Casalena: Squarespace monetizes GMV via a revenue-share partnership with Stripe
Anthony Casalena · 20VC: Squarespace Founder, Anthony Casalena on Scaling Squarespace from Dorm Room To Public Company with over $700M in ARR, The Decision to Direct List over Traditional IPO or SPAC & What Changes When You Go Public? · Oct 8, 2021 · at 20:18
Anthony Casalena is the founder and CEO of Squarespace. He addresses how Squarespace monetizes payment volume alongside its subscription SaaS model.
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“We do monetize all of the payments flowing through the e-commerce platform. Long ago, we made a, we were one of the, I think, first large companies to do it. We partnered with Stripe to enable the, our merchants to get online and to accept payments. And as part of that agreement, we monetize a portion of it. We don't white label the payments platform like some of our competitors do, which would put it as part of the top line instead of the Bottom line. But we definitely monetize the GMB flowing through the platform.”
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More from Anthony Casalena
Casalena: Squarespace reached a $10M run rate on $30K seed capital
“It was about 30 people, maybe, run rate of around, around ten million. So we got from nothing to there, you know, with 30,000.”
Casalena: Capital cannot directly solve usability or engineering management problems
“I think my problems were not exactly money dependent back then as much as they were making the product easier to use or, you know, engineering management or things like that, that money can't just directly fix.”
Casalena took secondary liquidity in 2010 to avoid selling Squarespace
“Back when I took some secondary, I would say it was, and this is 2010, it was very much not the norm, and I was looking to do it for a very specific reason, because I didn't want to sell the company, and at the time I basically owned all of it.”
Casalena: Squarespace chose a direct listing to avoid unnecessary IPO dilution
“So for us, because the company did not need to raise money, right? I mean, we've raised very little over the years. We had that primary round we did before doing the direct listing, which was done for A number of reasons, but otherwise we didn't need to raise …”
Casalena: Squarespace has spent up to $1B on brand marketing
“We've also spent hundreds of millions of dollars, probably a billion dollars on brand”
Casalena: Focus on design was Squarespace's main early differentiator
“There was an uphill battle along the way, obviously, selling people on, frankly, the importance of design and what it could do for them, and, you know, we look at it now, and it's obvious that was a huge differentiator in the company, and it really set us forw…”