Anthony Casalena, founder and CEO of Squarespace, discusses the high-risk decision to rewrite the platform from scratch to build Squarespace 6.
Insight
Casalena: Websites are more relevant than ever because AI relies on them
“And I think that the website ends up being more relevant than ever for a number of reasons. One being, It's where the answer engines are finding their information. You know, they're crawling the web and using either old data or modern data or more relevant dat…”
Opinion
Casalena: Squarespace is not threatened by AI coding tools
“Yeah, I mean, it's been a phenomenal tailwind for us. I mean, we're not particularly worried about the, you know, the idea that people could code a website where they couldn't code a website before because people haven't had to code websites for two decades us…”
Opinion
Casalena: Squarespace is a private business, not obligated to host every viewpoint
“We are a business, we're not the government, and we're not, you know, trying to protect every possible viewpoint on the planet, and so you know, we need to make sure that, you know, we're doing business with the right, you know, the kinds of people we need to …”
Insight
Casalena: Leaders consistently regret moving too slowly on decisions
“And I think that I would look back and go, you know, what decisions do I always delay on? And I'm always looking back and going, I wish I had done that faster. And I wonder why I've never gone to those decisions and gone, wow, I went too fast on that one. Righ…”
Insight
Casalena: Blogging sparked the DIY wave empowering non-technical web creators
“When blogging happened, I see it as the kind of beginning of this DIY, do-it-yourself wave, where people who would have otherwise been a little intimidated you know, it was this kind of like, oh, I can do this too, but then giving them something more powerful,…”
Insight
Casalena: Website builder customers have high retention and do not leave quickly
“Like, I mean, people are, they stay around, right? Like, they make a website, they're not leaving quickly.”