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Hello and welcome to the advice line on how I built this lab.
I'm Guy Raz.
This is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges.
Each week, I'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest on the show, who will help me.
Try to help you.
And if you're building something and you need advice, give us a call and you just might be the next guest on the show.
Our number is 1-800-433-1298.
Leave us a one minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with.
All right, let's get to it.
Joining me this week is Anthony Casalena, the founder and CEO of Squarespace.
Anthony, welcome back to the show.
Pleasure to be here.
It's great to have you on.
You were first on the show back in 2019.
You told us, of course, about Squarespace's origin story and all the things that you learned growing Squarespace.
You founded it in 2003 as a 21-year-old kid, as a college student.
I remember some of the stories about racing up and down I-95 and physically changing the servers out and all this craziness.
But basically it started because you had a frustration.
There wasn't anything really to build websites.
That was easy and good and you basically built the software for yourself.
And then a friend saw it and said, I paid you $200 to use it, and that's kind of how it was born.
Yep, that's right.
It's an absolutely amazing story.
And of course we will put a link to – that original interview in the podcast notes in the show description.
So please check it out.
It's just an awesome story.
Since you were on, Anthony, you've taken the company public.
It then hit over a billion dollars in revenue.
And then last year, it was bought up by a private equity group.
Yeah, we took it private.
Yep.
Amazing.
So private again.
And all this time, you stayed on as CEO and chair.
And I
Just out of curiosity, by the way, how has it – I mean, you're a founder, right?
You built this thing.
You took it public.
Now it's private again.
But I guess you kind of have bosses, right?
I mean, I guess shareholders are your bosses.
But now you've got bosses again.
Does that make things more complicated?
Does it really not change things a whole lot for you?
No, I mean running a company.
You always have a boss, be it even if you owned 100 of it yourself, your customers would be your boss.
And so nothing has really changed for me or the company in a day-to-day.
I mean, we could have remained public.
We thought it was a little better to do the private move, but we were fine to do either one.
So no, my day-to-day is pretty much the same.
Tell me a little bit about how you think about expanding the business.
You are, just full disclosure, it doesn't matter because it's a great story.
You and I don't even know this, but you guys advertise on how I built this.
Yes.
And you know you offer.
It's not just.
You know you started out building websites, but now it's like your full package e-commerce site.
You offer tools for small businesses to basically run their business online.
Yeah, we offer a complete set of tools for entrepreneurs and small businesses and others to get online.
I mean what started with a publishing product centered around websites and blogs, that evolved into portfolios and more.
Now encompasses great e-commerce tools, not just for physical sellers but people selling services.
We have other companies under our umbrella, like Acuity, which helps people sell time.
It's a scheduling product.
We acquired the assets from Google Domains, and so we're one of the By brand, probably the third biggest domain registrar out there.
We're one of the biggest website builders, one of the biggest resellers of business email through Google Workspace.
And so we play in a lot of different lanes that help people get online.
And I think it's actually a funny thing, and maybe there'll be some AI questions at some point, but what we do is more relevant than ever, because this is how normal people participate in the web and SEO.
What we call AIO, which is optimizing for answer engines, is how people get found.
Still,
And so we continue to do very well.
And it's just kind of a pleasure to be servicing millions of entrepreneurs.
Yeah.
I mean in this era of very fast-changing era of technology around AI.
Right now more and more people are using chatbots to do search.
Right that they might have gone on Google before.
And now they're going on chat or perplexity or whatever.
Yeah.
How does that change what it means to have a website, right?
Like you're a business.
Your website is your storefront.
How do you stay relevant when that's how people find out about you more and more?
Well, that's one way people find out about you, 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.
They're crawling the web and using either old data or modern data or more relevant data to give you the answers they give you, and when they don't have the answer to a real-time question, they go to the web.
And so it's being used in both their index and it's also being used for real-time interactions.
And then most of the interactions with a small business being contacting them, submitting a contact form, booking an appointment, purchasing a product.
That's still happening with some kind of direct interaction with that customer and we facilitate that interaction, whether you start it on a search engine or an answer engine or a social network or anywhere else.
And so we're really happy to be positioned as we are in this era.
I know you've got AI tools already to help basically build AI out websites designs, and this is happening very, very fast, right.
I mean what may be available in a year from now.
Like you may not even be able to fully anticipate that right.
What does it mean for your business and how it sort of fits into that, into this sort of brave new world of AI tools.
Yeah, I mean, it's been a phenomenal tailwind for us.
I mean, we're not particularly worried about 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 using Squarespace.
