Enterprise SaaS: How Nimble CRM Landed Microsoft

Jon Ferrara built an enterprise SaaS partnership that turned Nimble CRM from a struggling startup into a Microsoft reseller partner. His first company started with $5,000 and sold for $125 million. His second startup has been a much harder ride - pivoting multiple times after LinkedIn cut off API access and Facebook restricted theirs. Jon's biggest play was not a product feature. It was a multi-year enterprise partnership with Microsoft that made Nimble one of only 8 ISVs selected for their third-party offers program. He built those SaaS partnerships by identifying how Nimble could help individual Microsoft team members succeed - and by using his own CRM to navigate a company with 200,000 employees. Jon Ferrara is a serial entrepreneur who started Goldmine CRM in 1989 with $5,000 and sold it for $125 million. He launched Nimble in 2009 to build the simple CRM for Office 365 and has grown it to nearly $4 million in revenue with 10,000 paying companies. 🔑 Key Lessons 🤝 Enterprise SaaS partnerships take years, not months: Jon built relationships across Microsoft's product, marketing, channel, and biz dev teams over several years before being selected as one of 8 ISVs for the third-party offers program. 🎯 Position your product as a gateway for enterprise SaaS channel sales: Nimble positioned itself as the simple CRM that makes Office 365 stickier and introduces customers to Dynamics and Power BI - making Microsoft's first-party products more valuable. 🔄 Pivot from destination product to embedded widget: After realizing users would always return to Gmail and Office 365, Nimble built a browser widget that brings CRM context everywhere users already work. 🤝 Use your own product to navigate enterprise partnerships: Jon imported 3,500 WPC speakers into Nimble, segmented 150 targets, sent personalized emails, got a 50% open rate, and scheduled 25 meetings that led to the Microsoft deal. 🧠 Help each person succeed at their own goals: Jon's secret for building SaaS partnerships at Microsoft was never selling Nimble - he asked each team member how he could help them, then connected them to others inside the company. Chapters Introduction Jon's background and Goldmine origin story Pivot from destination app to browser widget The vision for Nimble as a relationship platform How Nimble builds itself from email, social, and business apps Losing LinkedIn and Facebook API access Going all-in with Office 365 integration Using Nimble to navigate Microsoft's enterprise SaaS ecosystem Landing the Microsoft third-party offers deal Building relationships across enterprise SaaS teams Becoming a reseller and channel strategy Why SaaS companies should build a partner channel Nimble's revenue and growth metrics Lightning round Where to find Jon Ferrara Resources Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/168 Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email