Squarespace

Squarespace
Type of business Private
Type of site
SaaS-based hosting platform
Headquarters New York, NY (SoHo)
Area served Worldwide
Founder(s) Anthony Casalena
CEO Anthony Casalena
Industry Internet
Products
Services
Employees 580 (as of October 2016)[1]
Slogan(s) Build it Beautiful
Website www.squarespace.com
Alexa rank Increase 674 (As of 10 October 2016)[2]
Advertising Yes.
Registration Required; subscription needed for certain features.
Launched January 2004 (2004-01)

Squarespace is a SaaS-based content management system-integrated website builder, blogging platform and hosting service. The system allows individuals and businesses to create and maintain websites and blogs.[3] The services are only available bundled; they are not available separately. Hosting by Squarespace is mandatory: individuals and businesses cannot host their own Squarespace sites.

Since launching in 2004, Squarespace has grown to over 500 employees[1] in 190 countries, and millions of users have created websites on the Squarespace platform.[1]

History

Squarespace was founded in 2003 and launched in January 2004 by Anthony Casalena while he studied at the University of Maryland,[1][4] using a $30,000 investment from his father. He created the initial software behind the company after trying and disliking other personal web page platforms.[5] Squarespace was founded to create an all-in-one web publishing solution. On November 17, 2014, Squarespace announced that it acquired Brace.io, a website creation startup powered by cloud tools like Dropbox and Amazon Web Services. The price of the acquisition was not released.[6]

Headquartered in New York City, the company also has offices in Portland, Oregon, and Dublin, Ireland.[4][7] Of the company's 560–570 employees, 149 work at the Portland office, located in the Spalding Building.[7]

In 2016, Squarespace was ranked #8 on the Forbes Cloud 100 list.[8]

Industry competitors

Squarespace's primary competitors in the website publishing industry include WordPress,[9] Weebly, Wix.com,[9] GoDaddy,[9] Jimdo, Webflow, Webydo[10] amongst others. Some of these competitors make services such as templates, hosting and domain registration available separately or in partial bundles.[11]

The exact number of Squarespace users is not disclosed, although Casalena estimates that Squarespace signs up about 1,000 new customers a day.[12]

Funding

Squarespace is funded by Accel Partners and Index Ventures. The company raised $38.5 million in its Series A round of funding in July, 2010.[13] As part of the financing deal, Squarespace formed a board of directors, to add its three charter members: Jonathan Klein, Andrew Braccia and Dominique Vidal. Casalena remains Squarespace's largest shareholder.[14]

Squarespace raised another $40 million in Series B funding from General Atlantic in April 2014.[15][16] This is a minority investment. Anton Levy, Managing Director of General Atlantic, will join the Squarespace board of directors.[15]

Awards

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "About Squarespace". Squarespace. Retrieved February 12, 2015.
  2. "Squarespace.com Site Info". Retrieved October 10, 2016.
  3. Squarespace 6 For Dummies. John Wiley & Sons. 2013. ISBN 978-1-118-57543-7. 360 pages.
  4. 1 2 Entis, Laura (June 22, 2015). "How the Founder of Squarespace Mastered the Tricky Role of CEO". Entrepreneur. Retrieved October 4, 2016.
  5. "Squarespace Raises $38.5 Million From Accel, Index Ventures". Techcrunch. 2010-07-13. Retrieved 2013-02-07.
  6. Napier, Lopez November 17, 2014 TheNextWeb. "Squarespace acquires Brace.io to bolster its developer tools"
  7. 1 2 Rogoway, Mike (August 24, 2016) [online date August 22]. "Rounded individuals fit easily into this Squarespace". The Oregonian. Portland, Oregon. pp. B13, B15. Retrieved 2016-08-27.
  8. "Forbes Cloud 100". Forbes. Retrieved 29 October 2016.
  9. 1 2 3 Novellino, Teresa (April 15, 2016). "Squarespace gets into domain space, takes on "antiquated" GoDaddy and other rivals". New York Business Journal. Retrieved October 4, 2016.
  10. "Squarespace Website Builder Review". SuperbWebsiteBuilders.com. Retrieved 2016-01-27.
  11. "Top Website Builders Reviewed: WIX vs Squarespace vs WordPress vs Shopify vs Weebly". Websitebuilders.net. Retrieved 2 September 2016.
  12. Pofeldt, Elaine. "How a dorm blog snared $79 million in VC funding". CNBC. Retrieved 11 May 2014.
  13. Chapman, Lizette (April 15, 2014). "Squarespace Raises $40M as Website-Tools Battle Heats Up". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved October 4, 2016.
  14. "Index, Accel bet big on Squarespace". Reuters. 2010-07-14. Retrieved 2010-09-24.
  15. 1 2 "Squarespace Takes $40 Million in Growth Equity". BeatBeat.
  16. "Squarespace Raises $40M in Series B Funding from Global Growth Investor General Atlantic". General Atlantic.
  17. "50 Best Websites 2012". Time (magazine). 2012-09-18. Retrieved 2013-02-07.
  18. "Best Places to Work 2012". Crain's New York Business. 2012-12-02. Retrieved 2013-02-07.
  19. "America's Most Promising Companies". Forbes. 2013-02-06. Retrieved 2013-02-07.
  20. "Critics' Choice Award for Best Website Builder". CMS Critic.
  21. "Squarespace Wins Four Webby Awards". Squarespace Blog.
  22. "50 Best Small and Medium-Size Companies to Work For". Fortune. 2014-09-18. Retrieved 2014-09-18.
  23. "50 Best Small and Medium-Size Companies to Work For". Fortune. 2015-10-21. Retrieved 2015-12-29.
  24. "The 2016 Wealthfront Career-Launching Companies List". Crain's New York Business. 2015-10-06. Retrieved 2016-04-15.
  25. "Best Places to Work 2015". Crain's New York Business. 2015-12-04. Retrieved 2015-12-29.

Further reading

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/29/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.