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https://www.flickr.com/photos/techcrunch/48839196133/ - Thumbnail image
Below you'll find quotes from my YouTube video and the sources listed that I used for it. Not everything in my YouTube script can be considered facts. At the bottom, you can find the assumptions I made.
0:00 - Timestamp
The picture at the beginning of the video is a stock photo because I couldn't find any high-quality images of Ben Chestnut as a kid.
Actual pictures of Ben as a kid:
Ben with his wife https://twitter.com/benchestnut/status/1088799312283385857
Ben with his mother https://www.instagram.com/p/BxXos03gnA6/?hl=en
0:00 - Timestamp
"Ben Chestnut grew up in the 1970s, in a small town in Georgia. His father taught on base at Fort Gordon, in the army, and his mother set up a hair salon in the family kitchen." (Douglas, 2018)
"As a kid, Ben helped by sweeping up the hair and emptying the ashtrays at the end of the day." (Douglas, 2018)
"By the end of high school, Ben wanted to be an automotive designer because of his love for cars. During his first year of college, he quickly realized that engineering wasn't for him. In 1994, at 25 years of age, Ben switched colleges and transferred to Georgia Institute of Technology, an industrial design school." (Ben Chestnut, Co-founder of Mailchimp // the Startup Story Podcast, 2020)
"In college, Ben became friends with Mark" (Armstrong & Chestnut, 2006) (Students Mark & Ben of Georgia Institute of Technology, 1998)
"Mark became the co-founder and the "heart" behind all the tools and projects they built later in their business" (About Our Company : The Rocket Science Group, 2007)
"During Ben's final year of college, in 1998, he started to study web design." (Ben Chestnut, Co-founder of Mailchimp // the Startup Story Podcast, 2020)
"When WiFi was still not invented"
What I mean by this is the birth of commercial WiFi. (How a 1998 Meeting With Steve Jobs Gave Birth to WiFi, 2018)
"In 1998, in the last few weeks of Ben's college time, he applied for a website design job. He eventually started as a banner ad designer over at Cox Interactive Media. He wasn't a big fan of the job at first, but in his words: he needed the money. His college friend Mark also started working over at Cox Interactive Media." (Ben Chestnut, Co-founder of Mailchimp // the Startup Story Podcast, 2020)
"During work, Ben came across this newspaper article that wrote Web portal buys bluemountain.com, the Web's biggest greeting card site, for $780 million. They were like, dude, let's do that too. In their spare time, they made a greeting card website.
They mainly wanted to see if they could ever build enough traffic to make some side money off of it. Ben explains: "Mark programmed, and I designed cutesy little cards. Then, in about a year, with virtually no paid marketing, we had 30,000 unique people visiting the site every month. By then, we had already lost interest. We had day jobs"." (2011/12 Creative Mornings With Ben Chestnut, 2011)
In 1999 Ben and Mark were working on a project for their bosses; Mp3radio.com. Ben needed to hire a programmer, and after asking for recommendations, he contacted Dan Kurzius." (Ben Chestnut, Co-founder of Mailchimp // the Startup Story Podcast, 2020)
In reality, when Ben interviewed Dan for the job in 1999, Dan was under the impression that it was a music-related job. He knew nothing about programming but got hired by bluffing his way in. Kurzius confirms that with a laugh. "I didn't even know what HTML was," he says. "I was a DJ at the time, so I thought this music website was going to have me write about music. (Konrad, 2018) (WILLIAMS, 2014)
"But in the end, it didn't matter whether Dan could code because only a few months later, at the beginning of the year 2000, the company they were working for got into financial trouble, and on April 1, 2000, they got all laid off, Mark, Ben, and Dan." (Ben Chestnut, Co-founder of Mailchimp // the Startup Story Podcast, 2020)
"Ben got offered another job at the mother company over at Cox Interactive Media but decided not to take it; instead, he wanted to pursue entrepreneurship." (Disruptor Studio, 2020)
0:00 Timestamp
"Ben didn't grow up in a rich family."
Since his father worked in the military and his mother had a hair salon, I assume he didn't grow up in a wealthy family. I'm not saying he was poor, but there's still a lot of middle ground between being a multi-billionaire, which he became later, and being poor. You get the point.
0:00 Timestamp
"But sadly, Mark's and Ben's friendship didn't last forever."
