Long before Sasan Goodarzi was the CEO of Intuit, the California-based executive spent a good portion of his early professional career in the tech sector traveling around the State of Georgia. Atlanta, in particular, left a positive impression on him over the years.
Then Intuit eyed Mailchimp, Atlanta’s bootstrapped tech darling. The financial software giant acquired Mailchimp in a $12 billion deal in September 2021. Intuit, a Mountain View-based company, had offices on both US coasts and in six other countries. But up until that point, it had not invested in the Southeast.
Following the Mailchimp acquisition, Goodarzi said that he realized there was more to love about Atlanta than he originally even thought all those years ago.
“The culture, the talent, and what’s possible in Atlanta is too good to be true,” Goodarzi said this week while visiting Atlanta. “We started looking into whether this could be an Intuit hub.”
Intuit Mailchimp officially opened that hub this week on the BeltLine in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward neighborhood. The 360,000 square foot building is designed to house Mailchimp’s close to 1,000 employees. But this isn’t just any new office building. The space is designed to highlight Intuit’s commitment to Atlanta and its small business customers around the country.
“WE’RE COMPETING WITH PEOPLE’S HOMES”
Most tech companies have decreased their real estate holdings since the pandemic. But Mailchimp is increasing its office footprint in a major way. Its previous office in Ponce City Market was just a few floors of the building. Now with its new office in Old Fourth Ward, Mailchimp has nine.
Designing an office space in 2024 is a very different challenge. Return to work mandates have rocked the tech world. Mailchimp has taken a different approach. The expectation is employees are in the two-days a week in the office based on team needs.
But a nice office isn’t enough these days. That’s because the design team knows that an office today is competing with a person’s home. So an office has to have all the comforts of home while providing the spaces for deep work and collaboration that are missed in a remote-first world.
For Mailchimp, that meant designing a space that is designed as a “city within a city.”
There are over 20 conference rooms, 48 huddle rooms, and several outdoor spaces that serve as work-focused extensions of the surrounding Old Fourth Ward park area. From the 200 pieces of commissioned art on the wall to the naming of rooms, each part of the building is designed to have a distinct “neighborhood” feel. That not only reflects different iconic neighborhoods across Atlanta, it draws attention to Mailchimp’s small business main customers.
MAILCHIMP’S SMALL BIZ BRAND
Even after the Intuit acquisition, the iconic Mailchimp brand is infused in every part of the new building. A classic tiki bar area gives employees a place to relax and recharge. A maker’s space allows for creativity and out-of-the-box learning.
But Intuit and Mailchimp aren’t just doubling down on office space in Atlanta. They are committed to growing their brands into more of the Atlanta business ecosystem.
Lain Shakespeare, an Atlanta native, joined Mailchimp when it was still just a small office on Means Street in Atlanta’s Westside. He told Hypepotamus that Mailchimp had a unique advantage over other tech companies: It built a recognizable, community-focused brand from the beginning.
“[Co-founders] Ben and Dan found product-market fit very early. So we were able to invest in the brand from day one in ways that other tech companies are not able to do,” he told Hypepotamus.
Shakespeare, who now runs philanthropy for Intuit out of the Mailchimp office, said that it was important for Mailchimp’s brand and its employees to “plug into the community in a really genuine way.” Over the last decade, Mailchimp has invested over $15 million into small and medium sized businesses and nonprofits. It also focuses on integrating customers and community brands into the Mailchimp office in a very intentional way.
Mailchimp today is a full-force marketing platform designed to help businesses scale. It has invested heavily in analytics and AI recently. Now as part of Intuit, the platform is part of a suite of tools for the modern business owner.
But the Atlanta company has not forgotten its email roots. One of the large office murals is a cloudscape with “Sincerely,” written in bold letters, an homage to their email platform that connects small businesses to their customers.
For Shakespeare, the mural is also a reminder that Mailchimp’s brand was intentionally and sincerely built to help small businesses.
“It doesn’t matter if a person on the street knows MailChimp by its product, by its brand, by its reputation, or by its community involvement. We want that all to be harmonious and aligned,” he added.
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Corrections: updated the acquisition number
Photos provided by Intuit Mailchimp
