The latest episode of Masters of Scale features Ben Chestnut, Co Founder and CEO of Mailchimp, and champion of simplicity and bootstrapping. When Ried asks him about when he started figuring out Dashboards and analytics stuff (Mailchimp ARR $600mn) Ben says – “Gosh, that’s a good question. I think to this day I still keep it very simple, myself. I obviously have a CFO who cares about it. He has big fancy reports, but I really say, you know, “How much money did we make this month? Is it growing? At what rate?” That’s all I really care about. I keep it pretty simple.” Strangely enough I also happened to read this article “Don’t Build a Startup, Build a Movement” by Ali Mese and guess who was the centerpiece of his narrative – Ben and Mailchimp. Ali makes a passionate plea for differentiated approach to your brand storytelling. Ali writes – “Over the last years, MailChimp has built an iconic brand with its design-centric approach and unconventional marketing campaigns.” that took Mailchimp, which was essentially a side hustle for about 5 years for Ben and his co-founder, to 15 million customers. So what did MailChimp do? They decided early to “Focus on building a brand customers love.”
