The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 30 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Ferrara: Companies should earn influencer advocacy without paying direct fees
“You don't pay them. So what you do is you identify the key influencer of your core constituency in and around the areas of promise your product, so thought leaders that are inspirational in and around the areas of functionality of your products or services, an…”
Ferrara: Standalone CRMs fail by forcing users out of inbox workflow
“And I actually think that was a better solution because today you really live in your inbox and now more and more social media, and then you have to go to your serum to work for it. And that kind of blows.”
Ferrara: It's called Salesforce because you must force salespeople to use it
“CRMs today don't stand for customer relationship management. They stand for customer reporting management. You actually have to force your salespeople to use it. That's why they call it sales force. Cause you have to force salespeople to use it.”
Ferrara: Nimble converts 20% of trials to paid with zero salespeople
“We're generating about 80,000 unique visitors per month on our website with zero marketing. We're converting at 10% of trial and 20% of paid with zero salespeople.”
Ferrara: Sales and marketing software should never have been separated
“Because I believe, Nathan, that sales and marketing should have never been split apart. Goldmine did all that in one single unit, and I think today, people don't want to go buy MailChimp to Marketo, HubSpot to Salesforce, and then go out and buy Yesware and To…”
Ferrara: Hiring and training retail workers beats hiring $100k sales reps
“So rather than going out and hiring a sales guy for a 100,000 dollars, I'd rather go find somebody who's really cares about customer Customer experience who works at an Apple store or Best Buy or Victoria's Secret, and they may not even have a business or tech…”
Ferrara: CRMs fail when restricted to sales and marketing teams
“So I think the biggest problem with serum today is that it's only sales and marketing people that use it, but ultimately everybody in your company should be using A relationship platform for the whole business, because everybody in the company touches the cust…”
Nimble signs deal with Microsoft to resell CRM through Outlook VARs
“We just signed a deal with Microsoft where they became a reseller of Nimble. Microsoft has started to resell Nimble with Outlook through their VARs And they're going to gift their VARs Nimble, so that their VARs can be better, smarter, faster at sales and mark…”
Microsoft bundles Nimble CRM directly inside Outlook Mobile
“Microsoft has bundled Nimble inside of Outlook Mobile.”
Ferrara: GoldMine was acquired for $125M in all-cash deal in 1999
“And so we took cash back in the day and it was about one hundred and twenty five million dollars in cash, but no strings attached.”
Ferrara: Nimble rolled out on 40M Outlook Mobile handsets for free
“We just rolled out Nimble with Microsoft Outlook Mobile on forty million handsets for free, which means you can Nimble anybody in any of your emails and get instant insights on people and companies, and imagine the upsell we're going to be able to do with thos…”
Ferrara: Nimble Series A post-money valuation is around $35M
“And our post money is gonna be around thirty-five million.”
Nimble reached nearly 100,000 monthly website visitors with zero marketing spend
“We got our monthly recurring revenue, monthly recurring unique users to our website at almost a 100,000 uniques per month with zero marketing spend.”
Ferrara: Microsoft passes all Nimble revenue to VARs
“Microsoft currently is passing through all that revenue to the VARs. So Microsoft's not actually getting a margin on nimble. So the VARs are getting that margin, and so ultimately what's happening is that the VARs make the margin on the monthly current revenue…”
Ferrara: Nimble ARPU reaches nearly $30 per month
“So it's actually closer to 30 dollars today, and we see it continuing to grow higher”
Nimble's Microsoft integrations convert at double the website rate
“And today, a visitor to our website, we're converting at five percent to trial. But on these outlook mobile and office five integrations, we're converting that double that rate at 10% to trial, which is amazing.”
Ferrara: I bootstrapped GoldMine with $5,000 and retired at age 40
“So I invented it started on 5000 dollars, no bank loans, no venture capital, ran it for 10 years, had five million customers around the world, and sold it and retired at 40.”
Ferrara: GoldMine achieved $70M annual revenue and 5M users before sale
“Five million total users, about seventy million in annual revenue, about 250 team members worldwide, about 5000 bars and 500 third-party add-on products.”
Ferrara: GoldMine was the first networkable sales and marketing tool
“Imagine in 1989, you built the first networkable sales and marketing tool when people were figuring out just what to even use a network for. There wasn't any networkable business software, let alone sales and marketing software.”
Ferrara: Cold calling Novell resellers drove GoldMine's first $50k/month revenue
“And I cold called every Novell reseller in the country, and I got them to use it. Because people sell what they know, and they know what they use, then they started to recommend it, and that gave me my first 50,000 dollars a month in revenue for Goldmine.”
Ferrara: I put $3 million of my own capital into Nimble
“So I put in my own money to start the company up.
How much?
And after I got it, three million.”
Ferrara: Nimble took angel investment from Cuban, Calacanis, and Dharmesh Shah
“And then after I got it all started up friends and family wanted to give me money, so I took money from Mark Cuban Dharmashar, Jason Calacanis, and other people, Google, and other people like that.”
Ferrara: Diagnosed with a life-threatening head tumor at age 41
“About a year after I sold Goldmine, I got a head tumor, and I spent about a year, you know, getting treatment and going through the journey of health, and I'll tell you what, Nathan,
I think the most important thing you have around you is your health.
Next is …”