Raghav

MailChimp – The Success Story of the Ultimate E-mail Marketing Tool

Founder, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By Raghav

Advertising is the key to success in business. It plays a significant role in the business’ growth. Advertising mainly due to the budget has been a hardball to crack and needs lavish spendings to spread a business out wide. But, to this advertising problem, MailChimp brings every business, solutions to make marketing easier and cheaper. MailChimp is an e-mail marketing service, which was started in 2001 in order to help small businesses grow and has since come a long way to become the world’s leading e-mail marketing platform. The success story of MailChimp shows that knowing the problem well will lead you to a more effective solution.

Ben Chestnut, the founder of the company, in early 2001 was working on a web designing business with his partner. Within their business, their customers started to question them about how to send e-mails. Ben, eventually dug up an old code which he wrote for a greeting card business and that code embarked the journey of MailChimp.

MailChimp’s potential was never realized by Ben, and it remained as a side business to the web designing business until 2007. In 2007, both the founders discovered that their passion lies in helping small businesses, rather than in the business of web designing they were doing at that time. So, they decided to shut down their former business to focus on MailChimp.

The service started off badly. Initially, the emails sent through their channel were mostly delivered to the spam folders. The receivers of those emails were annoyed by the increasing count of spam in their mailbox. Having a tough competition with better-funded companies added to their problems.

But, there was something that gave MailChimp the upper hand. Being a small business itself, the founders knew better what their fellow businesses wanted i.e. they knew the problem better than their competitors. They were aware of what exactly their customers were expecting. Their offerings were cheaper, added features more frequently and allowed more and more customizations to fit the customers’ needs. Their product was more efficient as they were closer to their customers.

The company’s mascot, named Freddie, has a significant contribution to it. The Marketing Director of Mailchimp, Mark DiCristina, explained that it is the honest representation of the company. It depicts making work fun, creative and independent.

Within the process, you will find the product witty as the cool GIFs displayed by the MailChimp make it so. The company has always managed to make the process of email marketing a fun experience.

The Freemium model of the company, announced in 2009, has also brought a lot to the company. The company was successful before the move came on, but still, it offered a lot. With the freemium version, the users could sign up with 500 subscribers and send 3000 emails a month. It included all the salient features of the service. The only condition was to have subscribers less than 500. To add more to the blazing fire, MailChimp announced this version as a ‘Forever Free’ plan. After this announcement, MailChimp started growing rapidly.

In September 2009, the company had only 85,000 users, and with the introduction of the freemium model, its user base increased nearly 5 times (1.2 million). 30,000 new free users, alongside 4,000 new paying customers started to sign up, each following month, increasing the company’s profit to a massive 650%. In February 2012, the platform was adding 5000 new users each day.

MailChimp is also known for sending out gifts to their customers. MailChimp is a standout when it comes to its ‘Weird Swag’. For the company, sending gifts out is more important than the cost. Maintaining a relationship with the customer takes them further apart than the other companies in their competition.

The company posted $525 million revenue in 2017 and is growing by more than $120 million every year. MailChimp was Inc.’s Company for the year 2017. More surprisingly, it is still owned by its co-founders. This makes the company as suggested by Chestnut, “A Startup to a Grown-up.”

MailChimp, in a fun and interactive way, gives you the ultimate option to boost up your marketing using the most powerful of tools it offers. Have a business? Boost up yours using MailChimp.

Raghav

Raghav is a student and a content writer. He loves to write about emerging as well as the existing technologies around and about the ones who bring them to you. Music is the other passion that Raghav processes. It is like the fuel to his body. He is also in writing songs and poems. He believes that life is short, so live the best out of what you have got. Raghav considers himself a sci-fi guy, having stories and tech all around in his head, all the time.

Mark Jonathan Pincus – The Pinnacle of Social Gaming and Entrepreneurship

Founder, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By Raghav

Online games are interesting as you do not have to download them or build a separate setup for it. A few clicks on the computer, and you are ready to play. Not only, the availability of the internet makes them better, but also, playing with friends increases the fun. Zynga, one of the best social video gaming services, provides the best in-game experience when it comes to social gaming. The mind behind Zynga, Mark Pincus Jonathan, is a spirit of pure passion for entrepreneurship, and his story shows that innovation can make anything happen.

