From Squarespace Forums to a Niche SaaS Business

Omer (00:10.240)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host, Omer Khan, and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights to help you build, launch and grow your SaaS business.
In this episode, I talked to Ward Sandler and Ryan Bennett, the co founders of MemberSpace, a SaaS product that lets you easily add membership functionality to your existing website.
In 2010, Ryan and Ward were working in enterprise sales for a tax and accounting startup.
They didn't enjoy their jobs and often talked about starting their own software company.
But they could never find a great business idea and neither of them knew how to code.
So one day they bought a book about HTML and decided to teach themselves how to code.
A year later, they got their first paid gig building a website for Ward's uncle, who was an attorney.
Over the next few years, they slowly grew their consulting business and eventually focused on building Squarespace websites for clients.
One day, while looking through a Squarespace forum, they noticed that a lot of people were asking how they could password protect pages on their website.
So Ryan and Ward built a simple tool.
It didn't do much, but it solved that one problem and people loved it.
So they kept listening to their users and kept making the tool better.
About five months after releasing their tool, they had their first paying customer.
It had taken six years, but they finally had a software business and their first customer.
In this interview, we talk about how they launch their SaaS product, how they use customer support as a way to differentiate themselves, and how they've bootstrapped a multiple six figure and profitable business.
It's a great story that I think you're going to enjoy, especially if you're in the early stages of building and growing your SaaS business.
Ryan Ward, welcome to the show.

Guest (02:10.220)
Hi.
Hey, Omer.

Omer (02:11.700)
So I always like to start by asking my guests if they have a favorite quote, something that inspires or motivates them or gets them out of bed to work on their business every day.
So what do you guys have?
Is there something that you can share with us?

Guest (02:24.940)
Sure.
So one of my favorite quotes is the mountains are calling and I must go.
And it's by John Muir.
He helped start Yosemite national park in like the 1890s.
So I like the mountains and they appeal to me.
So it's a good quote.
Yeah.
And mine, I don't really have a quote.
I'm more just kind of focused on kind of the core vision for our business, which is really helping people who aren't super technical.
To create membership businesses like.
To me that's something that I get excited about and whenever people give us good feedback about the software helping them, that really makes me feel good.

Omer (03:01.630)
Love it.
So for people who aren't familiar with member space, can you just tell us a little bit more about what does the product do, who's it for and what's the big problem that you're helping to solve?

Guest (03:14.580)
Yeah.
So basically it's an add on to any existing website that lets you add in membership functionality so that people can come to your website, sign up, pay you, log in, manage their account and view member only content on your site, all without ever leaving your website.
Who it's for.
We really try to target non technical folks and try to help them with support as best we can.
And the idea is that a lot of folks don't want to use external services like Teachable for example, where they have to leave where their customers have to leave and then go to view the member content.
A lot of people want to keep the branding, the content, everything on their website when their members are getting to it.
And that's what we're for.

Omer (03:56.180)
Okay, cool.
So what was your background before you guys kind of launched a business together?
Because, you know, we kind of chatted briefly about this earlier and you know, I was quite surprised by what you guys were doing and kind of where you are today.
So just kind of for the audience, kind of fill us in.
Like where does the story start, like before you guys decide to launch a business together?

Guest (04:26.630)
Sure.
So Ward and I, we actually met in college, so we were friends in school and we actually both followed similar tracks.
We were in the same social groups in college and then had the same degree.
So we took a lot of classes together.
And then after college we worked for a tax and accounting startup that sold tax provision software that corporations used to help them file their 10ks.
And a few years into that we got acquired by a Fortune 500 company and then we're eventually doing enterprise tax and accounting software sales.

Omer (05:04.250)
So both of you were sales guys?

Guest (05:06.250)
Yep, yep.

Omer (05:07.850)
And how long were you doing that?

Guest (05:09.530)
I was doing that for about four years.
Yeah, same.

Omer (05:13.690)
So what inspired you guys to start a business?
Because you didn't come up with the idea for member space right away.
That happened some years later.
But you guys still decided at some point you kind of had had enough of what you were doing and you wanted to go out on your own.
So how did that come about?