I assume Ben and Mark aren't friends any longer because:
Ben isn't listed as a friend on Mark's Facebook profile. Adam Smith, an early intern at the Rocket Science Group and worked for MailChimp in the first few years, and was mentored by Dan, is a Facebook friend of Mark.
2008 was the last time Mark Armstrong was seen on the Rocket Science Group's about page
Mark also isn't listed longer on MailChimp's about page as one of the original co-founders. Now it writes: "About 20 years ago, Ben Chestnut and Dan Kurzius started a web design agency called the Rocket Science Group." (About MailChimp, 2022) I find it weird that they write this because Ben started the Rocket Science Group with Mark Armstrong, not Dan. (Rocket Science Group: About Us, 2001). Dan Kurzius joined two years later as a partner. Still, he wasn't the original co-founder of the Rocket Science Group. (ROCKET SCIENCE GROUP Added a 3rd Person, 2002).
Mark Armstrong was bought out around the year 2008 for unknown reasons. (Want to Prove Patience Pays Off?, 2017)
"On June 20, 2000, Ben and Mark officially founded their company, The Rocket Science Group, a web design, and development agency." (Rocket Science Group Business, 2000)
"In Ben's words, he already had two invoices ready to go when he got laid off. He had a $13,000 project and a $35,000 project ready to go." (Ben Chestnut, Co-founder of Mailchimp // the Startup Story Podcast, 2020)
"Do you remember Ben and Mark's greetings website, lollipopcards.com, which they made in 1999? Back then, they didn't make any money with it, but it turned out it wasn't totally useless. Mark took a bunch of the code he developed for lollipopcards.com, tweaked it, and it became the foundation for MailChimp.com, which sold for $12 billion in 2021. Back then, it was all manual what they did for these clients. Ben and Mark had the tool, but they had to do the work and send those newsletters for their clients. The mailchimp.com website or name didn't exist yet. Later they built it into a web application so their clients could do it themselves. "Just log in and do it yourself," they said to their clients." (2011/12 Creative Mornings With Ben Chestnut, 2011)
One of the first editions of the MailChimp website:
MailChimp's pricing in July 2001
The newsletter they sent when they introduced Dan Kurzius as a partner in August 2002
PunchyTime was one of the products they created next to MailChimp
"In 2005 Ben faced multiple challenges. First, they saw that Mailchimp's revenue was climbing, from 2,000 MailChimp users in 2003 to 9,000 users in 2005. But their primary business, The Rocket Science Group, the consulting company, was declining. And although Mailchimp's revenue increased over the years, they lately saw Mailchimp's customers leaving for their competitors, which scared Ben." (Hoffman, 2019).
"Mark Armstrong, MailChimp's original co-founder, got bought out for unknown reasons and left the team, The Rocket Science Group, and Mailchimp somewhere from 2005 to 2008." (Want to Prove Patience Pays Off?, 2017)
"This stagnation in Mailchimp made them think about selling it when they had an offer for $4 million." (Kruppa, 2021)
"I believe that Mark Armstrong disagreed with Ben, and I think that Mark wanted to sell Mailchimp for $4 million."
In the Financial Times article (Kruppa, 2021) they write that Ben was thinking about selling MailChimp for $4 million at the time of its stagnation. That was somewhere between 2005 and 2008. (Hoffman, 2019). According to an Inc.com article Mark was bought out for unknown reasons in 2008 and didn't reply for any comment. (Want to Prove Patience Pays Off?, 2017).
Therefore I assume that Mark did want to sell and Ben and Dan didn't. Therefore Ben and Dan bought Mark out of the company and went all-in on MailChimp.
So, what did MailChimp do to grow from 10,000 customers in 2007 to 20,000,000 total users in 2018? Well, they turned on full grind mode and went all in. To give you a glimpse at the changes they made, let's go through a few of them quickly:
The year 2007
They hired a full-time Software Developer and marketing guy
They decided to add monthly subscriptions, despite first saying monthly prices are for people with serious mental issues.
They added a free trial for 30 days
The year 2008
Then, in May 2008, Ben changed the free 30-day trial plan to a forever free plan. This was a game-changer because they were still amidst the financial crisis. Who didn't want to have free marketing during one of the most significant economic downturns in history?
They made a comparison table on their website, attacked their competitors
created a mobile version in 2008,
upgraded their 25-pager free whitepaper to a 64-page free white paper with tons of tips.
They participated in awards
added an affiliate program
translations, etc.
And one of the things that made them different than the rest was their way of being funny.