Mark was born on February 13, 1966, in Chicago, Illinois. He studied from Francis W. Parker School, till his 12th grade. He has two Ivy League degrees. In 1984, he graduated from Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he pursued a B.S. in economics. After graduating, he worked in venture capital and financial services, for 6 years. He then joined the New Media Group at Lazard Freres & Co. Later, Mark moved to Hong Kong to serve as the Vice President of Asian Capital partners, but returned to the USA, only after two years, to complete an MBA degree from the Harvard Business School. Alongside, he continued to work in the industry with Tele-Communications (AT&T Cable) and Columbia Capital.

mark pincus — Image Source: usatoday.com

He took an overview of the startups at Columbia Capital, where he invested in New media and software startups. In 1995, he started his entrepreneurship career with ‘Freeloader’. The company received investments from Fred Wilson and Softbank. The startup was a web-based push technology. Within seven months of its launch, Individual Inc. acquired the company for $38 million.

After Freeloader, in 1997, Mark started another startup named ‘Support.com’. The product of the company was a help desk automation software. He ensured that his startup left no stone unturned and made the company as the leading provider of its services. The public valuation of the company was $1.5 billion. Later, the startup was renamed as SupportSoft Inc.

In 2003, Mark and Reid Hoffman purchased Six degrees patent for $700,000 from the extinct Sixdegrees.com. The patent has never been used to date. Both the purchasers state that the purpose of the purchase was to protect the innovation in social networking.

Tribe.net was his next milestone. His third startup was funded by The Washington Post, Knight Ridder Digital, Mayfield Fund and Guy Spier. The startup was about social networking. Cisco Systems, in 2007, acquired the company to develop a more comprehensive social networking platform for its digital media services group.

Alongside starting his own startups, he also invested in other ones out in the market. He made early investments in Facebook and Twitter. Napster, Snapchat, Friendster, Xiaomi, JD.com, Brightmail, Buddy Media. He invested in several other ventures like HVMN and Wealthfront.

Zynga Inc., his fourth company, was started in July 2007. Zynga is named after Pincus’ late dog, Zinga, an American Bulldog. The company’s red and white logo is a rendering of the bulldog. Zynga provides the best social gaming experience and has developed games for Facebook, Myspace and Bebo. Zynga states its mission as ‘connecting the world through games.’ The first game was Texas Hold’Em Poker (now Zynga Poker). In April 2009, Zynga became the developer with most active users on Facebook (reportedly 40 million). In the same year, Zynga released ‘Farmville’ which turned out to be an absolute blockbuster. It was Facebook’s first game to surpass 10 million active users per day. In December 2010, CityVille surpassed Farmville, as the company’s most popular game, with over 16 million active users per day. At its public offering, the company was valued at $1 Billion. Zynga, since then, has released games like Farmville 2, Words with Friends, CSR Racing 2, Mafia Wars, etc., which are played all under ‘Zynga with Friends’ Network.

Pincus served as the company CEO from 2007 to 2013. He made headlines when he sold around 16.5 Million shares of Zynga. He remained the Chairman of the Board of Directors and the Chief Product Officer of the company. He stepped down as the CPO in April 2014. In April 2015, the company announced Mark as the CEO of the company following his step down on March 7, 2016. He ceded his voting rights from 70% to 10% in order to vote of confidence in Zynga’s current leadership.

He has been involved in community service, too. He started Zynga.org committed to transforming the world through virtual social goods. The service raised more than $20 million and has donated it to several international non-profit.

Mark Jonathan Pincus, the founder of Zynga, has provided one of the best games the world ever witnessed. He made social gaming possible through ‘Zynga with Friends’ campaign. He has a real-time net worth of $1.2 Billion. He was named ‘Founder of the Year’ in 2009 and in the following year, by the Crunchies Technology Awards. He is a pinnacle of online gaming and entrepreneurship promoting innovation all the way.

Raghav

Larry Kim – The Man Providing Ultimate Solutions To Advertising Industry

Founder, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By Raghav

Businesses are a great way to provide something to the world. But at the same time, businesses are also a big risk, because you never know what will happen at what time in the market. You also can’t assure whether your business will bloom or not. Being an entrepreneur means that you are always under immense pressure. One of the things that bug an entrepreneur is how to advertise their business. Advertising online is easy but tricky and takes a lot of expenditure. But with every problem comes a solution and that solution is provided to you by Larry Kim – the founder of Wordstream.

Wordstream is a company that provides services and software that help marketers get more out of online advertising. The company has been in the market for more than a decade now. The company is a Google Premier Partner and Bing Elite Partner. The company was founded by Larry Kim, which provides a suite of cross-platform advertising solutions. Wordstream started from a keyword research tool and has since evolved.

Larry opening Wordstream is something that he himself had never expected. The story behind this journey is inspiring and explains how life throws random opportunities at us.
Larry, who is also known as ’Larry the Marketing Hack Artist’ never planned to be an entrepreneur. Brought up in Winnipeg, Larry joined the University of Waterloo through the tests the university held and enrolled self in Electrical Engineering. He was maintaining an excellent academic record and joined a co-op program. The program, however, was not much appealing to him.

