Page 76 - Forbes Magazine-October 31, 2018

MOM AND POP’S

BEST FRIEND

Ben Chestnut and Dan Kurzius have built billion-dollar fortunes
by helping save small businesses the old-fashioned way: email.
BY ALEX KONRAD

wo years ago, Ben Chestnut found a crum- brand email with just a few clicks can mean the difference
pled piece of paper in the trunk of his Mer- between bankruptcy and success.
cedes GL63 SUV, alongside the muddy shoes Chestnut and Kurzius have worked to keep that life-
and helmets he uses while mountain bik- line affordable: Mailchimp’s customers pay nothing for the
ing in the hills of northern Georgia. Forgot- first 2,000 subscribers or 12,000 emails sent, and then $10
ten there for a year, the paper assessed how a month after that. The low cost translates potentially into
much a top private equity firm in New York thought his a big upside. At Stringjoy, a Nashville-based maker of cus-
company was worth: $2 billion. The CEO of Mailchimp tom guitar strings, owner Scott Marquart says every dollar
stashed it in his personal safe along with the business cards he spends on sending a weekly email through Mailchimp’s
of some America’s deepest-pocketed financiers—for his software is good for $20 in new sales. “Customers feel like
wife to shop a sale in the event of his death, but not a min- they know me,” he says.
ute before. “That’s my retirement plan,” Chest nut quips. In Chestnut’s office at Mailchimp headquarters, an old
The Forbes 400 newcomer has good reason not to rest. Sears warehouse northeast of downtown Atlanta, there’s
Chestnut and his cofounder, Dan Kurzius, have both profit- a photo of a boxing glove accompanied by an apocryphal
ed richly from their patience. With $600 million in revenue, Mike Tyson quote: “Everybody has a plan until they get
Mailchimp is in the black and has more than doubled its es- punched in the face.” Chestnut is no boxer—though he
timated valuation to $4.2 billion in the last two years, giving met his wife in high school in karate class—but he relish-
Chestnut, 44, and Kurzius, 46, its sole owners, stakes worth es the sentiment because his career started by absorbing a
$2.1 billion each. couple figurative jabs to the chin.
Mailchimp’s success is built on the backs of America’s The son of a serviceman and his Thai spouse, Chest-
small business owners. Its most popular service—email nut transferred to Georgia Tech in 1994 to study industri-
marketing—might seem a low-tech, unsexy medium in al design, only to realize he wanted to learn how to build
JAMEL TOPPIN FOR FORBES
2018. But small business owners usually can’t afford mar- websites—something the school didn’t teach in the mid-
keting teams or social media pros. To the 20 million peo- 1990s. So he taught himself by reading technical books in
ple on Mailchimp today, the ability to send a sleek, on- the aisles of his local Barnes & Noble and eventually got

84 | FORBES OCTOBER 31, 2018