What Selling a Company for $100M Really Teaches You (Lessons From GoldMine Co-Founder)

This episode originally aired on October 21st 2025.

Introducing FROM THE VAULT, a new miniseries where we're bringing back the best episodes from Season 1.

The conversations that challenged the way we think, pushed us to ask better questions, and reminded us what it really takes to grow, lead, and build something meaningful.

Whether you've been here since day one or you're just discovering the podcast, there's something in these conversations worth hearing.

—- A founder who closes every deal personally has built a company that grows as fast as he can possibly sell. Jon Ferrara hit that ceiling with an unfamiliar product, $5,000, and no money for ads. He got past it by finding the people his buyers already trusted and giving them a reason to sell for him.

That decision grew GoldMine into a $100 million company with no venture capital and no bank loans, starting with Mark Cuban, then a local Novell reseller. Jon sold it, started over with Nimble, and is running the same play again through Microsoft's resellers. If you are still the one carrying every sale, this conversation shows where the leverage was hiding.

Jon is the CEO of Nimble and co-founder of GoldMine, an early contact and relationship management platform. He and a college friend started GoldMine in a San Fernando Valley apartment, grew it over ten years, and sold it in 1999. Nimble is a social CRM that pulls email, contacts, and calendar together with LinkedIn and other networks, and is now sold through Microsoft's resellers.

Each stage of GoldMine's growth began with a question about what the next partner was missing. Novell resellers sold what they used. Editors needed stories, and Jon gave them stories, which won repeated PC Magazine Editor's Choice awards. The Microsoft integration moved GoldMine onto SQL Server, Exchange, and NT Server and carried it to $100 million a year. Kayvon puts the pattern simply: put yourself first and you end up at the bottom, put your prospect first and you end up on top.

A year after the sale, Jon was diagnosed with a head tumor, and we talk about what he changed afterward, including a decade as a hands-on father before building again. Then Nimble: why LinkedIn cut off API access, why Jon bet Microsoft would absorb the email and calendar market, and how he plans to turn resellers who sell backup, security, and migration into business solution sellers. He also makes the case that fewer than 1% of the 225 million businesses worldwide use any CRM.

This episode is for founders, sales leaders, agency owners, and operators with a product that works who still carry the full weight of selling it. If your growth plan is more reps and more ad spend, parts of this will be uncomfortable.

Questions answered

• How do you get resellers and partners to sell a product nobody has heard of?

• How did GoldMine grow from $5,000 to $100 million without venture capital?

• How do you find the people who already hold your buyers' trust?

• How can editors and storytelling grow a company without an ad budget?

Thank you to our partner this week: If you're looking for a smarter way to research investments and make more informed financial decisions, check out today's partner, Weiss Ratings Plus at WeissVault.com

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