they work, what they're influential in the history of our interactions on email, calendar and social, and most importantly, the ability to follow up and follow through wherever I am.
Omer (23:32.550)
So instead of building kind of a destination, you said we're going to build this into everything where people are already going.
Can you give me an example of like maybe within Office 365 or G Suite, if someone is using email or calendar in there, what does the nimble experience look like?
Jon Ferrara (23:52.630)
So if I open up an email from you, I can not only see what you're saying to me, but I could also see all your details of all your background across all Your identities, because we map the identities and then bring the data down.
So I know you worked at Microsoft and I know that you worked at Disney.
I know that you're now a founder of ConversationAid and Presto Pod, but also I could go and look at your Instagram because I think a picture tells a thousand words.
And all of these things that give me a clue into who you are, what your business is about, where you are in your life, the history and actions that you and I and my team have had, and most importantly, the ability to follow up and follow through.
Because most emails or conversations in social require some next step.
And most people fail to do that because they have to go to their CRM or contact tool to do it.
And that's the beauty of Nimble, is that it gives you people in company context everywhere you work in relation to the conversations you're having and then lets you do that follow up and follow through.
Omer (25:02.780)
You also mentioned LinkedIn and Facebook cutting off the APIs access.
How did you get around that?
Because both of those are going to be incredibly valuable sources of data to power the intelligence within Nimble.
Jon Ferrara (25:19.740)
Sure.
So Facebook didn't completely cut off the API.
They went from version 1.0 to 2.0.
And there are certain restrictions that restricted us from doing all the beautiful things that we did.
But we still can do many things within the Facebook API.
So that was not as large of an issue.
LinkedIn was a little bit more burdensome because they are the system of record, of business background, at least they have been historically.
Facebook has been building that into their platform more and more.
And there's other places where you could drive that, like Google and other places like that.
But we can still map the identity of somebody's LinkedIn and connect that link to the record, where you could still then traverse over to that link to see it.
Then if you're inside of a LinkedIn profile, if you hover on the URL, Nimble can derive from that URL like in your record.
On the right hand side of your contact and personal info is your Twitter URL and your LinkedIn URL.
If you hover on either of those, or even in your company URL, Nimble will automagically bring up the record or build a record from that.
Because Nimble has this inherent people and company engine, this AI engine that can say if this and that.
So I could say if the Twitter handle is Omracon, then that means that you're Omracon in Facebook, Google, Instagram, Facebook, all these other identities and Then be able to bring the details down, plus the details on your company, which could all be used for giving me context and insights in the conversation.
But more importantly for segmentation, because ultimately, if you have a database, the database is only as good as the data.
And that's the biggest cause of failure.
CRMs is lack of use because you have to go to it to use it, and bad data, because even if you beat on people to do it, they're going to type in data.
And people change and companies change over time.
You don't work at Disney anymore, you don't work at Microsoft anymore, and your life is changing constantly.
And so Nimble maps identities, brings data down and lets you segment off that people and company data to then do outreaches.
And Omer, how many emails do you get on a daily basis that are generic and it appears that people haven't taken the time to understand you or your company or provide a way that they're going to add value to you?
Omer (27:44.500)
Way too many.
Jon Ferrara (27:46.019)
Exactly.
Now imagine if you got an email from me and said, hey, Omer, I know we share a passion about growing great software businesses, including our history with Microsoft, and I would love to connect to learn more about you and find ways we might add value to one another.
If I reached out to you that way, would you respond?
Omer (28:06.490)
Absolutely.
Yeah.
It's a different conversation.
Jon Ferrara (28:09.370)
I could do that at scale because I could segment 10,000 people into 20 or 80 that share specific traits.
And this is how I got the Microsoft deal.
So Microsoft asked me to come and speak at WPC16 on social selling.
Before I went there, I went and found a Twitter list from WPC15 of speakers and influencers of the previous year.
So that's a Twitter list of 3,500 people.
Nimble can import a Twitter list and off the Twitter identity, build the information on the person in the company and build those records automatically.
And I was able to outreach to 150 of them based off of the segment that I built with a one to one relevant authentic message that was sent from my email to their email.
Not from a marketing thing.
Nimble does all that.
It does the segmentation and group messaging in the one to one way and I got a 50% open rate.