May 2003 - 1,200 users https://web.archive.org/web/20030531132209/http://rocketsciencegroup.com/
November 2003 - 2,000 users https://web.archive.org/web/20031126032411/http://rocketsciencegroup.com/
2007 - 10,000 customers (before free plan) https://web.archive.org/web/20080117232232/http://mailchimp.blogs.com/blog/2007/07/mailchimp-is-hi.html
November 2008 - 15,000 customers - https://web.archive.org/web/20081113021058/http://www.mailchimp.com/about/
February 2009 - 60,000 users https://web.archive.org/web/20090225150907/http://www.mailchimp.com:80/about
August 2009 - 80,000 users https://web.archive.org/web/20090805181203/http://rocketsciencegroup.com/
September 2009 - 100,000+ users https://web.archive.org/web/20090926222840/http://www.mailchimp.com/blog/freemium-email-marketing-from-mailchimp/.
November 2009 - 190,000 users https://web.archive.org/web/20091130102322/http://www.mailchimp.com/
March 2010 - 270,000 users https://web.archive.org/web/20100301061016/http://www.mailchimp.com/about
2010 - 400,000 users https://web.archive.org/web/20120213063330/http://plywoodpeople.com/3668
October 2010 - 500,000 users https://web.archive.org/web/20110902151335/http://mailchimp.com/about/press-releases/2010-10-25/ (2,000 new users per day)
September 2011 - 1 million users https://web.archive.org/web/20111015001013/http://mailchimp.com/about/press-releases/2011-9-27 https://web.archive.org/web/20110927222945/http://blog.mailchimp.com/the-great-million-user-giveaway
December 2012 - 2.5 million users https://web.archive.org/web/20121130222741/http://mailchimp.com/
2013 - 2,409,660 new users (6,601 new users per day) https://web.archive.org/web/20140102111026/http://mailchimp.com/2013/
2013 - 3 million+ users https://web.archive.org/web/20130731150913/http://mailchimp.com/
2014 - 2,891,798 new users https://web.archive.org/web/20150106103841/https://mailchimp.com/2014
2014 - 5 million+ users https://web.archive.org/web/20140430170353/http://mailchimp.com/
2015 - 3,469,517 new users (9,505 new users per day) https://web.archive.org/web/20160101140901/https://mailchimp.com/2015#visit-from-a-mariachi-band
2015 - 8 million+ users https://web.archive.org/web/20150831052449/http://mailchimp.com/
2016 - 10 million+ users https://web.archive.org/web/20160430180700/http://www.mailchimp.com/
2016 - 3,936,108 new users (10,783 new users per day) https://web.archive.org/web/20171101201104/https://mailchimp.com/2016/
2017 - 15 million+ users https://web.archive.org/web/20170630144956/https://mailchimp.com/about/
2018 - 16 million users - 14,000 new people signing up every day. https://www.inc.com/maria-aspan/mailchimp-2018-company-of-the-year-update.html
December 2018 - 20 million users https://www.inc.com/maria-aspan/mailchimp-2018-company-of-the-year-update.html
2019 - 12,328,937 users - https://web.archive.org/web/20200301215037/https://mailchimp.com/annual-report/
2019 - 10,977 new users per day https://web.archive.org/web/20200301215037/https://mailchimp.com/annual-report/stats/shoutout-at-the-emmys/
2020 - 14 million users https://mailchimp.com/annual-report/mailchimp-hq/
2020 - 14,606 new users EVERY WEEKDAY (there were 252 weekdays = 3,680,712 new users in total = 10,084 new users per day) https://mailchimp.com/annual-report/mailchimp-hq/
September 2021 - 13 million users https://investors.intuit.com/news/news-details/2021/Intuit-to-Acquire-Mailchimp/
September 2021 - 800,000 paying customers https://investors.intuit.com/news/news-details/2021/Intuit-to-Acquire-Mailchimp/
The May 2019 blog of the new MailChimp https://web.archive.org/web/20190531143126/https://mailchimp.com/announcements/ben/mailchimps-evolution/
In 2001, 25,000 email credits cost $250. In 2018, 25,000 credits still costed $250.
This was their pay-as-you-go pricing page of July 2018. In August, they changed it to this. Before one could buy 300 credits for $9. Now the smallest package was 5,000 credits for $150.
Before, their email pay-as-you-go credits never expired, and in the new changes, email credits will expire after 12 months.