But we have AI and what used to be called machine learning frankly enabled into every aspect of our product.
And, in fact, our Blueprint AI product, which is the primary way you would get started with Squarespace if you just click Get Started, was named one of Time's 100 Best Inventions of the Year just last week.
So we've got it everywhere.
From optimizing your site for SEO and AIO to helping you generate imagery that works for you.
You know we've got AI enabled and you know probably 15, 20 plus touch points in the product right now.
Wow, it's awesome.
It's an awesome story.
Again, I highly recommend you guys take a listen to Anthony's story and the Squarespace story because it is really really cool and crazy story.
Anthony, you ready to take on our first caller?
I sure am.
Let's do it.
All right, let's go.
Welcome to The Advice Line.
You're on with the founder of Squarespace, Anthony Casalena.
Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and a little bit about your business.
Hi.
Hi, Guy.
Hi, Anthony.
Hi.
My name is Bob Zukowski.
I'm calling from Newtown Connecticut, and I'm the founder and CEO of Custom Sleep Technology Inc.
CST is a technology company that combines artificial intelligence with our own proprietary software to design and build a mattress that is specific to each sleeper's unique body characteristics.
Wow.
Well, OK.
Thanks for calling in.
So you – so these are custom mattresses.
This is not off-the-shelf mattress that you just like add a pad or two.
Like somebody – what do you like –
It's like going to a tailor.
You measure somebody and then you take all that data and you build a mattress with that in mind, from the ground up.
Yes.
So on our website, we have a questionnaire.
We call it a body profile questionnaire.
And once that's complete, that gives us the information about the physical characteristics of the sleepers.
And from there AI mathematically designs the mattress and our software delivers those designs instantly to the potential customer, and then it's followed up with an email with a complete proposal.
Wow.
Okay.
So you enter, you input the information, your height, your weight and different things, and then you get a proposal for a mattress.
And how much roughly do the mattresses cost?
So queens are in the $3,800 range.
Kings are in the $4,500 range.
Got it.
And are they – I mean is the material any different from other – I mean is it latex?
Is it foam?
Is it – what's in there?
Well, we use exclusively Talalay latex because it comes in multiple densities.
We can utilize the different densities to support the shoulders and hips separately.
So our goal is really to take pressure off the.
The various pressure points align the spine and when you do that and you get the body in the right position, then the sleeper has the greatest opportunity of achieving high-quality REM and slow-wave sleep.
How did you get into this?
This is a very complicated business.
We've done Tempur-Pedic on the show.
We've done some other mattress brands like Casper, and this is not easy.
So were you in this business before?
Well, I used to work for the company that manufactures the latex.
And my job was to work with the major mattress brands to incorporate Talalay into their products.
And I came to believe that their number one priority was not how their customers slept, but that their mattress wouldn't fail in the field.
And then I started doing my own research pressure mapping my friends and family into, And I learned that weight distribution is completely different depending on your physical characteristics, your sleeping position, your height.
And I realized, using the eight different densities of latex, that I could build a mattress that is personal to the individual sleepers.
All right.
Quick question, and I want to bring Anthony in.
Can you make a mattress that works for two people?
Because I share a bed with my wife.
So And if we have different measurements, can you do that in one mattress?
Oh, absolutely.
That is one of the things that separates us from the rest of the industry.
Primarily is that your design is for you and your wife's design is for her.
Got it.
Okay.
And what's your question for us today?
Well, my question is we're not well-suited for the traditional big box retail channels.
So I'd like to get your thoughts on taking a different approach.
Should we consider partnerships or license agreements with wellness tech companies or fitness organizations, or even professional athletes, to grow consumer awareness for the brand?
Anthony, this is like one guy in Connecticut starting a mattress brand.
That's innovative and interesting and I just – I love it.
I'm cheering you on even before I know all the details.
All right, Anthony, I'm going to bring you in.
Okay.
Well, I'm on the website.
And I'm a website person, so I'm just going to go out and say the site looks a little dated.
But I think maybe the licensing, unless you have an interest in it yourself, in kind of getting out there branding this.
Not making flashy is the wrong word, but you got to make me like oh, wow.
Like this is, I don't know, like you got to kind of catch me with the branding or something.
Yeah, I agree.
I think I mean listen and, by the way, We're talking about – if it's Anthony buying a mattress here Bob, we're talking about the Swedish, that one that's like a 100000 mattress.
That's what he's buying.
That's what he's doing.
He's getting that like by the tiny little elves in some Nordic town making them by hand.
Yeah, but I'm going to say this though.
