Kara Swisher

Recent Posts by Kara Swisher

Exclusive: MailChimp Buys Phil Kaplan’s Tiny Newsletter Start-Up, TinyLetter

MailChimp, the Atlanta-based email marketing service, has bought TinyLetter, which is well-known entrepreneur Phil Kaplan’s most recent start-up.

While MailChimp focuses on more commercial clients — including AllThingsD — who want to send email newsletters and manage subscriber lists, TinyLetter is aimed at individuals who want similar services.

In an interview this morning, Kaplan said he sold the nine-month-old company, which he self-funded, in order to take advantage of MailChimp’s infrastructure and scaling capabilities.

He will remain an adviser to MailChimp, which now has about 950,000 newsletters, with about two billion emails sent monthly. It has 100 employees.

In contrast, TinyLetter has about 30,000 newsletters and sends out about one million emails a month.

Kaplan would not disclose terms of the acquisition deal, even though I asked him nicely several times. But the TinyLetter brand will remain.

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Just as the atom bomb was the weapon that was supposed to render war obsolete, the Internet seems like capitalism’s ultimate feat of self-destructive genius, an economic doomsday device rendering it impossible for anyone to ever make a profit off anything again. It’s especially hopeless for those whose work is easily digitized and accessed free of charge.

— Author Tim Kreider on not getting paid for one’s work