Squarespace: Anthony Casalena

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.8 • 31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 4 March 2019

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Like many classic technology stories, Squarespace started in a college dorm room. In 2003, 21-year-old Anthony Casalena created a website-building tool for himself. But after hearing some positive feedback from friends, he decided to put the tool online and start a business. For years, Anthony ran Squarespace almost entirely on his own but the stress took a toll and he reached the limits of what he could accomplish by himself. The journey to hiring a staff and scaling the company had its own set of growing pains for Anthony, including difficulty letting go of control, and learning how to manage other people. Today, Squarespace has grown to more than 800 employees, and valued at $1.7 billion. PLUS in our postscript "How You Built That," how Kate Westervelt took an overwhelming experience and turned it into a gift box for new moms – filled with essential items women need to recover from childbirth. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:07.0	Download the app today.
0:09.0	New Year's is here, and with it brings the possibility of change.
0:13.0	As one behavioral scientist put it, first starts are really powerful.
0:17.0	So as you head into 2023, LifeKit is a great resource to help you plan your life and tackle changes, both big and small.
0:24.0	Listen to the LifeKit podcast from NPR.
0:30.0	Somewhere along the way, I get a call on my cell phone from a customer.
0:35.0	Guys, hey, it's Squarespace, okay.
0:38.0	So I call the data center. I'm like, hey, can you reboot this server?
0:42.0	And it doesn't come back. And it wasn't coming back. Completely crashed. Wow.
0:46.0	And I was like, I got you in New York right now. And I just drive to New York.
0:50.0	And I'm having a panic attack the whole way up, because I'm making a screw.
0:52.0	I lost all the data. It's all gone. That little experiment's over.
0:57.0	From NPR, it's how I built this.
1:03.0	A show about innovators, entrepreneurs, and idealists, and the stories behind the movements.
1:08.0	They built.
1:14.0	I'm Guy Raaz, and on today's show, how Anthony Castelena's dorm room coding project grew up
1:20.0	and turned into Squarespace. And now Anthony grew up with it.
1:33.0	So in business schools, they teach a bunch of ideas about entrepreneurship.
1:37.0	But the simplest one, the one that is the clearest path to creating something unique is this.
1:44.0	Find a problem that lots of people have and solve it.
1:48.0	So, for example, how can I get from this exact point I'm standing on to another specific point two miles away in a relatively fast and cheap way?
	...

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