In what was one of last week’s biggest business stories, email marketing firm Mailchimp announced its upcoming acquisition by Intuit, the company behind QuickBooks and TurboTax, for $12 billion. The deal is a massive payday for Mailchimp’s founders and joint owners Ben Chestnut and Dan Kurzius, who each own a 50% stake in the company they started in 2001.
Founded in the ashes of the dot-com bust, Mailchimp began as many a quirky startup has—as a side project of a pair of founders who’d tried their hand at many ventures, none of which proved lasting. But Mailchimp stuck, catering to a small business clientele and steadily growing its user base through 2009. That year, Chestnut decided to offer the company’s services to businesses under a certain size for free, essentially staking Mailchimp’s success on the success of its customers, who’d hopefully grow into a paid plan.
The strategy paid off. Today, Mailchimp boasts a user base of over 16 million, posted revenues of $800 million last year, and sends out over 1 billion emails a day. By many accounts, the rise of the company and its two co-founders—neither born to wealth—is very much a classic tale of bootstrapping Silicon Valley success. But Mailchimp and its founders actually call Atlanta home, not the Bay Area. And unlike many a startup, Chestnut and Kurzius never took VC money, instead remaining sole owners and ploughing profits into Mailchimp’s steady expansion.
Now, we’ll have two new multi-billionaires to contend with. After taxes, Chestnut and Kurzius will be worth an estimated $5 billion apiece following the sale. As of right now, neither appears to be ready to walk away from their day jobs at Mailchimp. And the duo’s philanthropic profiles are quite sparse so far, Kurzius’ in particular. Still, it’s worth taking a look at what these Georgia-based tech winners may prioritize in their giving—with the caveat that there’s certainly more to come, so stay tuned.
Lifelong business partners
Aged 47 and 49, respectively, Chestnut and Kurzius first met when Chestnut was working at Cox Media Group in the late 1990s and needed to hire a coder. Kurzius, then a would-be DJ working in real estate, taught himself to code and ended up partnering with Chestnut on a series of enterprises through the end of the dot-com bubble. Far from a billionaire at the time, Chestnut relied in part on his wife’s income during Mailchimp’s earliest years. The two men founded the company along with Mark Armstrong, whom they bought out in 2008.
Both Chestnut and Kurzius have some native familiarity with the small business space that Mailchimp has courted as it grew from small to not-so-small. On Chestnut’s side, there was a hair salon set up by his Thai mother; for Kurzius, a bakery-deli founded by his father in Albuquerque. Both businesses eventually folded.
Chestnut, who grew up in Georgia, has spoken of being on the receiving end of bullying because of his Asian heritage. Kurzius, for his part, doesn’t quite fit the image of a polished executive with his tattoos and affinity for DJing and skateboarding. Both men are married with children and live in the Atlanta area. At the time of the sale, Chestnut was CEO of Mailchimp while Kurzius was the company’s chief customer officer.
Modest giving, with an Atlanta focus
While it wouldn’t be fair to call these new multi-billionaires a philanthropic blank slate, neither Chestnut nor Kurzius have much in the way of a giving profile, at least not one that’s public. Chestnut does have a giving vehicle set up: the Chestnut Family Foundation, a modest, local affair that seems certain to grow now that its founder ranks among the nation’s richest.
The foundation got its start in 2017. Chestnut operates the low-key grantmaker along with his wife Teresa Chestnut, a Korean immigrant and former pediatric nurse whom Ben Chestnut met in high school. So far, the couple’s giving through the foundation has centered on providing Georgia children with access to the arts. A message on the foundation’s website reads, “We seek to partner with nonprofits that have demonstrated compassion and creativity in improving access and choice for children in the areas of health and the performing arts, and ultimately, help build confidence in children.”
Grantees have been small and local. They include Ballethnic Dance Company, Atlanta Music Project, Jessye Norman School of the Arts and ArtsNow Learning. The foundation also gifted $100,000 to AFCEA International’s Augusta-Fort Gordon Chapter Education Foundation to create a scholarship for STEM education.
The foundation’s largest commitment to date appears to be $1 million to help nonprofits meet basic needs during COVID-19. The couple made that pledge in March of 2020, and over half of the money had gone out as of that summer. The foundation’s most recent gift appears to be a September 2021 donation of $231,000 to ArtsNow, which will go toward delivering 300 laptops and Verizon Hotspot equipment to students in Richmond County, Georgia.
As for Kurzius, there isn’t much to go on at this point. He does not appear to have engaged in any significant giving so far—although we always have to allow for the possibility that any wealthy business leader may be giving in ways we can’t track through donor-advised funds or the like. But as of right now, Kurzius’ charitable activities appear limited to his involvement in Mailchimp’s corporate citizenship work, which is also centered on the Atlanta area.
Neither Chestnut nor Kurzius have been active political donors. One $1,000 donation on record from Chestnut went to Sam Park’s successful 2016 campaign for a spot in the Georgia House of Representatives. Park is the first openly gay man elected to Georgia’s state legislature and the first Asian American Democrat to enter the Georgia General Assembly. In 2019, both co-founders signed onto a message to the U.S. Senate from business leaders calling for “meaningful action” on gun violence.
A case of “stay tuned”
Traditional wisdom holds that Chestnut and Kurzius, still both under 50, will spend a number of years engrossed in business pursuits before turning to philanthropy in earnest. The relative sparseness of their philanthropic activity so far makes that a good bet. And yet, the traditional wisdom can be less reliable these days, with more tech donors in particular turning to philanthropy at a relatively young age. This is very much a case of “stay tuned.”
If either co-founder ramps up his philanthropy, expect a focus on their home turf—Atlanta. The city and environs are already the focal point for Chestnut’s past giving and for the company’s social responsibility portfolio. Concentrated giving in Atlanta from a set of new billionaires could be a big deal for the city. After all, consider how large Home Depot co-founder Arthur Blank looms in Atlanta, as both a businessman and philanthropist, with a net worth around $7.3 billion. Chestnut and Kurzius now command significantly more between them.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that Mailchimp—and its sale to Intuit—are far from controversy-free. Earlier this year, Business Insider reported on longstanding DEI concerns within Mailchimp’s ranks that led to a “mass exodus of women and people of color.” The sale also prompted some anger from employees who were never given the option of acquiring equity in the company, even as Chestnut and Kurzius apparently “promised they’d never sell.”
The stories have cast clouds over these tech founders’ entry into the world of post-sale plenty, and the DEI story in particular makes you wonder if there is any equity-focused giving on the horizon. Regardless, and especially for the city of Atlanta, we’d expect that there’s certainly more to come.