Plywood People: Interview with MailChimp CEO, Ben Chestnut

A man after my own heart... Ben had the gonadal circumference to name his service after a simian! We use MailChimp for our sporadic newsletters, too.


Within a year, Ben launched MailChimp, which grew alongside The Rocket Science Group.

MailChimp was a hit, and he started focusing exclusively on it in 2005. Since then, MailChimp has grown from 9,000 users to more than 400,000. 

MailChimp makes it easy to design and send beautiful emails, manage your subscribers and track your campaign’s performance. It takes powerful tools like segmentation, a/b testing and ROI tracking, and turns them into something anyone can use.

Ben’s interests include brand personality, monkeys and cars. His interests do not include golf.

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Chimps in Retirement

The Wauchula Woods Accord Toward a New Understanding of Animals
By Charles Siebert
Scribner, June 2009

From Michael Jackson's Bubbles to Tarzan's Cheetah, the simian stars of the Career Builder ads and laboratory test animals, these working apes are finally living in peaceful retirement.

In an interview on NPR'sFresh Air,journalist Charles Siebert describes his new book,The Wauchula Woods Accord: Toward A New Understanding of Animals.

He details his encounters with Roger a retired former circus chimp, who lived at the Center for Great Apes in Florida and preferred the company of humans to chimps.

As a science writer, Seibert covers the influence of person and animal interaction—both creatures are forever changed.

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