“I learned what I was not interested in, which is as important as learning what you’re interested in,” said Larry about his co-op program. He was employed in a software company, and that’s when he sensed the opportunity. The company introduced Larry to paid search as they wanted to look over their AdWords account.

Of course, Larry was no expert, but he soon evolved very fast in this job. His AdWords account generated a ton of clicks and millions of dollars in revenue. “The co-op program made me work in the Silicon Valley, and that is something magical. When you work there, the mind bug you to start your own startup.” But Larry faced a problem here. The question that bothered him was how will he turn his visionary idea in reality as it would take a lot of investment to build a company.

He determined himself to get a venture capitalist to invest in him but a dozen meetings, hundreds of emails and calls resulted in nothing. Larry never gave up and ended up investing his own money to at least bootstrap the business. He hired two-three engineers and a marketer and started to work at Panera Bread. After some time, when Larry got his product right, he returned to the VCs. The VCs were surprised yet impressed by his efforts and decided to invest in the idea. (Two investors)

Since then, the company grew, and today is one of the top choices when it comes to learning to advertise. Wordstream analyzes, optimizes and maximizes your business advertisements. The rise of the company has also led it to win many awards including the Boston’s Globe ‘Best Places to Work’ in 2017. The service reduces the hassle of long PPCs by converting them into shorter time periods which is done week by week.

A year after the launch of Wordstream, Larry stepped down as the CEO of the company to become the CTO, so as to focus solely on marketing and product management. He left the company in early 2017 to start a new gig, ‘MobileMonkey’ which builds marketing bots for messaging platforms.
When enquired about leaving Wordstream, he said, “It’s a big company now, and I’m looking to go back to my roots as a product developer. I’m very excited about chatbots and AI, and there are some really interesting applications of this technology in marketing. I want to be one of the leading companies bringing this to market.”

Larry has been named Search Marketer of the Year by PPC Hero several times (2013, 2014, 2015 and 2017). He is also, very active on social media and is ranked #8 most popular author on Medium. The story of Larry Kim gives us the inspiration to not give up in hard times and get back up every time one gets a huge blow in life. He surely is the one to follow if you have an interest in businesses and entrepreneurship.

Raghav

Evernote – Revolutionizing the Way You Manage and Remeber Things

Founder, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By Raghav

One of the key ideas for a better life is to keep the notes of everything important that goes on. But, is it feasible to keep a notepad, and a pen, every single time with you? Well, the answer is a straight ‘NO’. But technology extends at all scales, and one such wonder of technology is ‘Evernote.’

Evernote is a mobile app for taking notes, that has solved the problem of keeping a diary and a pen. The app has been a success since its launch. But like any other success story, it also has a story full of ups and downs.

Evernote is a multi-platform app, enabling its users to capture, organize and share notes from anywhere. It is described as a tool to store images, photos, files, audios, etc. Stepan Pachikov, the founder of the company, was working on the idea for a long time. He recognized three things that our brain does: remembering the past, building connections and creating new ideas for the future. Keeping this in mind, he started Evernote as an extension for the brain. The clear-cut mission that it presented was ‘Remember Everything.’

The Evernote web service was launched on June 24, 2008, and went through a series of funding problems. As the company started, there were never more than a few weeks of cash flow. As they had the money things turned worse, they faced a financial crisis. The company decided to stop, as all the investors backed out, and it ran out of money.

But the story didn’t end here. A phone call saved Evernote from shutting down. A passionate Evernote user from Sweden called Phil Libin (the then CEO) and told him how significantly Evernote made his daily life productive. The caller went on and offered an investment to the company. Phil and the caller eventually ended up on a Skype call after twenty minutes, and a week later, the company drew half-a-million dollars to its name.

Since then, there’s been no looking back. Evernote got its 1 million users in almost 446 days and nearly 223 to double it. The service was rapidly growing, and the growth was impeccable. In 2011, the company reached to more than 11 million people worldwide. Evernote has also launched many products suiting one’s daily life comfort. Evernote is more than just an app.

When asked the secret of growth, Phil discussed eight mindsets that routed Evernote’s road to success.

1. Working with Friends – Phil recruited people he previously had worked with. “I think the most important thing at a young age that you can do is, cultivate a group of brilliant, high-energy, willing-to work-for-free, best friends for life,” he quoted.

2. Product Based on Own Needs – What really makes a product great is its simplicity and its need in your daily life. Evernote stood on both of the parameters.

