Mailchimp CEO Rania Succar on culture, acquisitions, and how big 'small business' really is

Decoder with Nilay Patel

Vox Media Podcast Network

Technology, Business

4.3 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 1 April 2024

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today, I’m talking to Intuit Mailchimp CEO Rania Succar, who took over as CEO in 2022 after a pretty rough patch in the company’s history. In 2021, Intuit acquired the company, and the very next year, co-founder Ben Chestnut stepped down after telling employees that he thought introducing themselves with pronouns in meetings did more harm than good. After that, Rania took over. This is a pretty huge culture change, especially as Mailchimp became more integrated with Intuit. It was also a big challenge for a new leader who came in from the outside. You’ll hear us talk about that transition a lot. Rania and I also got into the weeds of making decisions, which is very Decoder. And, of course, we had to talk about generative AI, which is a big part of the Mailchimp road map. This was a really fun conversation with some honestly scary ideas in it — and it’s all about email. Links: Mailchimp employees have complained about inequality for years — The Verge Mailchimp Employees Are Fuming Over $12 Billion Deal — Business Insider Did this email cost Mailchimp's billionaire CEO his job? — Platformer Mailchimp is shutting down TinyLetter — The Verge TinyLetter, in memoriam — The Verge Did Mailchimp censor J.D. Vance? — Mother Jones Hackers breached Mailchimp to phish cryptocurrency wallets — The Verge Boring, mundane businesses have an exhilarating, viral life on TikTok — The Verge Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23879556 Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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0:00.0	Support for Today's show comes from Deloitte.
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0:40.0	You might be able to do your thing better on Wicks Studio, a web platform with everything you need to deliver bespoke sites, hyper-efficiently.
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1:01.3	with an AI code assistant and your preferred IDE for rapid deployment.
1:06.2	Search Wicks Studio today to explore the full range of features. Hello and
1:15.0	Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems.
1:20.0	Today I'm into it, male chimp CEO Ranya Sukar who took over a
1:24.8	CEO in 2022 after a pretty rough patch in the company's history. See, MailChimp was founded in 2001.
1:31.2	It was a startup that learned a lot of lessons from that first
1:34.2	dot-com boom and bust. It managed to stay both successful and fully
1:38.2	independent for 20 years. But in 2021 it's sold to Into It, the company best known for finance products like QuickBooks and TurboTax.
1:46.0	In the very next year, CEO Ben Chestnut, who was one of the original co-founder, stepped down.
1:51.0	After telling employees that he thought introducing themselves with pronouns and meetings did more harm than good
	...

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