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MailChimp’s founders built the company slowly by anticipating customers’ needs

nytimes.com

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Re: MailChimp’s founders built the company slowly by anticipating customers’ needs

#51

Post by bildung »

Animats wrote: post #47

Spam is profitable. (And yes, Mailchimp is a spammer, based on the Spamhaus definition of spam.[1] It may be legal, but it's still spam.) [1] https://www.spamhaus.org/consumer/definition/

According to that definition, you're wrong: Mailchimp doesn't fulfill the first condition. In my experience, Mailchimps interface puts heavy emphasis on having opt-in proof for the addresses you use, having to include unsubscribe links and sender's postal addresses etc. Yes, they don't technically enforce it, but how could they do that without also preventing legitimate use cases like importing addresses from a competitor's service?

Re: MailChimp’s founders built the company slowly by anticipating customers’ needs

#52

Post by tomschlick »

sb8244 wrote: post #38
jonstokes wrote: post #30

And then somehow they managed to totally disregard their customers' needs and screw everyone with the Mandrill changeover. Seriously, has everyone forgotten that fiasco? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11170713 I'll never trust them or use them again, after that. No way no how.

My understanding of that is that the term customer shouldn't apply to free tier heroku spammers. It is a very secretive company about most things related to way of business, so I can only speculate and from what I heard around town, but most of the customers there were not good sustainable fits. I've had extremely negative experiences in their customer support, but also extremely positive experiences through their co…

> My understanding of that is that the term customer shouldn't apply to free tier heroku spammers.

But they fucked over more than the free tier. We (work) had 15 clients that all had accounts that we managed for them. We probably spent upwards of $1200/mo on emails through those accounts.

We only got ~50 days of notice that we had to change over to another provider before we would get cut off.

Re: MailChimp’s founders built the company slowly by anticipating customers’ needs

#53

Post by koonsolo »

echelon wrote: post #37

The Atlanta tech scene is blossoming, just like our film industry. We have a couple of incubators, including a few that are funded/supported by Georgia Tech. The cost of living here is super cheap, and there are brilliant and talented people everywhere. We have satellite offices for tons of major tech companies, so there are traditional tech jobs too. Earning $200k here while the cost of living is so low is phenomina…

The company where I work has a satellite office in Atlanta (with software developers).

The main reason is that the time difference with Europe is small, so that developers on both sides still have some work hours overlap.

Re: MailChimp’s founders built the company slowly by anticipating customers’ needs

#54

Post by treehau5_ »

irishloop wrote: post #44
echelon wrote: post #37

The Atlanta tech scene is blossoming, just like our film industry. We have a couple of incubators, including a few that are funded/supported by Georgia Tech. The cost of living here is super cheap, and there are brilliant and talented people everywhere. We have satellite offices for tons of major tech companies, so there are traditional tech jobs too. Earning $200k here while the cost of living is so low is phenomina…

I used to work for a company based in Conyers, GA, and would hang out in Atlanta when I traveled there. It is a great city. However, there is a huge cultural shift outside of Atlanta for people used to Silicon Valley or NYC, because the rest of Georgia is definitely... different.

You say this as if it isn't true for NYC or SV either. I think the bubble is bigger in those places and makes it easier to plug your ears and turn the eye in NYC or SV. Ever been to Yonkers? Inside San Jose?

Re: MailChimp’s founders built the company slowly by anticipating customers’ needs

#55

Post by cyanbane »

irishloop wrote: post #44
echelon wrote: post #37

The Atlanta tech scene is blossoming, just like our film industry. We have a couple of incubators, including a few that are funded/supported by Georgia Tech. The cost of living here is super cheap, and there are brilliant and talented people everywhere. We have satellite offices for tons of major tech companies, so there are traditional tech jobs too. Earning $200k here while the cost of living is so low is phenomina…

I used to work for a company based in Conyers, GA, and would hang out in Atlanta when I traveled there. It is a great city. However, there is a huge cultural shift outside of Atlanta for people used to Silicon Valley or NYC, because the rest of Georgia is definitely... different.