I am a little – thanks for pigeonholing me there.
But like I am a little –
I'm a little skeptical though, when the materials are like and it's horse hair and this and the horses are from here.
I'm like, why does that make a better mattress?
I'm kind of unaware of why that should be true.
So I am susceptible to what I would call like more of a scientific message than a like rich materials message.
So I think there's a world for you, for people there who don't want to necessarily pay more, because the mattress and I would consider myself part of this and I'm very into the branding, but like I don't need it to be like made of gold fibers.
I think that would probably be very bad actually, because that doesn't make a mattress better.
I don't think.
You tell me.
But if you knew, right?
Like, we know.
I know that Bob, who's been in this business for decades, knows how to do this.
Yeah.
And you're right.
Listen, Bob, again, this is tough.
It's tough.
I know you don't have time, but, you know, maybe you should go on Squarespace and redo your website.
Okay.
It's easy.
Maybe get the AI agent.
I said I was going to be blunt.
I think, I think we need a little web help here.
You need some web help.
I can appreciate that.
And you can do, because I need to go here and be like, you know what?
I am going to spend three grand on this thing.
I trust this guy because see, I can talk to you here and say that, but your website not, everyone's going to talk to you.
Your website's what's talking to people and and and how you and so you need to You know you need to basically make it so people can say yeah, I'll do that.
The other thing in terms of like licensing or working with.
You know some interesting brands.
I think that could be a cool idea, especially if you can somehow integrate some of the technology.
You know, there's obviously there's eight sleep that measures your sleep.
Could you put an eight sleep on top of this mattress?
Could it be designed?
Could you work with Oura rings, you know, or Whoop, which we've done on the show?
Right.
I think that's an interesting thing to explore because, look, you're a small brand.
You're looking to compete with Tempur-Pedic and Diala's mattress and all these things.
But you're offering something very, very different, very custom, very specific.
And it can be scaled.
We know it happens.
People scale these things.
And so it may make sense to try and reach out to some of these brands and say look –, this is who I am.
This is what I've been doing.
I know this business and I know it really well.
And I've got a really terrific killer product.
We just don't have the scale to get this out there.
And we need, you know, we want to work with a partner.
And maybe that's, maybe that's the angle for the licensing that some of these brands are going to say look, here's our off the shelf stuff.
It's not customized for you.
But if you want something custom and they'll mark it up maybe to three times what you're pricing it at.
You know, you could be the technology behind that, but you're under that brand umbrella.
You can kind of deliver the technology to people, help them out, without having to go from zero and build a brand.
You know, build a brand from zero.
Yeah.
And I've got information about you, Bob, stuff you've told me.
And I know that you can do thousands of configurations.
It sounds like it, you know, Different densities.
You mentioned this latex.
What was latex that you use again?
Talalay.
I don't know what that means.
I know that latex is a really good thing for mattresses unless you have a latex allergy.
But Talalay, what does that mean?
You need to somehow convey that on the – starting with the website, because that's going to explain the whole brand to people, right?
It's like personalized sleep system.
Well, Eight Sleep says that and –
Tempur-Pedic says that.
Other people say that.
But you're saying something different.
It's like we make a mattress for you specifically, and that's different.
That's a different value prop here.
Right.
And we can modify it over time.
So we build it to your existing body profile, and then we can change it over time.
Tell us that from the get-go.
Right, Anthony?
Yeah.
Anthony is going to be your personal customer service agent.
Just call him up.
He's going to walk you through the process.
I gain 100 pounds, I call you.
I lose 100 pounds, I call you.
We just keep adjusting.
That's right.
That's how we do it.
That's awesome.
All right.
The company is called Custom Sleep Technology.
Robert Zukowski, thanks so much for calling in.
Good luck.
Thank you.
Thank you both for your time.
Thank you.
Good luck.
Yeah.
So you're sleeping on horse hair now, Anthony, is that right?
No, no, no.
No, no.
I'm not susceptible to these.
I said the opposite.
I said, I said, I'm not sure those make better mattresses.
I think that there's certain places where the branding takes you that don't really translate into anything that's better for sleeping.
And so I'm kind of I'm allergic to that stuff a little bit.
All right, we're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with another caller and another round of advice.
Stay with us.
I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to The Advice Line right here on How I Built This Lab.
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Welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab.
I'm Guy Raz, and my guest today is Anthony Casalena.
He is the founder and CEO of Squarespace.
We are taking your calls.
So let's bring in our next caller.
Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a little bit about your business.
Hi, Guy.
Hi, Anthony.