Furthermore, many prices doubled in price. The price of the 50,000 credit package suddenly doubled from $500 to $1000, the same as the 75,000 credits and 200,000 credits.
Intuit, a software company, specializing in financial software, bought MailChimp for $12 billion.
https://mailchimp.com/intuit-completes-mailchimp-acquisition/
https://investors.intuit.com/news/news-details/2021/Intuit-to-Acquire-Mailchimp/default.aspx
This news resulted in many negative comments from MailChimp's employees, saying that their founders always told them they would never sell the company or go public.
"No, you are not going to get equity, but you will get to be part of a scrappy company that fights for the little guy and we will never be acquired or go public." (Bergman, 2021)
"The founders told anyone who would listen they would own Mailchimp until they died and bragged about turning down multiple offers." (Bergman, 2021) (Konrad, 2018)
https://www.teamblind.com/post/Mailchimp-Employees-got-screwed-n2Sz4WFK
https://twitter.com/thebenbergman/status/1453896947266297860?lang=en
https://techstory.in/employees-furious-as-mailchimp-acquired-for-12-bn-by-intuit/
https://www.businessinsider.com/mailchimp-insiders-react-to-employees-getting-no-equity-2021-9
Despite the decrease in user numbers, they continue to increase prices, adding limitations to its free plan for the first time ever, making it far less valuable than its competitors.
Ben Chestnut, co-founder of Mailchimp // The Startup Story Podcast. (2020, August 18). thestartupstory.co. Retrieved October 17, 2022, from https://www.thestartupstory.co/episodes/ben-chestnut-co-founder-of-mailchimp
April 1 laid off, April 10 I start my business
See, since I had that two weeks advanced notice and time to prepare, I already had two clients, two paying clients, ready to go. I'll never forget the two invoices. I had a $13,000 project and a $35,000 project ready to go.
Douglas, N. (2018, October 24). I'm Mailchimp Co-founder Ben Chestnut, and This Is How I Work. Lifehacker. Retrieved October 17, 2022, from https://lifehacker.com/im-mailchimp-co-founder-ben-chestnut-and-this-is-how-i-1827110952
Armstrong, M., & Chestnut, B. (2006, March 5). About MailChimp and The Rocket Science Group. mailchimp.com. Retrieved October 17, 2022, from https://web.archive.org/web/20060305102700/http://www.mailchimp.com/about.phtml
Mark & Ben were students who worked together at Georgia Tech's IMAGINE Multimedia Lab
Students Mark & Ben of Georgia Institute of Technology. (1998, January 12). Retrieved October 17, 2022, from https://web.archive.org/web/19980112203454/http://www.arch.gatech.edu/imagine/members.htm
About Our Company : The Rocket Science Group. (2007, August 22). Rocket Science Group. Retrieved October 17, 2022, from https://web.archive.org/web/20070822022008/http://www.rocketsciencegroup.com/about.phtml
About MailChimp. (2022, October 14). Mailchimp. Retrieved October 17, 2022, from https://web.archive.org/web/20221014201350/https://mailchimp.com/about/
About 20 years ago, Ben Chestnut and Dan Kurzius started a web design agency called the Rocket Science Group.
Rocket Science Group: About Us. (2001, October 24). Retrieved October 17, 2022, from https://web.archive.org/web/20011024223652/http://www.rocketsciencegroup.com/about.shtml
We efficiently employ the best 3rd party experts in the business to get the job done.
ROCKET SCIENCE GROUP added a 3rd person. (2002, August 14). Retrieved October 17, 2022, from https://web.archive.org/web/20020814155928/http://www.rocketsciencegroup.com/moved/
We're now 2 years old. Our new crew member is Dan Kurzius.
How a 1998 meeting with Steve Jobs gave birth to WiFi. (2018, August 19). Retrieved October 17, 2022, from https://wifinowglobal.com/news-and-blog/how-a-meeting-with-steve-jobs-in-1998-gave-birth-to-wi-fi/
The world's first Wi-Fi-enabled laptop was launched by Apple at MacWorld in New York City on July 21, 1999. Jobs demonstrated wireless Internet by walking about on stage with the laptop in his hand and – like a magician – passing the iBook through a hula hoop while the crowd cheered.
WILLIAMS, W. (2014, April 3). Cover Story: Subject: MailChimp. Creative Loafing. Retrieved October 17, 2022, from https://creativeloafing.com/content-185685-cover-story-subject-mailchimp
According to Chestnut, Kurzius "lied his way into the job."
