Jigsaw has been purchased by Salesforce.com, validating what many have understood for some time – crowd-sourced data is a game changing strategy. I am excited for the many great people at Jigsaw who have persevered through the early years of ridicule, name-calling and ridiculous hyperbole (Mr. Arrington) about the “evil” that Jigsaw was participating in. To Jim Fowler and Garth Moulton, congratulations to you both.
After my excitement wears down for the Jigsaw team, I begin to wonder what this means to me, an avid user on a daily basis. In an email this morning from Jim Fowler, CEO and Co-Founder of Jigsaw he says:
“What does this acquisition mean to you?
- Nothing substantial will change from an operations standpoint. Jigsaw will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of salesforce.com, and Jigsaw will continue to offer the same free, pay, and corporate options that we do today.
- The Jigsaw Community and our Rainmakers will continue to play a critical role in our success. Jigsaw started as a crowd-sourced model and will continue to lead the market in accurate business information through that model.
- Integration with salesforce.com will get even better. As an open data platform, we’ll also continue to build out our set of APIs and connectors to other Web-based software and data management solutions.
- In short, we believe this acquisition will let Jigsaw achieve the mission we set out to accomplish when we opened our doors in early 2004—only faster and more easily!”
You gotta’ appreciate Dana Gardner/ZDNET post when he says this about the Jigsaw model and it’s detractors:
“Oh, and don’t give me the “I’m a victim” crap about how your identify is being pilfered or your privacy invaded by this data collection and cleansing. The data is being contributed by you, and everybody else all the time, ie, Facebook, … freely and openly — just by being online. It’s the quid pro quo of the web.”
What will happen to Jigsaw? Time will tell. From my own experience of several corporate buy-outs over the years I know that whatever is said on day one in the press release lasts for only a short time. Then reality sets in. To those leading the charge at Salesforce.com I offer my congratulations. You have a winner in Jigsaw and their people. Just don’t screw it up!
Here are some links to what others have to say about this transaction:
ZDNet: Dana Gardner- http://blogs.zdnet.com/Gardner/?p=3572
TechCrunch: http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/21/salesforce-buys-jigsaw-for-142m-in-cash-plus-earn-out/?dbk