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Discussion with Squarespace CEO Anthony Casalena
This morning I met with Anthony Casalena who is the Founder and CEO of Squarespace. To be honest, before I was contacted about the company I never heard of them. Anthony provided me with a demo of Squarespace and we discussed the industry in general. Anthony is a bright guy and from what I can tell, his company is poised to take percentage points from Wordpress.com.
Here are my notes from our discussion:
- Squarespace is a sophisticated publishing tool. It handles more than say Wordpress but less than a complete CMS package
- Launched three years ago. Created by Anthony after his struggle to find a tool that could do what he needed
- Anthony notes that the components are called legobricks and they fit together to form a customer’s Squarespace
- Squarespace has thousands of paying customers; they do not offer a free or ad-supported model
- Serving over 1 billion pages a year not including admin pages – very impressive!
- Revenue has continued to increase and has risen each month since launch
- Pricing – $7-65 per month; Anthony notes that the majority of users are on the $17 plan
- The Squarespace team is currently four people
- Company is unfunded but is currently looking at vc options
Squarespace looks very well built and feature-rich. It has tons of Web 2.0 type features along with a robust set of user options. I asked about their marketing plan to which Anthony replied that outside of word-of-mouth, the only other marketing they do is using Google Adwords. While he wouldn’t share how much they spend, he said they continue to maintain 1st position for “blog” in sponsored and that they spend, “a lot.”
We ended our discussion with the future for Squarespace. Anthony had three bulletpoints for the future:
- Catering to developers – they will be expanding the ability to build on the Squarespace platform
- Video hosting – they are working on adding the ability for sites to host videos within the platform making it extremely easy to get a video onto a Squarespace site
- Predefined segments – they will be creating predefined templates for certain segments. Anthony noted their first will most likely be photographers and will have the features and templates initially set for this segment. Targeted marketing is a good idea for expansion
The demo looked absolutely sweet. Shockingly sweet. It’s rare that I am “wow’d” by a demo, but this one did it. In fact, I have two clients that I might propose we move to Squarespace. Check out the full feature list and see what you think. My suggestion to him is to look at creating user groups. This way sites that are similar in nature can share features such as the search engine if they both agree. Could be pretty powerful if executed correctly.
Are you using Squarespace or have you tried the tool? Share your thoughts in the comments.
I have been using squarespace since they opened their doors. I have launched 40+ sites on squarespace and I have to say the experience has been nothing short of amazing. Their software works flawlessly, and it looks great doing it. They do get bashed a bit for keeping tight wraps on development, but when they roll out an update, it is always air tight. I love the fact that I, the designer, can manipulate the code and then hand the site over to my client to maintain. All I can say is give them a shot, you wont be disappointed.
We have set up a couple of websites using Squarespace and it’s fantastic. We will continue to use them. If we had a wishlist, however, it would include more blogging tools and an internal e-commerce system.
Thanks for all the positive feedback, guys :)
I’ve been using them for my business for a while and love how easily I can manipulate my site to suit my needs. At my personal blog it’s a rather cumbersome process to change the look of my design and with Squarespace it’s so simply, I end up spending too much time playing and not enough time working!
Seriously hot program, the designs are bitchen, the people are smart, easy to work with and always right on top of everything. Adore them.
Anthony is one funny fellow.
I think he looks like Charlie Sheen.
Squarespace is very cool.
I am new to square .space and building two little sites.
I have endless problems with text sizing…..
I email and no answers….no solutions…….I ask for their phone….none. I looked everywhere on their web site for contact info….names….email address…phone….nothing.
I send emails once I found an address….no response….what is going on over there
When you are starting off….there are questions and when the text gets skewed so bad it can’t be fixed and no response…no phone….hard to believe.
Anthony Casalena, Founder and CEO of Squarespace
What should I do now…..quit ?? ?? This is crazy.
Need a phone call if this is resolveable. The text sizing wads working ok…then today…it went wild an my front page is a total mess….tiny….unreadable. wow
Hi Phil,
1) You can contact us within the “Support Ticket” interface in your site manager. Could you give me the reference # on a ticket you’ve opened so I can see your previous correspondence with us? We never delete tickets, and we respond to every single ticket that is opened in our interface within 24 hours (generally within 6). I’d be happy to look into the correspondence with whomever was helping you.
2) Have you attempted contacting us via the form on the front of our site?
3) Have you submitted any inquiries to support@squarespace.com? Both this and the front form enter our ticketing system as well.
4) As for “who runs the show” — some of our bios are printed on our front site, and are not hidden (http://www.squarespace.com/about/). This button is next to the contact form on our front site (http://www.squarespace.com/contact/) which you can use to reach any of us directly (just mention it in your correspondence).
5) There is a phone number printed on your credit card statement, but we haven’t received any voicemails from you.
All of these are valid ways of reaching us. Again, if you have a reference # from your previous correspondence, I can look into this.
Thanks!
I’ve contemplated using SBI since April and still have cold feet. What I like best about SquareSpace is that you can see AND “find” what they have to offer before making an inve$tment. You can join SBI as an affiliate before paying/building a website but the real poop you want to find out about i$ only vi$ible/$earchable after payment$. The other suggestion mentioned above, to create a users-group, is a great idea. But if SquareSpace really wants to expand and word of mouth is their approach, the no-brainer is to offer an affiliate program. A webma$ter who can recommend a webho$t that provide$ the incentive$, $ince money speak$ louder than word$. When $quare$pace offer$ incentive$, watch SquareSpace move into Alexa’$ mover$ and $haker$ top performer$.
I’ve been using Squarespace since September 2004 for http://www.ddmcd.com. The quality and feature set — all remotely hosted — are fantastic. Uptime, reliability, and support are also superb. Templates are beautiful and easily customized. The only downside I have seen is that they are too quiet. They don’t advertise enough. This has hurt them when competing with more well known services. They also keep development plans tightly under wraps which has raised (undeserved) questions about their business viability. Would I choose them again when starting a remotely hosted feature-rich web site? Absolutely.
I’ve used Squarespace to build a web presence for a friend that has a small business. I think they’ve created a platform that is best learned by developers or advanced computer users. The feature set is outstanding. A lay person can use the system once the developer’s set it up for them.. this results in an excellent combination of power and ease of use. The customer service is remarkably consistent and high quality — they answer every single question I’ve posted, even when I’m not yet a paying customer.