Friday Five // Ben Chestnut

Published by: PlywoodPeople
August 20, 2010

Ben Chestnut is MailChimp’s founder and CEO. After studying industrial design and physics at Georgia Institute of Technology and working as a designer for an mp3 website, Ben founded The Rocket Science Group in 2000. There, he built web apps—before they were even called web apps—for companies like BellSouth, CNN, Coca-Cola and The Arthritis Foundation.

Within a year, Ben launched MailChimp, which grew alongside The Rocket Science Group. MailChimp was a hit, and he started focusing exclusively on it in 2005. Since then, MailChimp has grown from 9,000 users to more than 400,000. MailChimp makes it easy to design and send beautiful emails, manage your subscribers and track your campaign’s performance. It takes powerful tools like segmentation, a/b testing and ROI tracking, and turns them into something anyone can use.

Ben’s interests include brand personality, monkeys and cars. His interests do not include golf.

Plywood People: What prompted you to start an email marketing application?

Ben Chestnut: We used to run a web design company. Some time in 2001, a couple of our clients were having trouble sending email newsletters. One of them had no idea where to begin. The other one was using some bloated “enterprise” software that made it way too difficult. We had some scrap code from another project that could help them, so we gave it a new life as MailChimp.

Plywood People: What was your greatest challenge in bringing your idea into reality?

Ben: That’s the beauty of this. Since we were web designers, there was no pressure building MailChimp at all, or making it a reality. It was just this tool we built on the side. We were already a profitable company with tons of projects. We just built it and let it grow organically. January 1st 2007 was when we dedicated ourselves strictly to MailChimp. We were sort of like a startup that had been around for 6 years, was already cash flow positive, and had a few thousand customers.

Plywood People: If you had once piece of advice you could offer someone working to launch a new idea, what would you tell them?

Ben: Best advice I ever got: “these things take time.”

Plywood People: As you’ve developed your company what has been the greatest lesson you’ve learned?

Ben: Forget the competition, and just go be awesome in your own way (even if it’s weird).

Plywood People: When you’re not helping people stay in touch with their networks, what other projects are you working on or passionate about?

Ben: I think my only passion is what I do at work — trying to keep people creative, and thinking a little differently about stuff.

http://topsy.com/plywoodpeople.com/3668?utm_source=pingback&utm_campaign=L2 Tweets that mention Friday Five // Ben Chestnut « Plywood People — Topsy.com

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by wacdesignstudio, Plywood. Plywood said: Friday Five // Ben Chestnut: CEO of MailChimp-"We built a reputation for building quality applications that were '… http://bit.ly/c1LSfT [...]
http://www.world-markets.biz Trevor

Running a successful company (that was my start up) I so totally aggree with the sentiments that Ben has written. If your idea is unique enough there will be no competition. So why worry, just go for it, and be prepared to wait for your dream to come alive.
http://www.zemanta.com/blog/building-better-business-blogs-47-click-click-whos-there/ Building Better Business Blogs (4/7): Click, Click, Who’s There? | Zemanta Ltd.

[...] speaks with a compelling and distinct voice is the MailChimp corporate blog, which is written by the company’s founder Ben Chestnut along with members of the team that makes Mailchimp happen. The posts are generally written in a [...]
Doris

That is oh so awesome!
Curious T in Madison

It’s a mystery to me how you became cash flow positive when marketing a free service. This always makes me feel like there is a catch, even though I trust there isn’t one. I volunteer hundreds of hours a year for my non-profit, so I know others give their time away, too–but, then, I can’t sustain the giveaway for ever. Without divulging the inside scoop, can you help us understand what holds your cash flow together?
Mylilly64

I like your last sentence on the most. Thanks theartworkgallery24.com
http://AndreaWeightloss.weebly.com/ Andrea

Thank you very much for sharing your compassion, wisdom and courage.
Proverb1821

ok… sound great, but what are the nuts and bolts of this new concept, and how do I get connected. And will this work for a landscape company?
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1776483863 Michelle Wright

Love the scripture reference of your screen name. What we say is SO important.

To answer your question, MailChimp’s concept isn’t new anymore, it was when he started it. For you as a business owner, his program will allow you to send professional looking emails to your customers and/or prospects who signup to be on your mailing list. Let’s say you ask all your current customers if they would like to be on your email list for monthly/seasonal emails. They will probably say yes. You then add those email addresses to your contact list in Mail Chimp, pick how you want it to look, type in your wording, and send the emails at the decided times.

I’m not an expert at this yet, but I am familiar with it and have helped with wording for my employer’s email campaign. Let me know if you’d like more info or need help with marketing and developing more rapport with your customers.

Don’t worry, there’s not catch.

michellewright522@gmail.com