I scheduled 25 meetings and I signed the deal with Microsoft because of that interaction.
Omer (29:12.920)
Wow.
Jon Ferrara (29:13.320)
And that's what Nimble is all about.
Omer (29:15.320)
Wow.
So let's talk about the Microsoft deal and the accelerator program.
So how did that come about?
Jon Ferrara (29:22.140)
It was a series of relationships that were built over time.
Microsoft, I liken to a big woolly mammoth.
You're not going to bring down that mammoth with one rock or one spear.
It's going to take a series of relationships over time where you're adding value to those people.
And Microsoft is massive.
And we started the relationship with their product team on Office 365 and built an integration with them.
And that was like six years or so ago and they weren't really that big in the marketplace yet.
And so the relationship just sort of sputtered along.
And then Microsoft wanted to get somebody to build an integration to nimble for Outlook Mobile.
And so we stepped up and worked closely with their product team to build an integration that they then use in this example to teach other ISVs about how to do that.
That we thought was going to open us up to millions of customers because they were going to preload that into millions of Office Outlook Mobile customers.
But in the end it didn't.
We could have just rolled over and folded at that point.
But what we did is we took the code that we wrote for Outlook Mobile and then embedded it into Office 365 and Outlook desktop.
That generated conversations with a variety of other teams, including the Dynamics team, which started to get us speaking slots at Build and Inspire and opportunities to integrate into this project called Euclid, which is a pet project for Satya.
Then that got us an opportunity to be involved with this third party offers program, which is Microsoft is starting to resell applications with their first party product.
Now, if you think about Microsoft reselling products with their first party product, think about this.
Omer products make other products sticky and help get them sold.
SQL Server and Exchange Server would have never been bought if Goldmine didn't require it for data store and email transport.
And we made those products sticky.
And so Microsoft needs third party solutions to make their first party solutions get adopted and make them sticky.
But the SaaS applications today aren't going to go set up themselves in Ingram, Marisol and Tech Data because it costs $100,000 and it takes a year to do that.
And then even after you onboard to Ingram, they're going to want 50 to $100,000 in MDF funds to sell products through them.
So Microsoft recognized that and decided they're going to build their own warehouse for ISVs and they've selected eight ISVs for that program.
And we were one of those eight because of the relationships that we'd built over time with the various Microsoft product and field and executives that then led to us being involved in the Microsoft ISV embedded program, which is where we can now embed Dynamics and Power, BI Flow and PowerApps into Nimble to help sell those other first party solutions.
All of that led to conversations with the Accelerator program.
In fact, they cold called us and then they selected us for that program, which is just yet another acceleration of the deep and wide relationship that we've built with Microsoft.
Omer (32:46.170)
So you were working that Microsoft relationship from all kinds of different angles and looking at different kinds of products and integration opportunities.
Jon Ferrara (32:55.610)
First off, number one, Microsoft doesn't sell anything their resellers do, their distributors do.
Building integrations with Office isn't going to get you sold anything because ultimately the product integration is just the starting point.
Then what you need to do is go figure out who are the business team members that help make that product get sold.
There is the DX team out in the field and all that's been reorganized into Microsoft One customer.
You need to build relationships with who's running Microsoft One customer, which used to be Ron Huddleston and now it's Gavriela Schuster.
And so we had to build relationships with the channel people, but also the marketing people.
So Gretchen o' Hara and then all the different across the board, the marketing, the biz dev and even the chief of staff people at the head of Microsoft.
So we built relationships with their corp dev and biz dev people as well.
So we literally have a Rolodex at Microsoft where we, we open doors, knock on doors and go into these doors with the intent how can we help you achieve what you're doing today?
And for Microsoft Team members, that's refreshing because There may be 100, 200,000 people that work there, but some of the people don't even know other people.
So if you can help the edge person by building integration and then introducing them to another part of the organization that can help the edge people achieve their goals, then you're paying that relationship forward and that returns dividends in abundance.
And so now I'm on the ISV pack for Microsoft.
I don't know if you know what the packs are.
They have advisory boards for different areas of the business that are important.
And that pack then started a conversation with one of their leadership people who put me in contact with people who manage the channel.
And we're now pioneering this program to basically get nimble introduced to the distributors and resellers globally.
