Anthony Casalena | $1B+
Get in touch with Anthony Casalena | Anthony Casalena is the founder, CEO, and driving force behind Squarespace—a web‑building pioneer he launched from his University of Maryland dorm room in 2003. Over two decades, he transformed the platform into a billion‑dollar SaaS powerhouse used by millions, navigating a public listing in 2021 and steering the company again through a $6.6 billion take‑private deal in 2024. His disciplined, design‑centric leadership continues to define the future of web entrepreneurship.
Anthony Casalena founded website building startup Squarespace in his University of Maryland dorm room in 2003.
Casalena founded Squarespace with a $30,000 loan from his parents.
Squarespace sells monthly or annual plans that range from a simple domain name and website to more advanced options for e-commerce.
He took Squarespace public in 2021, then took it private in October 2024 alongside UK private equity firm Permira.
Casalena owns more than 20% of Squarespace and remains CEO.
Anthony Casalena is the Founder and CEO of Squarespace, a service-based content management system, integrated website builder, blogging platform, hosting service, commerce platform, and domain name registrar. He started the company from his dorm room in 2003 at the University of Maryland, where he was also an active member of the Hinman CEOs Program. During his company’s early years, Anthony acted as the sole engineer, designer, and support representative for the entire Squarespace platform. In addition to running the company and setting overall product strategy, he remains actively involved in many departments of the company that he had previously run himself.
Squarespace, Inc. is an American website building and hosting company based in New York City.[2] It provides software as a service for website building and hosting, and allows users to use pre-built website templates and drag-and-drop elements to create and modify webpages.
Squarespace, Inc.
Headquarters in Manhattan
Type of business Private
Type of site SaaS-based hosting platform
Traded as NYSE: SQSP
Headquarters 225 Varick Street
New York City, New York,
United States
Area served Worldwide
Owner Permira
Founder(s) Anthony Casalena
CEO Anthony Casalena
Industry Internet
Products Website builder and hosting service
Revenue US $1.01 billion (2023)[1]
Employees 1,749 (2023)[1]
URL squarespace.com
Registration Required; subscription needed for certain features.
Launched January 2004; 21 years ago
In 2003, Anthony Casalena founded Squarespace as a blog hosting service while attending the University of Maryland, College Park. He was its only employee until 2006 when it reached $1 million in revenue. The company grew from 30 employees in 2010 to 550 by 2015. By 2014, it raised a total of $78.5 million in venture capital; added e-commerce tools, domain name services, and analytics; and replaced its coding backend with drag-and-drop features. It began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on May 19, 2021,[3] and was taken private by Permira in October 2024. According to W3Techs, Squarespace is used by 1.9% of the top 10 million websites.[4]
Contents
History
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Casalena began developing Squarespace for his personal use while attending the University of Maryland.[5][6] He started sharing it with friends and family members[5] and participated in a "business incubator" program at the university.[6] In January 2004, he launched Squarespace as do it yourself/drag-and-drop website builder for the public,[6][7] with a $30,000 seed fund from his father,[8] a small grant from the university,[9] and 300 beta testers who paid a discounted rate.[6][10][11][12] At that time, Casalena was the company's sole developer and employee, and worked out of his dorm room.[6][11]
By the time Casalena graduated in 2007, Squarespace was making annual revenues of $1 million.[7] He moved to New York City, began hiring, and had 30 employees by 2010.[7][12] That year, Squarespace received $38.5 million in its first round of venture capital funding led by Index Ventures and Accel Partners,[13] enabling it to hire more staff, continue to develop its software,[14] and double its marketing budget.[5] From 2009 to 2012, it grew an average of 266% in yearly revenue.[15] In April 2014, it received another $40 million in funding.[16][17] By 2015, it had reached $100 million in revenue and 550 employees.[7]
Squarespace purchased Super Bowl advertising spots in 2014,[18][5] 2015,[19] 2016,[20] 2017[21] and 2018.[22] Its 2017 ad won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Commercial.[21] In 2017, it signed a sponsorship deal with the New York Knicks to add the Squarespace logo to their uniforms.[23]
After the Unite the Right rally in 2017, Squarespace received a petition with 58,000 signatures and removed a group of websites for violating its terms of service against "bigotry or hatred" towards demographic groups.[24][25] In 2017, it raised an additional $200 million in funding, boosting its value to $1.7 billion.[26] This funding was earmarked for reacquiring interests from investors.[26]
In 2018, Squarespace partnered with the Madison Square Garden Company to launch the "Make It Awards", which awarded $30,000 to entrepreneurs (4 winners, totaling $120,000).[27]
Squarespace acquired appointment scheduling company Acuity Scheduling in April 2019.[28] In October 2019, Squarespace acquired Unfold, an app founded by Alfonso Cobo that allows users to editorialize their social media content.[29] In April 2021, the company bought hospitality industry management platform Tock for more than $400 million.[30]
In early 2021, the company filed paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to go public through direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "SQSP".[31][32][33] In March 2021, Squarespace raised $300 million in a round of funding led by Dragoneer, Tiger Global, D1 Capital Partners and Fidelity Management & Research Company with participation from existing investors. This funding round valued the company at $10 billion.[34]
Squarespace agreed to be acquired for $6.9 billion and taken private by British private equity firm Permira in May 2024.[35] Permira increased its offer to $7.2 billion after the proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services recommended that Squarespace shareholders reject the original offer, which undervalued the company. The acquisition was finalized in October 2024.[36]
Corporate affairs
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Leadership
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Squarespace is managed by CEO and Founder Anthony Casalena. Other key executives are:[37]
Courtenay O'Connor, General Counsel
David Lee, Chief Creative Officer
John Colton, Chief Technology Officer
Kinjil Mathur, Chief Marketing Officer
Nathan Gooden, Chief Financial Officer
Jarlath Doherty, Chief People Officer
Paul Gubbay, Chief Product Officer
Raphael Fontes, Senior Vice President, Customer Operations
Roberta Meo, Vice President, Channels and Services
Dan Chandre, Vice President, Head of Acuity Scheduling & Squarespace Payments
Matthew Tucker, Senior Vice President, Head of Tock
Product / business model
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As of November 2022, Squarespace had more than four million subscriptions.[33] Its users employ pre-built website templates, and a variety of drag and drop widgets to add elements such as text and images.[14] Its developers also create custom templates that are sold to users.[14] On-screen instructions walk users through things like search engine optimization and setting up e-commerce.[7]
Squarespace was initially built for creating and hosting blogs.[10] E-commerce features, such as integration with Stripe for accepting credit card payments, was added in 2013.[38] In 2014, more commerce features were added; a mobile version of the service was released; a separate facility was added for developers writing custom templates and features;[39] and a logo-creation app was introduced in partnership with icon designer Noun Project.[40]
In 2011, Squarespace was upgraded to version 6, with new templates, a grid-based user interface, and other enhancements.[14] Version 7, which went live in 2014, replaced its coding backend with a drag and drop interface,[41][42] and added integration with Google Workspace (formerly G Suite and Google Apps for Work) and Getty Images.[17] In 2016, Squarespace started selling domains, putting it in more direct competition with GoDaddy;[43] and added an analytics dashboard[44] and PayPal integration.[45]
On June 15, 2023, Squarespace concluded an agreement to purchase the Google Domains business, including approximately 10 million registered domain names.[46][47]
In 2025, Squarespace released AI SEO features [48] and expanded its Extension Marketplace to include SEO tools like SEOSpace [49] and TinyIMG,[50] putting it in more direct competition with WordPress and Shopify, which have the popular Yoast SEO tool.
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