I'm Stacey Bernstein, and I'm calling in from Los Angeles, California.
And I am co-founder of All Better Co and we are reimagining Mom's First Aid Kit with Better For You, Better For The Planet Daily Skin Health Essentials.
Awesome.
Thanks for calling in.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you.
So All Better Co you sell first aid kits so like Band-Aids and I don't know, like Bacitracin and stuff like that.
Yeah, that's the goal ultimately is for us to create these one-to-one products.
Like for right now.
We have our Don't Scratch That Pen, which is an award-winning, our proprietary formula, which is a replacement for hydrocortisone right.
So anti-itch, anti-inflammatory, the same way you'd use hydrocortisone.
We don't want you to do that.
We want you to use our product instead.
Nice.
And where are they being sold right now mainly?
So we're D2C Amazon and we're in about 100 plus retail locations across the country, including Air One, a few resorts.
And we're really kind of actually testing these channels and see where we live best.
Tell me how the idea came about.
Yeah, so I come from brand.
I have brand background in creating immersive experiences for families and I've always really spoken to families.
And during COVID, my co-founder called me one day.
My daughter suffered from major, major injuries. mosquito bite reactions.
And it got so bad.
The only thing that was working for her were prescribed steroids.
And that's just not intended for everyday use.
And my co-founder has kids that deal with eczema and sensitive skin as well.
So we were kind of like on the same page and we kind of joke that you know, we solve the world's problems in the parking lot, as moms do.
And we decided, when we couldn't find what we were looking for for our children, we would make it ourselves.
Tell me a little bit about how you guys are doing so far.
I mean, what are your – give me a sense of your sales.
Yeah.
So again, since we came out pretty strong out of the gates D2C and as a bootstrap company, just really being scrappy a lot of organic seeding, getting our product into as many people's hands as possible and really just gaining some brand equity.
And then when we kind of knew what that was like and we decided to try retail and so we went out.
Just the two of us, actually.
You're looking at our sales team right here.
And just started knocking on some doors through email.
And when we went into retail, we took a little bit of a hit on our margins, right?
Because once you're in retail, there's a little bit of a dip.
But so far, we're at about 200,000 lifetime sales.
Amazing.
And before I forget, tell us what your question is.
Sure, absolutely.
So, as I said, we're a bootstrap female-founded brand and we are bringing clean beauty standards to the first aid aisle.
It's not the sexiest category out there and most people don't even realize what they're using could be doing more harm than good.
Plus, we're up against legacy brands like Neosporin and Band-Aid.
So how do you get consumers to rethink something that's been in their cabinets forever, to buy it before they need it and to understand why our products?
All right.
Awesome.
I want to bring you in, Anthony.
All Better Co., first aid kits, reimagined.
What do you think?
I mean, questions, first of all, for Stacey or thoughts?
I mean, it sounds like you've got... a good amount of early traction, right?
I mean, you got 200K in lifetime sales.
And I guess the balance is between you know, do you lean more into retail or are the online DTC channels the thing to lean into?
Is that sort of it?
Or is there like a third place that might be promising?
Yeah.
I mean our three main channels right are DTC, which we imagine that we'll always maintain, because I think that um, really having connection with our consumer is important.
We're two moms where we are family-driven, and so that's really important.
But we see our primary channels as e-commerce like a Thrive Market or Amazon, and then retail mass market.
I mean, I think the ultimate price for us is a mass retailer like a Target, or we're definitely going down the natural path, grocer route.
It's just really expensive to be into retail.
A quick question.
Who are your...
Are your customers like you and your co-founder?
I mean, do you think of your customers as moms who are going to have these in their bags or their purse or whatever?
Or do you think more broadly?
I think that's a really great question.
And it's funny when people ask us who our demographic is, we say anyone with skin.
I would say, though, our primary target audience, we are definitely speaking to moms.
We feel like moms are the original influencer, right?
They're the gatekeepers to their communities.
And yes, we make all of our products thinking three steps ahead, as we believe moms do, right?
So everything we make is in a travel size.
We think about our dispensers and how we're like.
For example, our pen or our cream is not in a tube.
It's actually in a lip gloss dispenser.
And so the idea behind it is that there's not as much waste.
A child or any person could put it on with one hand and it's really – you can pack it on the go.
And then I feel like there's a halo effect.
Once you get to mom, right, you're getting to her friends.
She just has this social currency and so –
Um, but we have a lot of like Gen Zers and young people that love our products.
Again because of that travel nature that we're thinking about everything with ease and it's better right.
