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

Decoder with Nilay Patel

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.

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