So we're not just integrating into the product, we're not just integrating with the distribution, third party offers or the ISV embedded, but we're now integrating with the people that run the channel and do the marketing to basically get in the hands of the resellers because that's the only way you're going to sell.
Omer (35:12.430)
And this is significant because of the number of sellers that are out there, resellers.
And getting these people on board and understanding and getting excited about nimble and what can it offer their customers is another powerful way just to help them drive more sales.
Jon Ferrara (35:31.290)
Right, Exactly.
So we have evolved to become the simple CRM for Office 365, which is a powerful position because today the operating system of your business is email, contact and calendar.
And for the majority of people in the world it's going to be Office 365.
But Office 365 suffers in that it's not a great contact manager because email, contact and calendar are three separate tabs.
And it doesn't do simple sales and marketing.
And Dynamics is too big for 99% of the customers of Microsoft and LinkedIn Sales Navigator unless they understand social selling is not going to be applicable for the masses.
But we then are that simple layer on top of Office that give it contact management and social sales and marketing and grow customers into becoming consumers of LinkedIn Sales Navigator, of Dynamics, of Azure, of Power, BI Flow and PowerApps.
So we become a gateway drug, the bridge between Microsoft first party solutions.
And we help modernize sales and marketing for the Microsoft resellers and introduce them to selling solutions on top of the operating systems that they're selling.
Because most resellers sell plumbing to plumbers, they don't sell solutions on top.
So we get them to start using modern sales and marketing solutions, then they can start recommending them and then they will be in a position to start selling Azure, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Dynamics, Power BI Flow and PowerApps.
And we will then work in conjunction with LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Dynamics.
In fact, we will embed all of those said programs into Nimble.
So you buy Nimble with Office, you get introduced to all those other products and then we can upsell you into those programs.
And once I've executed on all that, we will become so strategic to Microsoft that they'd be stupid not to buy us and or push the crap out of us worldwide.
Omer (37:26.750)
I think it's worth underscoring what you've done there in terms of building those relationships at Microsoft because for somebody who was, quote, an insider, I know how difficult it was to find the right people in different product groups who were working on whatever and then to build those relationships and then to figure out how to align roadmaps and how you could integrate each other's products and do something together.
And so to see somebody who's done that from the outside is pretty impressive.
And I assume that Nimble played a role in helping you discover those relationships.
Jon Ferrara (38:10.050)
Well, absolutely.
I'm sitting here looking at your Nimble record and it gives me the context and insights to have conversations about our mutual shared passions and friends.
Right.
So you know Brian Shin.
Yeah, an incredible entrepreneur and by the way, an investor in Nimble.
Kevin Lee is also an investor in Nimble as well.
And Warren Whitlock is a user of Nimble.
And Sean Ellis is a dear friend and leads the growth hacker community.
And so being able to see these things and have conversations about these things helps to let me jump from rock to rock in the river of business as I navigate the rapids with Microsoft.
But Omer, the secret to Nimble success with Microsoft is just identifying how we can help that person we're dealing with at Microsoft be successful in their endeavors.
I'll give you example.
There's a guy named Todd Nelms who's the chief of staff for Ron Huddleston, who used to run Microsoft.
One customer.
Todd and I are friends, but we struggle to stay connected because he's so busy with somebody who's running Microsoft worldwide.
But we stay connected on our areas of commonality.
I call it the five Fs of life.
Family, friend, food, fund and fellowship.
We connect with each other across our Instagram where we share our passions about mountains and photography and our dogs.
And so when I do reach out when I am in Redmond, it's not a cold call, it's a warm call.
And he's very receptive to me.
And this is the normal course of life, the way business has always been done.
It's just harder to do in our over connected, over communicated world when we're working between Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, Foursquare, Google, Crunchbase, Angellist and Snapchat, and in email and Calendar and Office and Gmail G suite.
And so you need Nimble.
Anybody listening to this today should just go sign up for Nimble today and use it as their personal golden Rolodex because your network is your net worth and then bring it to work with you.
And if you're using it in Salesforce or Dynamics, that's great because Nimble works in conjunction with those programs.
In fact, we bidirectionally synchronize those records into Nimble.
So you could take your CRM records with you.
Everywhere you work.
Omer (40:33.540)
Love it.
How big is nimble today?
