The Start:

Ben Chestnut, a failed rock musician turned passionate web designer, co-founded Mailchimp with Dan Kurzius, who previously worked as a real estate agent and DJ.

Before starting Mailchimp, Ben had experience running a web design agency called Rocket Science Group, where he and Dan honed their skills in understanding small business needs and digital marketing.

Their diverse backgrounds and entrepreneurial spirit laid the foundation for what would become a game-changing platform in email marketing.

The Problem:

Ben and Dan realized that small businesses often struggled with expensive and complicated email marketing tools that were primarily designed for large enterprises.

Their clients needed a more accessible, cost-effective solution to connect with their audiences and grow their businesses.

With Mailchimp, they aimed to create an easy-to-use, affordable email marketing platform tailored to the needs of small businesses and entrepreneurs.

The goal was to democratize email marketing, enabling anyone to create professional campaigns and harness the power of email to build strong customer relationships.

Getting their first customers:

Mailchimp started off as a side hustle for the founders' web design business. the three of them began offering email marketing & newsletter writing services.

Initially they charged a fee per email sent & their rate started at $50 for 2500 emails to be sent.

Soon after, they developed an email marketing tool named Wemailer and started sending out emails on behalf of their clients.

Since the tool was easy to use with no need for coding skills, they opened it up to their customer base for them to use on a $20/month subscription. And just like that, Mailchimp was born.

This pricing plan gave them more predictable revenue, which they reinvested back into the business without having to rely on outside funding.

They leveraged content marketing as his primary distribution channel.

He studied the Google algorithm and discovered that at the time, Google was indexing and giving higher ranking to PDFs. So he wrote a full PDF about email marketing. This got them their first online customers.

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