3. Timing is Everything – Evernote’s timing was perfect because it grew alongside the growing market of mobile apps. App stores were launching back to back new apps, which meant the Evernote had an instant reach to the millions.

4. Freemium Model – Freemium model played a key step in Evernote’s success. It held the free customers around and converted them into paying customers with everything that was being provided to them.

5. Focus on Product – Evernote never spent a penny on Search Engine Optimization. It focused on the product itself that made their users, their biggest strength.

6. Closed Beta Success – The beta program launched by the company built a community which worked big time for them.

7. The Hundred Year Company – Evernote, in 2012, raised a $70 million funding. The funding, however, was not meant for the cash they needed. The company wanted to build a financial and technical structure to make it, as suggested by Phil, a ‘100-year startup.’

The service supports formats like formatted texts, web pages, web pages, excerpts, photographs, voice memos, handwritten ‘ink’ and notes. The supported platforms are iOS, macOS, Android, Windows, Blackberry and others. Evernote was initially built on C#, and in 2010, C# was replaced by C++ to improve the performance.

As of now, the company has more than 225 million active users all over the world. At its IPO valuation, the company was valued at a massive $1 billion. The company sails smoothly now, with it being the number one app when it comes to productivity. The success story of Evernote shows that sometimes, a little ray of hope can pull you through the darkest times, gifting you the light, the legacy that you will carry forever after.

Raghav

Tony Xu : The Co-founder of the Dashing Food Delivery Service ‘DoorDash’

Founder, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By Raghav

The food industry is blooming with every second that passes. Now that the food industry has got technology-induced in it, one can order any kind of food, anytime, anywhere. It requires nothing but a simple three taps on your tech-savvy devices. In this growing food industry, DoorDash emerges as a key company leading the change. Tony Xu, the founding CEO of the company shares a success story which speaks that a simple problem can turn on the light in our minds to figure out something innovative.

DoorDash Inc. is an on-demand food delivery service which was founded in 2013 by Andy Fang, Stanley Tang, Tony Xu and Evan Moore. The founding story of DoorDash, as described by Tony, is an ‘unlikely one’.

It was 2012, and all four of the founders were working on an app which focused on building the technology for small businesses. They used to go and talk to the owners of coffee shops and restaurants. It all started when they were in a small macaroon store, in Palo Alto. The manager of the store, Chloe, expressed all the problems in her day to day business. However, as they were about to leave, Chloe showed them a thick booklet, which contained pages of delivery orders, and said, “This drives me crazy. I have no drivers to fulfil them, and I’m the one doing all of it.”

All four of them had their lightbulb moment. They spent the next few weeks interviewing and questioning other small businesses (nearly 200) and heard the same thing over and over again: ‘Deliveries are painful’. They started coding keeping in mind that they can improve this backlog and were ready with their first prototype within a few hours.

On January 12th, 2013, Palo Alto Delivery was born. The service spread so quickly that all the four members were delivering all over the Stanford campus. In the day, they were students and, in the night, they were delivery drivers. The name ‘Palo Alto Delivery’ was changed to DoorDash, in June 2013, and the delivery drivers were called the ‘Dashers’. “We learnt so much from driving in the streets. Now, anyone who joins the company, has to be a Dasher for at least 1 week,” said Xu.

“When we first started, we were trying to solve our own problems of getting food delivered. But soon, it grew quickly within the Stanford community and beyond. We found out that many families and office workers in the area have the same problem. When we deliver food, it’s as much about delivering happiness as it is about bringing convenience,” DoorDash posted on Medium.

Tony Xu, is a first-generation American. His first job was at his mom’s restaurant. His education includes B.S. (High Honours) in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from UC Berkeley, M.B.A. from Stanford Graduate School of Business. He was an Arjay Miller Scholar at Stanford. He started his professional career at McKinsey and Company. After that, he worked in Product at Square and led special projects for CEO and CFO at eBay.

When he started DoorDash, his simple mission was to enable every merchant to deliver easily, and that mission has come a long way. DoorDash has drawn investments worth $700 million with key investors being: Khosla Ventures, SoftBank, Sequoia Capital, GIC, Kleiner Perkins Caufield, and Byers. During 2018, the company was valued at $1.4 billion in a round of funding.

In April 2018, DoorDash stepped into the grocery deliveries with a partnership with Walmart. Further, in the year, DoorDash surpassed Uber Eats to become the second largest company in US food delivery sales behind only GrubHub.

The company took everyone by surprise when its valuation took place in February 2019. The company’s value increased 5 times and valued $7 billion when the rounding was done by SoftBank, Vision Fund, DST Global and Y Combinator.

