Mailchimp insiders react to employees getting no equity from Intuit sale
I worked at MailChimp for a few years. I most recently worked at a company that went through an IPO that I had equity in. When deciding to join my recent company, equity was the largest factor in my move.<p>MC’s benefits are great and at the time were top-tier in Atlanta. They are cash&#x2F;401k heavy and offer great profit sharing incentives. They also make it abundantly clear that they don’t offer equity and when I negotiated my non-MC offer that I ended up accepting, they were clear that they could not match my equity. They even acknowledged that if I was willing to take a risk with the equity it would likely be the advantageous move to make.<p>Nonetheless, during my time at MC Ben&#x2F;Dan repeatedly boasted about turning down offers to sell and repeated they were never intending to go that (or the publicly traded) route. This ultimately factored into my decision to leave, as it never appeared I would have a personal stake in the company. I hope other employees interpreted this in a similar manner and I do believe everyone had abundant opportunities to do so.<p>In the end and in hindsight, I’m happy with my decision to leave and it did pay out. Nonetheless, I do still believe MC is a great company and despite the founders somewhat selling an incorrect vision, are still acting in good faith. I don’t believe they “withheld equity” as they made it explicitly clear it was never offered, or was ever going to be, but I do see how the boasting of never selling out could be interpreted poorly now in hindsight.