What metrics can you share with us?
Jon Ferrara (40:38.820)
We'll probably double again in revenue this year, getting close to $4 million in.
In revenue.
We've got over 100,000 subscribers, 10,000 companies paying us, and our partner channel is growing exponentially.
And this is the future of our company.
You know, listening to this podcast today are probably entrepreneurs in the SaaS industry.
Is that right, Omer?
Omer (41:04.580)
Yes.
Jon Ferrara (41:05.460)
Now, the problem is that most SaaS entrepreneurs think about SDRs and an inside sales team that's going to sell their software.
Would you agree?
Omer (41:14.900)
Yeah.
I mean, it depends on the type of business, but yes.
Yeah.
Jon Ferrara (41:18.340)
Well, they're either digitally driving people and digitally converting, or they're moving up market and they build an inside team and using SDRs and other means like that.
Very few people understand the power of relationships with ISVs, let alone an ISV named Microsoft and its billions of users and hundreds of thousands of resellers and leveraging a thousand.
So most SaaS people listening to this today don't understand the value and power of a channel.
And that's because the channel hasn't been cloud first, but Microsoft has a cloud CSP program, and they've got hundreds of thousands of ours that are signed up into it and more coming.
And it is the way of the future.
So if you want to scale your business, rather than you trying to maximize the eight or 15 hours a day that you can sell, you want to build relationships with tens of thousands of the trusted advisors of your prospect and turn them into your evangelists and resellers.
And if you do that, you might be able to build a gold mine.
Omer (42:23.080)
All right, on that note, let's move on to the lightning round.
I'm going to ask you seven questions.
Just try to answer them as quickly as you can.
And you've probably been through this before.
Once, but you have been through this once before, so you know the drill.
Okay, you ready?
Jon Ferrara (42:38.060)
Yep.
Omer (42:38.780)
What's the best piece of business advice that you've ever received?
Jon Ferrara (42:42.380)
I think that enter into every conversation and relationship with the desire to serve that person and help them grow.
That if you do that properly, you'll achieve any goal you have in life.
Omer (42:54.620)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
Jon Ferrara (42:58.300)
Of course, Napoleon Hill.
And When Friends and Influence People Are Business books.
But I believe that life is more than business because I believe that we're on this planet to grow our souls by helping other people grow theirs.
And I love this book by Deepak Chopra, the Seven Spiritual Laws of success.
And I think it's a great foundation to living your life via a higher vibration or power.
Omer (43:22.970)
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful entrepreneur?
Jon Ferrara (43:28.890)
Dogged determination and passion.
I believe that the best entrepreneurs are solving problems that they have themselves.
And sometimes people overestimate what they could do in a year and underestimate what they could do in ten.
And Goldmine was a ten year overnight sensation.
And you know, God help me, Nimble looks like it's going to be the same.
So I really believe that setting a goal and putting one foot in front of each other each day and don't give up, nobody's going to give anything to you.
But if you go out there and you intelligently work for it, you can achieve anything.
And I call it the three Ps of life.
Figure out what your passion is, build a plan and make it your purpose on a daily basis.
And you can, you'll be amazed at what you can achieve.
Omer (44:14.060)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
Jon Ferrara (44:18.940)
You know, I think just writing things down, we forget things.
I really believe it's the basics that wins games.
If you say what you do and do what you say, do the basics, take notes and follow up and follow through.
I struggle with that because I was born with some handicaps.
Mentally I'm very bright, but I forget things.
And so you need tools to help you do the things you need to do.
And like I said, I think your network is your net worth.
So you should be nurturing and building relationships on a daily basis.
And so productivity tool is anything that can help you nurture and maintain relationships and follow up and follow through.
Omer (45:06.300)
What's a new or crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the extra time?
Jon Ferrara (45:12.220)
So I've built products that help people achieve their passion, plan or purpose in life.
And I'd like to transcend products and to use words and inspiration to do so.
And so when I do transition, Nimble and I think that Microsoft would be a fool not to be involved with that.
I would love to be involved in a spiritual, inspirational way.
Wiley's asked me to write a book and I'd love to write a few of them and become a teacher because I think that you grow by helping others grow.
And so my crazy idea might be to become a teacher.
Omer (45:52.820)
I think you'd be very good at that.
