Yo, check this out—Anthony Casalena went from a regular UMD student in 2003 with no special skills or cash, to running Squarespace, a $200 million powerhouse. 🚀
Here’s the lowdown:
April 2003: Anthony had zero tech skills and was just vibing at college. But he knew he wanted to make the web his playground. No business plans, just solving his own problems.
January 2004: Squarespace was born! He borrowed $30k from his pops to grab some server hardware and get the party started. 💻
2004 – 2007: Anthony ran the whole show solo—coding, customer chats, and marketing. He wasn’t trying to battle it out with Drupal or WordPress. Instead, he went all-in on making stuff look slick. By the time he graduated, Squarespace was pulling in over a million a year. 💸 He then moved to NYC and expanded his crew to thirty.
2008 – 2010: He and his team rebuilt Squarespace to handle major growth. In July 2010, they scored $38.5 million from Accel Partners and Index Ventures. 💰
April 2014: General Atlantic dropped another $40 million into the mix. Then in November 2014, Squarespace snapped up Brace.io.
2015: The company’s revenue was over $100 million, and they had 550 employees. Fast forward to 2016, and Anthony’s brainchild was raking in more than $200 million. 💥
Talk about turning a dorm-room idea into a mega success story! 🌟
Source: www.entrepreneur.com