We're committed to making everything, um, chemical free and as clean as possible.
Got it.
Building on the, um, that travel nature idea.
One of the places that I have recently discovered a couple of brands that I hotel partnerships.
They had put certain brands in the rooms.
And I actually became like big buyers of certain brands via that, where it's kind of a free sample but kind of selected.
And if I have an affinity towards the hotel chain you know, thinking about like hey, you know, let's try that out.
Or even like I mean, hopefully you're not hurt at the hotel, but like I don't know, take it right.
And then that way you kind of are giving it out in a non-cheesy free sample sort of way.
Um, and it's related to travel.
I don't know.
Is that, would that ever come up?
Yeah, absolutely.
I think like um, those big brands, like especially the family brands, like a Hilton or a Hyatt we're currently in about six different four seasons properties, which is a little bit, I think, which I think is actually a little bit more premium than we want our brand to be.
Um, we're in some auto camps, which is a really really cool like um uh, mobile park resort type of place.
Uh, Absolutely.
I think you kind of nailed it, right?
Like we have products that people might not pack, but then they need them in an urgent situation.
And I guess the question is how do we?
We continue to seed product, put it as many places as we can, but it's that idea, right?
You might not buy the hydrocortisone or something to relieve that itch until you need it, but or our band-aids bandages.
Most people don't know that a huge percentage of current band-aids or bandages on the market are full of forever chemicals PFAs.
They are sitting in our landfills.
So it's like these types of things that people probably don't even like think about on a daily basis.
And as a society, we think so much what we're putting into our bodies, but we're not thinking about what we're putting on our body, our skin, which is our body's largest organ.
I think that, that, All of that is really compelling.
And I think when people hear about those things, it does inform their choices.
But I keep thinking back to so many brands we've done on the show.
And what it comes down to is convenience and price and effectiveness, right?
Efficacy.
And so you clearly have all three of those, right?
You have a product that works, that people like.
And I think really you've got beautiful branding.
It's a great name.
Thank you.
But educating people about that's going to take a lot of time.
To me, it seems like this omni-channel strategy is really critical.
The direct-to-consumer is harder, Anthony.
You could talk about that, right?
Even with Squarespace, even with all of the tools that are available to people, there's just more noise out there.
And I feel like having an omni-channel strategy where you can get this in as many places as possible especially –.
Airport shops where people are traveling quickly.
If I go to the airport, I forgot shaving cream.
I'm going to spend $10 on whatever I can buy at that store, you know?
And I feel like here in San Francisco, there's some great stores at the airports, gift shops.
I feel like that's really – it's going to sell itself simply because it looks good.
It's got a great name.
And then maybe on the product.
Over time you can think about simple ways to explain that story, you know.
Yeah plant-based, chemical-free.
Better for you.
Whatever you want to say, that you can quickly sort of transmit to consumers on the label, because that's really where people are going to find out about it.
Yes, they'll find out about it from influencers and from other moms.
It's just going to take more time.
So I feel like you really want to focus on getting it into as many places as possible where people make convenience purchases.
Yeah.
That's great.
Thank you.
I guess that was maybe my question too.
It's like, where is that purchase?
Is it a convenience purchase?
Is it an impulse purchase?
Is it, when did people have this kind of purchase on their minds?
Like, is it part of another cycle?
Yeah.
I mean it's so interesting because the truth is, because of our branding, in a really weird way we can live so many places, right?
We can live at the cash wrap as an impulse purchase.
I love, I love the idea of airports.
That would be like huge for us.
No doubt.
I think that's, Really great observation.
Thank you.
And maybe that's it.
Maybe it's like just getting more people to find out about us when they need us.
And then when they go home, they're reminded hey, I need to replace those Band-Aids with what I found from All Better Co when I was traveling.
And maybe that's the switch that like needs to be flipped right there.
Yeah.
And I think your branding lends itself.
I'm taking a look at the website now.
I think it looks great.
And it lends itself to not being like I don't know how to put this like a sterile medical purchase.
Like going and buying, like Neosporin or something, feels different than buying what you have because of how you're positioning it.
And I'm sort of wondering what that enables you to do that like Neosporin can't do.
You know what I mean?
Because that's like Yeah, it's a perfect example, because if you speak to any dermatologist, they're actually going to tell you that Neosporin is the one thing they don't want you to use.
It actually causes more harm than good.
And And there are more people allergic to it than we think about.
So that's a perfect example right there.
I just think that's an uphill battle for now.
If you had $20 million to spread that message, that's one thing.
You've got a great brand.
You've got great branding.
