[HN Gopher] MailChimp: A side project that turned into a $700m/y...
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MailChimp: A side project that turned into a $700m/year revenue
business
Author : Anon84
Score : 130 points
Date : 2021-03-02 13:33 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (entrepreneurshandbook.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (entrepreneurshandbook.co)
| claudiulodro wrote:
| Between MailChimp and Basecamp, it seems like a few products have
| spun out of agencies. Is it a good idea to first start an agency
| to maintain reliable cash flow until a product strikes it big, or
| is it a distraction/time sink? Curious on the community's
| thoughts. In my opinion, it seems smart because you can float by
| indefinitely with a handful of clients until you have market fit
| with some product, though I wonder if statistically it would make
| more sense to just focus on the agency without the distraction of
| product.
| ncallaway wrote:
| If you have a specific product in mind, I don't recommend the
| strategy. Find investor funds and build the product.
|
| If you don't have a specific product that you want to build,
| then I think it's a more viable path. Running the agency gives
| you a stable revenue and base to bootstrap a product when a
| product opportunity becomes available. Running an agency also
| gives you insight into pain points that multiple different
| companies are hitting.
|
| So, an agency as a path to eventually developing a product
| makes some amount of sense but an agency as a path to develop a
| specific product vision probably doesn't.
| michaelbuckbee wrote:
| FWIW - I've also seen a lot of SAAS companies come out of
| individual consulting engagements. I know of two services
| that started with "I'll give you a 25% discount on my normal
| rate if you're ok with me keeping the IP for this portion of
| the project" type negotiations.
|
| I think this is a neat way to start as it's validation
| (someone is paying) and your first customer (which is the
| hardest to get) all in one shot.
| [deleted]
| creaghpatr wrote:
| Also puts a lot of back-office infrastructure in place to
| serve as a starting point for a transition rather than have
| the founder(s) have to manage that as well.
| kbanman wrote:
| Hootsuite also started as an agency side project, and I'm sure
| there are more.
|
| Intentionally following this model doesn't seem sensible
| though; with VC money so accessible if you have already put
| together a good team you might as well focus on the product
| itself. Agency work is not fun.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| VC money takes time to get, it requires you to give up some
| part of ownership/control, and puts pressure on you to be a
| unicorn.
|
| Fine for some; certainly not foolish to go a different route.
| Basecamp never wanted to be huge, just successful. I'm
| working on a project that our company funds through agency
| work, and it's fine.
| offtop5 wrote:
| Option three, create an agency which is building out its own
| product as the base for the projects you're taking on.
|
| For example let's say You're building homes using a special
| process that you're developing in house. Your clients just want
| homes, but while you're building those homes you can and keep
| working on your process until you can sell the process to a
| conglomerate of some sort.
| claudiulodro wrote:
| Smart. I hadn't heard of this approach before, and I like it.
| offtop5 wrote:
| It's actually amazingly common for SAAS companies to do
| something like this.
|
| I will say it can be extremely stressful since you have to
| both support your core product, and your agency shop work.
| farquad82 wrote:
| Also: a workplace known to be hostile to women.
| uptown wrote:
| Does anyone else find MailChimp's UX to be counterintuitive?
| Simple things like form building feel overly complex and its
| frequently unclear whether some actions will be destructive or
| not. It's a product I'm stuck using for a client but which I
| absolutely abhor each time.
| lesinski wrote:
| Totally agree. I had to bail on it years ago because of how
| nervous I would get every time I built a new campaign. Every
| button-press you're walking on egg shells.
| abanayev wrote:
| Same experience here. Eggshells is a great metaphor
| sschueller wrote:
| Save you the click. MailChimp was a web agencie's internal
| project. It wasn't abandoned, it was just not the focus of their
| business. The pivoted from an agency to full time launching
| mailchip.
| follower wrote:
| Kinda makes you wonder why that company in particular might
| want to have a positive story about them in the current news
| cycle, doesn't it?
| thedz wrote:
| (this was published back in dec)
| corobo wrote:
| No, but I appear to have missed whatever news you're winking
| and nudging about
| boringg wrote:
| ?
| superultra wrote:
| Thanks for mentioning this. Wish I'd read your comment before
| the article.
|
| This article seems like a for-pay puff piece when it was
| originally published in December 2020, but the posting here and
| now when this company is going through a bit of negative PR is
| a bit suspect.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/22300931/mailchimp-company-culture-...
| sidpatil wrote:
| If I recall correctly, Twitter progressed in a similar way--it
| started as an internal project and eventually grew into the
| main offering.
| capableweb wrote:
| Thanks, absolutely ridiculous that the name of the main subject
| is not in the title. I already knew the story of MailChimp but
| this could have been about anything...
| stephenhuey wrote:
| > To investors, the math just didn't check out. Why serve a
| highly fragmented, emotional, low-budget small business audience
| when 30% of them will be out of business in 2 years, and 50% of
| them will fail within the next 5 years? What Ben understood from
| personal experience was that even when solo-preneurs fail, they
| keep their email lists alive, and most of them start something
| new some time down the road.
|
| Always encouraging to hear that you may be working on something
| worthwhile even if smart people still don't get it. Even some
| smart friends of mine have been pretty unconvinced simply because
| they don't understand the domain, or maybe they're just not that
| interested. Investors are often pretty smart, but apparently
| those they spoke with were biased against the massive small
| business market. Conventional hurdles of selling and retaining
| such customers didn't apply to Mailchimp but it was difficult for
| them to see that. Today, Mailchimp still has over half the
| market.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > Always encouraging to hear that you may be working on
| something worthwhile even if smart people still don't get it.
|
| People very rarely "get it" at first for things that become
| big. Anything obvious will already be attempted by larger
| corporations.
|
| Google was initially so unappealing to investors they would go
| out the backdoor to avoid talking to the founders. AirBnB has a
| long, fascinating story of them struggling to get off the
| ground. Amazon was laughed at for competing with brick and
| mortar. Tesla was considered idiotic to compete with big auto,
| who presumably could put their weight behind electric and crush
| them. Likewise SpaceX was crazy to complete with legacy defense
| contractors. And so on.
|
| Also, from personal experience, most investors aren't that
| smart. Investors are just people. How smart do you think the
| average person is?
| ampdepolymerase wrote:
| They do have money though.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| Something most people have to learn the hard way is that
| bad investors are worse than no investors. This isn't just
| my opinion, I was originally taught that by YC. And while I
| don't normally agree with this guy, he says some salient
| things here.
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2013/09/11/vinod-khosla/
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