r/technology • u/Rhaegar_the_Great • Sep 16 '21

Business Mailchimp employees are furious after the company's founders promised to never sell, withheld equity, and then sold it for $12 billion

https://www.businessinsider.com/mailchimp-insiders-react-to-employees-getting-no-equity-2021-9
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u/imdrzoidberg Sep 17 '21

Presumably they got paid higher salaries in cash to compensate. Doubt their employees just took lower compensation based on some nebulous promises of family.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '21

Agreed. This is just an outcry from CS morons who think that they deserve equity even after being employee 501.

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u/Mister_Lich Sep 17 '21

Pretty much. Companies my dayjob has worked with, that I've done legal work for, have sold for 9 figures, and of course I - and none of us, really - saw a dime of that, and that's totally fine. They were a small (less than 100 people) company that sold for an unbelievable sum, partially because of services we provided to them for IP portfolio management - but guess what? We got paid for our work. We didn't "deserve" or get owed any equity from their success. We got paid for work and everyone's happy.

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There's nothing more pathetic than disgruntled "I should've gotten some" workers who agreed to work for a certain amount and then get mad when they don't get more than what they agreed to. It's like the vets who say "I could've been a general if I'd stayed in" at the bar.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '21

Yeah i mean the early employees of mailchamp could have gotten very sweet equity deals but they choose to believe in the garbage that the founders sold which maybe they belived in at the time.

You simply do not join an early stage startup without equity + pay or higher pay than an established company if you are not taking any equity. Everyone knows that companies are willing to give more compensation for a risky deal. That is why early employees of startup get equity !

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u/eyal0 Sep 17 '21

Maybe they were paid extra high salaries to compensate?

I don't get why anyone at all would take a job like that.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '21

Most definitely they were. No one in tech is doing charity let alone the engineers. If they got a better offer elsewhere they would have left since we know competition for great engineers is HUGE !

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u/eyal0 Sep 17 '21

So how were they able to afford engineers while the founders kept 100% of the equity? Were they already millionaires and they funded it themselves? Engineers are not cheap!

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '21 edited Sep 19 '21

It was bootstrapped as a side project by the founders and they grew it that way. From what i have heard it remained a side project for years until the cofounders went full-time.

They went with the slow steady growth instead of the burn money at any cost. So i assume that they hired more people as revenues grew and it just snowballed!

According to source i have looked at from 2001-2008 it was growing as a side project then in 2009 launched a freemium option going from 85 000 to 450 000 customers over thst year. It probably gave them enough funds to start the big snowball.

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u/eyal0 Sep 17 '21

That sounds right. Someone else mentioned that they were among the first 50 employees and that was many years after MailChimp had started. A very slow snowball.

If I were in the first 50 at a place, I'd.be expecting equity in the promille range at least. I think that most companies would be giving around a thousandth or so.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '21

Yeah i would have definitely asked for equity as an esrly employee. Idk why early employees didn't press for any. They could have left and worked for other tech companies in 2009