You've got to focus on just as a good product.
It's like method soap.
They didn't say, hey, it's organic and plant-based.
It was.
It's a beautiful bottle and it works well.
I really feel like that's what you want to lean into.
If you want to send that message –
I don't see it on your packaging.
I see better bandage.
I see a bamboo bandage.
I see biodegradable, latex-free.
I don't see that message that you're.
But then you go on the website and it says you know, sensitive to skin.
And so I feel like you can use the packaging a bit better to just add some of that stuff, because better bandage isn't enough.
It's tell me why.
Better for sensitive skin.
Amazing.
Okay.
This is... this is better than Neosporin.
Obviously, you don't want to get in a lawsuit with them, but you know better than the, you know better for you than the leading.
You know anti, whatever bacterial brand or whatever it is.
You know something like that.
We don't use chemicals or something like that.
But I do think that you want to just have a couple of, I think RX bar nailed it.
It's like four eggs, you know, six almonds.
It was all the macros.
You see that on like pints of ice cream, this idea of just simple macros.
Take what you see in food with 7 grams of protein, 10 grams of fiber or whatever, and apply that to what you're doing.
And I'm going to echo what you're saying.
I'm on the side looking at the products.
I don't get the – I wouldn't have known a lot of what you're saying there about like alternative products and what the negatives might be.
Like I don't get the education part from a glance at this.
And I might have appreciated that because I've actually never even heard anyone say that.
So, you know –
Just look at food.
I'm holding, I don't know, this is a brand of bars here, Keto Bar.
It says 17 fat, 2 grams of net carbs, 12 protein.
This is a thing that food is doing really well.
And I think simple messages like that could work.
We got to run.
Thank you for calling in, Stacey.
The brand is called All Better Co.
Good luck.
We're cheering you on.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you so much.
Congrats.
All right, we're going to take another quick break, but we'll be right back with another caller.
Stay with us.
I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to The Advice Line right here on How I Built This Lab.
Welcome back to The Device Line on How I Built This Lab.
I'm Guy Raz, and I'm with Anthony Casalena.
He is the founder of Squarespace, and we are taking your calls.
And, Anthony, are you ready for our next call?
I sure am.
All right.
Let's bring in our next caller.
Hello.
You're welcome to The Device Line.
Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a little bit about your business.
Hello.
Hi, Guy and Anthony.
My name is Mahek Mohan.
I'm calling in from New York City.
I am the co-founder and CEO of Kahani, which is a personalized recovery companion for eating disorders.
Awesome.
Welcome to the show.
Thanks for calling in.
So this is an app that helps people in recovery from eating disorders.
And tell me what it does.
Yeah, tell me a little bit about it.
Yes.
So my co-founder and I actually built this when I was at Stanford Business School.
And we kind of partnered with some of the leading clinical psychologists to think about how we could make recovery more accessible meaning, how do we apply evidence-based therapies in a bite-sized format that's then able to be personalized to an individual's unique goals patterns, triggers and behaviors?
And that way you can have a 24-7 companion, because recovery isn't just happening at 2 pm on a Wednesday.
Awesome.
Wait, we met before, haven't we?
We did, yes.
We did, yeah, through Adam Grant.
Okay, I remember you now.
So, okay, so this is cool.
So you've got this thing and it helps people get through eating disorders.
And tell me a little bit about where it is now.
I mean, because you guys recently launched this, right, in the last year.
Yeah.
So I think right after we talked, we closed our pre-seed round, which happened at the end of June.
And so now we're chugging along, building the second version of the app.
And this is kind of a re-imagined landscape where we're sort of sitting in between this happy medium of being gamified and engaging as we know lots of consumer apps must be but also not too clinical focused.
And so we want to create this beautiful blend of skill-based progression so that you actually feel like you're recovering.
And it's not too much on the gamification side, like there are a lot of apps like that these days.
So we're about to launch and that actually leads into my question around the App Store, which is our biggest milestone.
We're about to come out of private beta in the next couple of months.
We're about to launch on the App Store.
And so I was really curious to learn more about most unique go-to-market strategies to be able to create the most effective launch specifically for our target demographic.
And just briefly, this will be a subscription model?
You will pay monthly to use this?
Correct.
Got it.
Okay.
So now you are about to launch the App Store.
You're looking to figure out how do you get people to be aware of it, right?
There's millions of apps out there, right?
How do you get people to adopt this?
Anthony, I want to bring you in here because we have lots of questions and also some thoughts on how to do that.
So the challenge is obviously that there's millions of apps out there, and then there's also a fatigue-related challenge.