I think it is different in the way that most big cities are when compared to other parts of their states. San Fran and East California might be one of the better examples. Marietta is very similar Merced; Athens is similar to Berkeley. I don't think Atlanta is very different in that regard. (From Athens, longtime Atlanta resident - spent a lot of time in Cali, lots of family out in Sacramento/Berkeley)

Re: MailChimp’s founders built the company slowly by anticipating customers’ needs

#56

Post by jseliger »

jasode wrote: post #22

>In fact, it’s possible to create a huge tech company without taking venture capital, and without spending far beyond your means. It’s possible, in other words, to start a tech company that runs more like a normal business than a debt-fueled rocket ship careening out of control. The author, Farhad Manjoo, is romanticizing a bootstrapped business as "good" and (via his prosaic examples of restaurants and dog walking)…

The author, Farhad Manjoo, is romanticizing a

I started feeling Murray Gell-Mann amnesia (https://seekerblog.com/2006/01/31/the-murray-gell-mann-amnes...) reading him a while ago and sent him a tweet about an important thing not discussed in some article, and his sarcastic response made me realize that he doesn't care very much about getting stories as right as he can: https://jakeseliger.com/2015/07/03/why-you-really-cant-trust....

Re: MailChimp’s founders built the company slowly by anticipating customers’ needs

#57

Post by Animats »

bildung wrote: post #51
Animats wrote: post #47

Spam is profitable. (And yes, Mailchimp is a spammer, based on the Spamhaus definition of spam.[1] It may be legal, but it's still spam.) [1] https://www.spamhaus.org/consumer/definition/

According to that definition, you're wrong: Mailchimp doesn't fulfill the first condition. In my experience, Mailchimps interface puts heavy emphasis on having opt-in proof for the addresses you use, having to include unsubscribe links and sender's postal addresses etc. Yes, they don't technically enforce it, but how could they do that without also preventing legitimate use cases like importing addresses from a compe…

No. After a transaction is complete, any further communication from the seller is spam. MailChimp treats a previous transaction as a license to spam. MailChimp says they're in the "email marketing" business and writes about "campaigns". That's spam.

Re: MailChimp’s founders built the company slowly by anticipating customers’ needs

#58

Post by maneesh »

jasode wrote: post #22

>In fact, it’s possible to create a huge tech company without taking venture capital, and without spending far beyond your means. It’s possible, in other words, to start a tech company that runs more like a normal business than a debt-fueled rocket ship careening out of control. The author, Farhad Manjoo, is romanticizing a bootstrapped business as "good" and (via his prosaic examples of restaurants and dog walking)…

How is the position of WhatsApp significantly different than that of Snapchat? WhatsApp didn't need outside funding to grow huge...

Re: MailChimp’s founders built the company slowly by anticipating customers’ needs

#59

Post by dangrossman »

sb8244 wrote: post #38
jonstokes wrote: post #30

And then somehow they managed to totally disregard their customers' needs and screw everyone with the Mandrill changeover. Seriously, has everyone forgotten that fiasco? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11170713 I'll never trust them or use them again, after that. No way no how.

My understanding of that is that the term customer shouldn't apply to free tier heroku spammers. It is a very secretive company about most things related to way of business, so I can only speculate and from what I heard around town, but most of the customers there were not good sustainable fits. I've had extremely negative experiences in their customer support, but also extremely positive experiences through their co…

Mandrill had over $1,000,000/mo in -paying- customers. We got no more time to transition off them than the free users did.

Switching e-mail providers is not something you can do overnight if you send large volumes (large volume does not mean spam: I send purchase receipts, contact forms, notifications, password resets -- transactional mail not ads). Even if you have a team of coders that can drop everything to start integrating alternatives, you need time to warm up your new IP space at a new provider, or your mail ends up in spam folders.

MailChimp screwed a lot of customers, and customers' customers when they gave only 60 days notice.

Re: MailChimp’s founders built the company slowly by anticipating customers’ needs

#60

Post by lgleason »

echelon wrote: post #37

The Atlanta tech scene is blossoming, just like our film industry. We have a couple of incubators, including a few that are funded/supported by Georgia Tech. The cost of living here is super cheap, and there are brilliant and talented people everywhere. We have satellite offices for tons of major tech companies, so there are traditional tech jobs too. Earning $200k here while the cost of living is so low is phenomina…

I'm in Atlanta. It's a great place to work for a non-tech corporation, but the startup scene is so so. Most of the "tech" startups fall in to one of two categories. First, ones that will not get traction and are doing something that someone else is already doing or two high tech boiler room operations where they hire a few tech people and an army of sales types to try to sell it. Sadly tech people in Atlanta are second class citizens even today. But there are plenty of "Choose Atlanta" marketing types touting the city.... There is a reason that rents and housing prices are low in ATL.
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