Tony Xu, has also kept the focus of the company on an issue very important to him personally. Project DASH was launched and has since focused on the efforts to save food from wastage.

“Today, more than four and a half years after we first launched the company, we’re still passionate about transforming local businesses helping them thrive in this digital and convenient economy.” Tony Xu, the founding CEO is leading his company with its dashing food delivery services to new heights and is setting an example in front of the world that if innovation stays, then progress to success will always be on the tracks.

Raghav

Kanika Tekriwal – The CEO & Founder of High Flying JetSetGo

Founder, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By Raghav

When it comes to ultimate comfort in travel, airlines are at the top. But the airlines have their path and destinations set, and at the time of emergency, the only thing you can do is, co-operate with them and wait. But then, there come the affordable private flights that JetSetGo provides even on urgent basis. JetSetGo is a multi-faceted organization dealing with low-cost private services. It focuses on delivering innovating and transforming ideas into the general aviation industry. The co-founding CEO of JetSetGo, Kanika Tekriwal is someone who shares a story which is a set example for everyone and speaks that sometimes discomfort can lead to great ideas. All one needs is a spirit and a willingness to fight back their own backlogs.

Kanika hails from a business family but had to face a non-supportive journey. Aviation was looked up as an industry with male dominance, and her parents were against it from the very beginning, but her passion towards her goal changed their thinking and made them support their daughter. “Doing a job in aviation, and being a women entrepreneur are two different things. Though you find women in plenty in the industry, and the majority of them are employees and not the employers. Being a woman employer in aviation is indeed a tough task. When I told my parents about my dream, they were drop-dead against it. But I was adamant, and when they saw a little success and passion of their daughter, they supported me,” said Kanika in an exclusive interview.

Kanika Tekriwal — Image Source: beboldpeople.com

She always aspired to be in the aviation industry, to do something for the betterment of the services. Kanika pursued B.A. in Economics from the University of Mumbai, and later, moved to the United Kingdom for her M.B.A.

It was after her coming back from the UK, in 2011, when she started to think about turning her dream into reality. That’s when a major setback hit her hard. She was diagnosed with cancer. But that did not stop her from achieving her goals. During the nine months of rigorous treatment, she conceptualized the whole idea of JetSetGo. She sensed the need for an aggregator in the private jet space. “I would meet a number of people using private jets who complained that booking one in India was a very shoddy experience, and they felt cheated that the entire private jet experience is a far cry over travelling business or first. At the same time, private jet owners were selling planes due to the escalating costs, regular maintenance, and other hindrances as well as not getting the real pleasure of actually owning an aircraft.”

She started the company ‘JetSetGo’ in 2014 and aimed to cater to a wide clientele. JetSetGo offers exclusive ground services, unparalleled personalized inflight services, the highest aircraft dispatch rate, state-of-the-art technology, and ensures 100% safety. The company is referred to as the ‘Uber of the Skies’ delivering the ultimate pleasure of private aviation. JetSetGo has been showing a massive 7X growth ever since with investments coming in from large personalities, Yuvraj Singh and Puneet Dalmia.

“The very thought of having a chartered plane gives one a feeling, which is beyond imagination. Affording a chartered plane is indeed a matter of luxury today. But, probably after a century, when we all would have gone to dust and bones. People will own their own jets. And I am talking about people with decent earning and not the high and mighty. I believe time will come that in India, too.” said Kanika when asked about the company and indicated that private flying will get cheaper in India. She expects India to become one of the largest private aviation markets in the world, in the next 10 years. She makes sure that in her company, gender equality remains intact as she is a huge supporter of women empowerment.

“JetSetGo, today, has 162 visitors monthly out of which 64.5 are first-time visitors. JetSetGo is looking at capturing a minimum of 20 per cent market share by the end of the year, and we will raise the bar without compromise to indulge and cater to each customer’s need,” mentions Tekriwal. JetSetGo is growing at a rate of 70% per year. Its customer range starts with a net worth of $10 million. In 2016, the company did 4,691 hours of flying with a dispatch rate of 99.2% as compared to 74% of the global average.

JetSetGo acquired Indo Pacific Aviation Limited with an undisclosed amount. “This acquisition now gives a significant boost to our ability to grow our fleet and offer unique services and next-generation aircraft for personalized on-demand mobility”

Kanika Tekriwal, the founding CEO of JetSetGo expresses cancer as her the best experience so far because it gave her a new life to experience. She clearly is an inspiration to everyone and shows that nothing can stop you from achieving non-turbulent flights to success.

Raghav

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