Kurzius confirms that with a laugh. "I didn't even know what HTML was," he says. "I was a DJ at the time, so I thought this music website was going to have me write about music. Apparently, I applied to write HTML instead."
Disruptor Studio. (2020, January 17). The Disruptor Studio featuring Ben Chestnut hosted by Alex Gonzalez [Video]. YouTube. Retrieved October 17, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oL0iSHjRoLI
Rocket Science Group Business. (2000, June 23). Georgia Corporations Division. Retrieved October 17, 2022, from https://ecorp.sos.ga.gov/BusinessSearch/BusinessInformation?businessId=28959
2011/12 Creative Mornings with Ben Chestnut. (2011, December). [Video]. Vimeo. Retrieved October 17, 2022, from https://vimeo.com/34081566?login=true
Part of the egreetings site starts at around 36 minutes.
Hoffman, R. (2019, May 21). Episode 39: Masters of Scale: The case for bootstrapping - Mailchimp's Ben Chestnut. mastersofscale.com. Retrieved October 17, 2022, from https://web.archive.org/web/20191017012207/https://mastersofscale.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/mos-episode-transcript-ben-chestnut-.pdf
"So five years later, Mailchimp is just the side project running on its own.
And the thing is the income we were getting from Mailchimp, we weren't watching it."
"The billable hours game got to be too hard for us. The agency just wasn't scaling and we were thinking about giving up actually, we were talking about winding down the business"
"And so my partner, he looked at Mailchimp and he did our first ever Excel spreadsheet for our business. And it was Mailchimp's revenue, and it was climbing up and to the right – and the consulting business was just flat and maybe even declining. He said, "That's it, have faith in the math. This is what we should focus on."
"It took all year to really convince ourselves to do it, because it felt like, "Oh, my God, you're going to go from $25,000, $50,000 website gigs to $25 Mailchimp accounts?" It was very scary to make that jump. So it took all of 2005, I think, to work up that courage."
"End of 2005, we kind of had an official vote, four people at the time. We decided, "Hey, we're going to do this thing. We're going to take the leap." In 2006, we said goodbye to our consulting clients. We found new vendors for them, kind of tried to get them all to consider Mailchimp. Then in 2007, we started as a software company. That was our day one, January 1."
"Mailchimp was making money. But there was a problem. When Mailchimp launched as a side project, it had been light years ahead of the competition. But they had let it stagnate. In the meantime, other competitors had caught up with – and exceeded them – in terms of features. Mailchimp's customers were beginning to desert them for their competitors."
"That's scary when you commit to something and they're leaving."
Kruppa, M. (2021, September 17). Ben Chestnut and Dan Kurzius, the men who made MailChimp. Financial Times. Retrieved October 17, 2022, from https://www.ft.com/content/98f63cdf-1c73-4cab-be0e-14c9fdee438d
"Around this time, Chestnut, who is the public face of the company, says he also began thinking about selling MailChimp for close to $4m. The company started to stagnate while he agonised over whether to sell, before he finally abandoned the idea."
Want to prove patience pays off? (2017, December 11). Inc.com. Retrieved October 17, 2022, from https://www.inc.com/magazine/201802/mailchimp-company-of-the-year-2017.html
"In 2008, Chestnut and Kurzius bought out Armstrong, who did not respond to requests made through LinkedIn for comment."
Bergman, B. (2021, September 20). Mailchimp employees are furious after the company's founders promised to never sell, withheld equity, and then sold it for $12 billion. Business Insider. Retrieved October 17, 2022, from https://web.archive.org/web/20210917080634/https://www.businessinsider.com/mailchimp-insiders-react-to-employees-getting-no-equity-2021-9?international=true&r=US&IR=T
Konrad, A. (2018, October 8). The New Atlanta Billionaires Behind An Unlikely Tech Unicorn. Forbes. Retrieved October 17, 2022, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2018/10/08/the-new-atlanta-billionaires-behind-an-unlikely-tech-unicorn/?sh=6f26209b31a2
The CEO of Mailchimp stashed it in his personal safe along with the business cards of some America's deepest-pocketed financiers—for his wife to shop a sale in the event of his death, but not a minute before. "That's my retirement plan," Chestnut quips.
Once there, Chestnut hired Kurzius, a part-time DJ and former competitive skateboarder who'd bluffed about his own coding skills, to work with him on the company's dot-com-era MP3 music service. After just a few months, the unit folded in the tech crash.