I think that I don't have the stats off the top of my head, but I feel it personally myself.
It's like it's kind of a lot for me to install a new app.
Obviously, you know, something as targeted as yours, I think there'd be maybe less resistance to.
But I guess I would say this.
Imagine it wasn't even an app.
Where do I find it?
And does it need to be an app?
Could it be a website that then leads you to an app once you use it?
Yeah.
Imagine it wasn't an app, because I'm actually not somebody who's ever been successful or really launched a lot of things in the app store that weren't related to another thing.
How do people find it?
How do they find it?
So this is a really interesting question because, to your point, like many things, recovery is not linear.
Right.
And so motivation can wax and wane.
So we started to think about less so of the demographics of the type of person who might use this and more so of the psychographics of the type of individual who's motivated and in that place in recovery in which they're looking for extra support.
This is likely someone who's been through lots of different treatment centers.
They've been through higher levels of care, come back down, cycled through and now they're really focused on recovery, because they have probably a bigger goal, something of a life change that's occurring.
So there are two parts of this dynamic that we've thought about in terms of where people might find the app.
One being when you might come off of a treatment center or a higher acuity level of care.
And two, maybe when you're in an outpatient setting.
So you have a current therapist or a dietician, But that's not good enough because you're spending a lot of time on TikTok.
In between sessions, you're spending a lot of time in your day-to-day.
Maybe your work is really stressful.
And so there's a real opportunity to target.
Our users have actually probably found us through lots of community engagement.
So you're also in the place in recovery in which you are not in denial.
So that's a big piece because maybe they're in a community group like Facebook or in a TikTok chat.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Meg, I'm curious, and I think I asked you this when we first met, not on the show.
I remember we talked and I said, you know, I don't know about this.
I'm a 50-year-old man.
And I think you had mentioned to me that many of your potential customers are women and women in a certain age, demographic.
Is that fair to say?
Yeah.
So this was actually one of the most interesting things we learned in our first pilot, which is what motivated us to keep building this out is –.
Initially you think of a gamified sort of fun cutesy, engaging app and you think maybe teen women would be the most likely to use something like this.
And sure, we do have lots of teen women using this app.
But what we learned is that, based on the psychographics and the type of engagement and retention data we were seeing, it was actually women in their 30s and 40s who ended up being the most engaged because they weren't in denial of an eating disorder.
They were looking for recovery.
They tried a lot of things before, and they were probably in a moment of life change.
Maybe it's a job change.
Finishing a graduate degree and this is becoming now not recovering is a big hindrance to achieving those goals.
I know you've got, you just went through, you tested it out with people and you had a test group.
Do you have more, roughly 50, 60, 100 users total?
Yes, we have about 100 users who've tested this out.
We saw a 23 symptom decrease in four weeks with super users who used it for more than seven minutes a day.
Some people seeing 60 to 70 decreases in symptoms in that time span.
They have to be your early ambassadors.
That is where you're going to build this out.
It's going to be slow but then fast.
Which is they?
– I mean, I wonder if you can build a closed community on Slack or Circle or one of these places, because they –.
These are your ambassadors.
I have a friend who has sciatica, okay?
And I said, hey, he's going to do all kinds of expensive physical therapy.
I said, great, do that.
He's thinking about surgery.
I said, try this out too.
There's a guy who does all these amazing videos on stretching.
I've been using it for three years.
I tell people about this all the time because it has transformed my flexibility.
And that's where you are going to.
Really, if you're saying hey 23, you know better outcomes, those are your ambassadors.
Can you incentivize them?
Sorry, Anthony, go ahead.
So my question is sort of building on the vein you're in.
So, without knowing the app, was the method or the things developed in the app based on a known protocol that a doctor's developed or something?
Or is it something you guys have discovered and you are the authority that you know is the person you know.
Talking through this and I guess where that would go is you know if it's based on some known branded method.
Okay, obviously that's your angle.
If it's not a known branded method, that maybe makes you the storyteller for this method.
And, you know, could you be that personality that people are going to look to, to you know, know that story.
Yeah, so that is a really interesting argument.
Element of what we're doing is we are leveraging studies that have been done in hundreds of clinical trials where there's evidence of CBT.
So cognitive behavioral therapy, DBT and you know some other forms of evidence-based therapies that have all worked in different veins for treatment for eating disorders.
And so we've basically curated a all of these exercises and broken them down into deeply personal applications into someone's current lived experience.
So what they've got in their current day-to-day routine?
How can we apply these therapies?
