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

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81–90 of 267 posts

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

#81
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…

Is it practical to live in Atlanta without a car?

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

#82
post #61
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…

How's the political climate? It doesn't look so great from my initial Googling: Georgia is one of the states suing over the transgender bathroom issue. Per Wikipedia Georgia doesn't include sexual orientation in their laws against employer discrimination. Anything else folks from SF might be concerned about?

California is also one of the states being sued [0]. You obviously don't know much about Atlanta but seem to know a lot about Georgia by browsing wkikipedia. Our LGBT community is one of the largest in the US.

California probably has more backwards people than Georgia fighting against stuff like this.

[0]http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/may/26/california-tra...

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

#83
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got to disagree with you. I'd say MailChimp has elevated the perception of email marketing. MailChimp has pretty strict standards when it comes to sending emails. If you send emails to a list that has a 20 percent or more bounce or unsubscribe rate, they'll freeze your account. Other providers let you upload a CSV with emails and blast out campaign after campaign to purchased lists without repercussions.

> If you send emails to a list that has a 20 percent or more bounce or unsubscribe rate, they'll freeze your account. Without giving you a chance to do anything to correct that? What if it is a genuine case of non- spam? e.g. 100% signed up, soon after, 20% decide this list is not for them. Sometimes that might happen.

When you unsubscribe from a Mailchimp email, they ask the recipient why they are unsubscribing. If the recipient marks "I never subscribed" or "this email is spam," the threshold is probably much lower than 20 percent. The software tries to decide if your emails were malicious.

If your account is locked, then you have to call MailChimp and explain that your intentions weren't malicious and that you won't send anything else to those emails from your account.

I had a small email list that I had not sent anything in about a year and had my account locked after sending a campaign. People just forgot they were on the list, because it had been so long. Their support team unlocked it and suggested that I send an email at least every 6 months.

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

#84
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…

Is it practical to live in Atlanta without a car?

Yes if you live and work downtown but you'll be at a disadvantage. Atlanta is very much a car city especially if you have or want kids and want to live outside the city.

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

#85

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.

Agreed - what a nightmare. We spent thousands a month and got under 2 months notice that we needed to switch providers. What a nightmare, and it was so shockingly disappointing coming from a beloved company like MailChimp.

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

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earning $200k most places is pretty nice, but most sources show that in Atlanta almost no one is making that much. The average is less than half that. For most of us, moving to Atlanta would probably coincide with a sharp pay cut. If that wasn't the case, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

You would take a pay cut and there are many in Atlanta who would still complain that you are making too much and be thinking about how they could move your job to a low cost country. I've had conversations with startups "leaders" in Atlanta where they have expressed this sentiment.

I'll stick to the valley and just have roommates then.

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

#88
post #38

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…

So you are defending them (at least in the first sentence)from your speculation based on what you heard around town, that customers were simply not sustainable fits... Wouldn't it make sense they not offer a service package that is unsustainable in the first place? The clients myself and many others put on Mandrill were certainly not free tier anything, and they still offer the service, just under he Mailchimp name. (point being it can't be too unsustainable if they still offer it)

Customers I know who were ultimately stuck by being heavily integrated in the Mandrill API still suffered issues and downtime with the flawed account migration process. Just about every paying (and non paying) Mandrill customer got screwed in one way or another.

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

#89
post #69

Depends on what you mean by 'making it' as a startup - is it the revenue growth? burn rate? profit growth? Number of users? Number of employees? A SF office? How well funded you are? It's hard to grow a business without going the conventional SV route and getting VC funding. Unless you have a revolutionary product, the bigger competition will likely stomp over you unless you have resources to grow your team and produ…

> Unless you have a revolutionary product, the bigger competition will likely stomp over you unless you have resources to grow your team and product and marketing. Or if you are comfortable with a small market share but a profitable one. Case in point, me. I started FreeRADIUS in 1999. Started making money in 2007. Incorporated in 2008. I now have multiple offices, multiple employees, and good growth. No investment.…

Wow, I used your product when I worked at Cisco! We used it for testing AAA with enterprise routers that were in development.

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

#90
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing something that someone else is already doing is not necessarily a bad thing.

Yup, it amazes me that WhatsApp, an instant messaging app, was founded in 2010.

Whatsapp was not a "instant messaging" app in the way you put it. It was started specifically to get around high SMS carrier rates in countries around the world, hence their ultra-fast adoption in ROW.

Not trying to nitpick, just pointing out that Whatsapp didn't start in a crowded market. They actually did something unique that made messaging their friends & family way cheaper and easier.

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