692: With Microsoft Deal and $225k MRR, Will He Win CRM Space?

Jon Ferrara. He’s been recognized for pioneering innovation in the customer service management category for many years. Prior to founding Nimble, he was the creator and co-founder of the award-winning customer management product GoldMine. In 1999, Goldmine got acquired by FrontRange and he left to pursue other interests. During those years, he continued to watch the CRM market grow. He saw that most CRMs in the industry that were serving small businesses moved up market and became way more expensive and more complex—leaving the small business market totally underserved. It was at that point that Jon decided to create the next generation CRM product for small businesses called Nimble.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Think and Grow Rich
• What CEO do you follow? – Marc Benioff
• Favorite online tool? — Buffer App
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— Around 8
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Start a business earlier”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:44 – Nathan introduces Jon to the show
• 01:42 – Jon was on Episode 643 of The Top
• • 01:55 – Nimble has around 10K paying customers with a monthly RPU of $20
  • 02:08 – 3% monthly churn
  • 02:14 – CAC is around $5
  • 02:24 – Team size is 25
• 02:43 – Nimble has recently closed a $9M round
• 03:07 – Acquiring SMBs is the exact same way they’ve scaled Goldmine
• • 03:20 – The problem with most CRMs today is that only sales and marketing people use these systems when in fact, everyone in the company should use it
  • 03:56 – Jon cold called every Novel reseller in the country when Goldmine was just starting
  • 04:00 – “People sell what they know and know what they use”
• 04:15 – When Jon started Nimble, no one knew that social media would be the way to grow a business
• 04:30 – Jon looked around for influencers for Nimble’s launch
• • 04:48 – Nimble is the early pioneer of influencer marketing
  • 05:08 – Nimble was getting 100K website views with 0 marketing spend
• 05:25 – As a company scales up, it should also touch the customers in different ways
• 05:43 – Nimble doesn’t pay influencers
• 05:45 – To find influencers, you have to know the core influencers around your product
• • 06:00 – You find ways on how to build a relationship with influencers
• 06:32 – Nimble will now try to get around with ad spend
• 06:41 – Jon always believed that there was another way to get access to customers
• 06:44 – Jon is going to replicate the strategy they used with Goldmine by partnering with people similar to Microsoft and Google and get their VARs to use Nimble and start recommending it
• 07:01 – Nimble just signed a deal with Microsoft where they can be a reseller of Nimble
• • 07:12 – Microsoft can now give their VARs Nimble so their VARs can be better, smarter and faster in sales and marketing
  • 07:33 – Nimble will work on top of Office 365 as the operating system of a business
• 07:57 – Microsoft is currently passing their revenue to the VARs
• 08:11 – The VARs are the one making the MRR which is 20%
• 08:30 – Nimble’s average RPU is now around $30
• 08:41 – If you can help a business person with their sales and marketing needs, you’re now opening yourself up to other functionalities for that customer
• 08:53 – Every business struggles with sales, marketing and relationship management
• 09:20 – Nimble just rolled out new pricing and marked on automation add-on
• 10:13 – March MRR is around $225K
• 10:25 – Nimble now has around 10.5K customers
• 11:31 – Without relying on the VARs, it’s going to be a long term strategy for Nimble
• 11:48 – Microsoft has bundled Nimble inside of Outlook mobile, Office 365 and Outlook desktop
• • 12:07 – It is like a free acquisition
• 12:32 – Jon won the deal with Microsoft because of their relationship
• 12:42 – In every business relationship, you want to know how the other person answers and what success looks like for that person
• 13:21 – Nimble is now a free plug-in with Office 365
• • 13:37 – Users can use Ni...