Doesn't sound like a crazy idea at all to me.
Jon Ferrara (45:57.530)
Thank you.
Omer (45:57.810)
Omer, what's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know,
Jon Ferrara (46:03.450)
I am a passionate historian and astronomer.
I believe that knowing history and knowing your place in time and space gives you incredible perspective and awareness and empathy.
And I really believe that we misunderstand people and places and that if you knew history, you could actually predict the future.
It's all of our responsibility to be a little bit more aware of what's around us globally and in the universe.
I have an app that basically gives me a notification when the International Space Station flies by.
And there's something spectacular about seeing that bright light moving so fast to the sky as it crosses in the twilight that just transforms me.
I just have to say that I heard that our government is thinking about defunding the International Space Station, and I'm absolutely against that.
I believe in world cooperation and in working with others in places like space.
And so I love astronomy, I love history, and I'm an avid photographer.
Omer (47:15.390)
John, what was that website that you mentioned earlier where you can kind of type in a date and it kind of shows you how the world looked in that time?
Jon Ferrara (47:25.150)
It's incredible.
So we got on this conversation because I asked you where you're from, and I didn't want to assume I could have basically said that you're from a number of different places, because my father's from Sicily.
So you and I share an ancestry, roots that travel across the different trade routes.
And so I use this thing called Geochron G E A C R O N And if you put a date in geo chron, it will tell you geographically since 3000 BC.
So the past, I don't know, 5000 years, what the world looked like.
And so, because I read about history a lot, I was reading about the Assyrians and her amazing culture with the Babylonians, but I learned that the Assyrians were just sort of wiped out by this guy named Cyrus the Great.
And I'd never really heard of Cyrus the Great, but basically I subsequently learned that he was a great king of the Persians, and he conquered the known world at the time, all the way from basically all the corners of the world known at that time.
And Alexander the Great wouldn't have been able to do what he did had Cyrus the Great not already conquered the world.
And then Alexander conquered Persia, which then gave him all of that land.
And we don't know about Cyrus the Great.
And I think that if we as Americans and anybody listening to this around the world knew more about the history of the people that we interact with, I think there'd be a better understanding and better empathy that would serve us all much better.
And I love the fact that Satya leads with empathy and you should read his new book.
Omer (49:16.710)
He's a very different kind of CEO.
And finally, what is one of your most important passions outside of your work?
Jon Ferrara (49:24.350)
My family, my friends, and just being connected with other human beings.
My dad used to talk to everybody when we went to the market, whatever, and it used to really bug me.
But I become my father.
I really believe that we're here to connect with others and be present with other people.
And if you're in the line at the grocery market, put down your phone and have a conversation with somebody and ideally find ways to add value with them.
When I'm in an Uber, I ask people, what do you do besides drive Uber?
And I find ways to add value and help them.
And so I'm passionate about being present.
And it's best to be present with people you love and who love you.
And Omer, if you're present with people who love you, they'll reflect your shit back at you.
And if you're willing to look at your shit and work on it in life, you can grow as a human being.
And ultimately that what you're on this planet to do, grow by helping other people grow.
Omer (50:21.450)
That's a great way to end.
So, John, thank you for making the time and joining me again.
If people want to go and check out Nimble, and you should, you can go to nimble.com and if people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Jon Ferrara (50:37.290)
Google me.
In fact, you should Google yourself because it's your calling card today.
And if you sign up for Nimble, you can Nimble me, but my name is J O N Space.
F E R R A R A John Ferrara.
And that's also my Twitter handle, johnferrara.
And my email is Jonimble, so you have no excuse not to reach out to connect with me, to let me know who you are and how I might be able to add value to your journey.
Omer (51:05.130)
That's awesome.
I wish you and the team all the best with Nimble, and I would love to have you come back and join us maybe once you've had a successful exit.
Jon Ferrara (51:13.470)
Again, Omer, it really was a pleasure.
You're a unique human being and there's a reason why we've had an incredible conversation twice now.
And please stay connected and let me know how I might be able to help you in whatever personal or professional endeavors you're doing.
Omer (51:31.430)
Thank you, John.
I appreciate that.
Thanks again.
Jon Ferrara (51:33.350)
You bet.
Omer (51:33.910)
Cheers.