So it's actually relevant, like they would do homework-wise in between therapy sessions.
So we're not creating anything new, but we are creating a new implementation, let's say, of it.
Really, I would imagine one of the ways to get this into people's brain space is to target targeted ads.
I mean, there are people who are going to be searching for eating disorder help.
And so there are ways to target those people.
But we know that customer acquisition costs have just skyrocketed over the last five years.
And you don't have a $30, $50 million ad war chest.
But you do want to experiment with some of that.
But I also wonder whether some of your users might be willing to go public and allow you to create some social media content, with them telling their stories.
Yeah, we actually had one person from our pilot, our first pilot post, a really long TikTok video on how she was able to use Kahani and some of the impact it had on her, and that we were looking for more people to help us build out the second version.
And because of the TikTok algorithm, we actually ended up getting maybe five or six organic inbounds.
And I didn't even know this had been posted because I didn't have a TikTok at that time.
And so it was really interesting getting emails saying, I found you on TikTok.
I'm like, no way, I don't have a TikTok.
So it was really interesting to see that.
And so that is, I think, the hope.
It is.
That is, I think, a bit of a demographic split on.
Maybe our younger participants would be more willing to do that.
I haven't seen excitement from our older participants to do that, and they are our more highly engaged ones.
So hopefully that might change, but that's certainly something we're trying to play around with a little bit more.
I mean some combination of those vulnerable stories that can relate to people authentically and maybe spread virally is, I think, great.
And I like the numbers you used.
You were like, we got five.
That's amazing.
So you can get 10, then you can get 20, right?
You didn't say like, how do we get a thousand?
Like you know, I'm a big fan of that sort of snowball spreading and you encouraging the mechanisms of why it has spread.
But again, the vulnerable stories are, I think, what everyone wants to kind of hear and search for.
For sure.
The app is called Kahani.
Mehak Mohan, thanks so much.
Good luck and churn you on.
Let us know how it goes.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah, I think that it's like – I mean, again, you know this.
The best form of marketing is word of mouth, because if somebody you know is using it, you trust them and they're like this is really good.
I'm not going to recommend something to somebody, especially if it's expensive or a commitment of cash up front that – unless I really think it's great.
And also the ability to talk about how it actually authentically helped you is going to be better than any – you know paid marketing you could ever do.
Yeah, it's interesting because I you know admittedly I don't know what the total addressable market is here, because I don't.
You know, I'm lucky I don't have one right.
Or I don't know anybody who does.
Maybe I do.
I don't know.
But it's an interesting idea.
And I, you know, and listen, she's smart.
She's a smart entrepreneur.
And so clearly there's something to this.
Anthony, before I let you go, I want to ask you one question, which is now that you have.
You know you've gone public.
Now you're private again.
You're running a hugely successful business.
Started as a little website software.
Now it's a full package e-commerce business.
If you could go back to you.
You know this programming nerd and you know 22-year-old kid and you're like hey Anthony, I'm coming back from the future and I'm telling you this was going to happen.
But just so you know, I want to give you some advice now.
Because this is important for you to know.
What do you think you would be able to say now that you know all this stuff?
I think the thing... Everyone says, you know, follow your gut, right?
And sometimes you do, and sometimes that takes a while.
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 right.
Like, why does it always error in one direction?
And what does that mean?
And I think I try and watch out for that stuff now and realize that sometimes I never move too quick on certain things and just kind of keep that in mind.
And it's like, you could have just gone faster.
You knew what to do.
I love it.
All right, it's great advice.
That's Anthony Casalena, founder and CEO of Squarespace.
Anthony, thanks so much for coming back on the show.
Yeah, real pleasure.
Thanks for having me.
I'm honored.
So fun.
And, by the way, if you guys haven't heard Anthony's original How I Built This episode, you've got to go back check it out.
We'll put a link to it in the show notes, the podcast description.
And here is one of my favorite moments from that interview.
Somewhere along the way, I get like a call on my cell phone from a customer.
A guy's like, hey, is Squarespace okay?
So I call the data center.
I'm like, hey, can you reboot this server?
And it doesn't come back.
And it wasn't coming back wow.
And I was like I gotta go to New York right now and I just drive to New York and I'm like having a panic attack the whole way up because I'm like it's screwed, I lost all the data, it's all gone.
That little experiment's over.
Thanks so much for listening to the show this week.
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This episode was produced by Sam Paulson with music composed by Ramteen Arablui.
It was edited by Andrea Bruce, and our audio engineer was James Willits.
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I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to The Advice Line on How I Built This Lab.
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