Guest (05:35.160)
Oh, Ward, you want to give your motivation for leaving the corporate world?
Sure.
You know we were doing, we're doing fine.
The corporate world from a money standpoint, we were making pretty good money.
But it was a good lesson for actually both of us to learn that money wasn't really motivating us.
And so we kind of kept coming up with different ideas for businesses that we could maybe start on the side.
And every time Ryan and I would brainstorm that, we would always kind of come to the same conclusion that, well, it's going to involve something with software probably, and neither of us know how to code, so I guess we're going to have to hire somebody.
And then that just didn't really sit well with us.
The idea of like, man, if I want to change the button color to green, I need to call somebody to go do that.
That sounds crazy.
I want to be able to have control over that.
And that is what spurred us to start learning about coding and how to do it.

Omer (06:22.540)
So you started learning to code while you were still working at the company and doing sales?

Guest (06:27.820)
Yeah, Ryan first we bought a really basic book.
It's called Head First HTML and css and basically it just teaches you the fundamentals of HTML and css.
And we both started there and both really liked it and really was like, wow, this is kind of magic.
You can just type something in and it changes the color on the screen.
And that was kind of our introduction, got us both kind of jazzed about programming.
And then Ryan went more in the back end logic side of programming than I went more towards the front end and design, look and feel, UX type stuff.
I think I was about 25 at the time and yeah, just started picking up books on programming like PHP and Python, eventually Ruby and just really liked it and yeah, dove in.

Omer (07:13.220)
So I'm curious, did you guys have like some project that you were trying to build or was it just not really sure what we're going to build right now.
But we want to start learning these skills because they'll come useful at some point.

Guest (07:30.900)
We didn't have like a specific project at first.
At first we were just learning for learning's sake because we wanted to be empowered to be able to do this kind of thing on our own and not have to rely on somebody.
Pretty shortly after that, we were trying to get some actual revenue from consulting because we both were like, all right, this is cool, but we need to make money if we want to do this if we're going to quit our jobs and focus on this kind of stuff full time.
Our first client was actually my Uncle Larry, who was a Lawyer in Florida.
So we started working on his website, and that's kind of.
We got to put our new skills, if you call them that, to use.

Omer (08:07.370)
So how long were you kind of learning these skills before you got the gig with Uncle Larry, Ryan?

Guest (08:14.130)
How long do you think it was?
I'm trying to remember.
I mean, we started probably learning in the spring of 2010, and I think we got Uncle Larry as our first client about a year later.
So, yeah, we'd just been learning on the side for about a year.
Yeah, I think it was the best $600 I ever made because I just really like doing the work.
And yeah, it was cool to, like, do something on our own.

Omer (08:39.180)
So a year before that, neither of you guys had done any coding or, you know, worked in that kind of area.
You'd literally come from sort of square one, bought some books, started learning, and then it took you a year to get your first paying gig ever.

Guest (09:04.040)
Yeah.

Omer (09:04.600)
That's so cool.
Okay, and then so at some point, Ryan, you decided to.
Because this was all happening.
Like, when you were still working, you had a full time job.
Right.
But at some point, Ryan, you decided that you were going to take the leap and go and start working on this full time.
When did that happen?

Guest (09:25.570)
Yeah, so we started to get just a few more small projects, and I saw some.
Saw some potential.
I, you know, maybe I was a little naive.
I was like, all right, I know how to.
I had to, like, program Python.
Like, I can do this.
That was about 2011.
August of 2011.
Yep.

Omer (09:42.530)
Okay.
And then was there kind of a plan, like, you guys were like, we're going to run this company together, and Ryan's going to go out and sort of be the first, and then ward, you kind of gonna follow, like, what was sort of the game plan that you guys had talked about?

Guest (09:57.560)
I mean, to be honest with you, I kind of just had enough of the corporate world and I just, you know, I had some money saved up, so I was like, I'm just gonna give this a shot, and even if it's not like a full time gig right away, I'll at least be learning and, you know, basically paying myself to learn now.
People, like, go to coach schools and stuff.
This was kind of before that was really a movement in the United States.
Yeah.
I think Ryan was also just emotionally just a little more drained than I was with the work.
He was a lot more stressed out at the time.
I was stressed, but I could kind of.
I don't know, I guess I was dealing with it.
A little better, if you will.
And so I was able to kind of hold on a little longer.
Plus I also had a couple big deals in the pipeline that I wanted to close right before I quit, which I did.
And I actually quit a day after my largest deal closed.

Omer (10:45.960)
And that was about six months after Ryan had left.

Guest (10:50.840)
Yeah, it was actually March 20, 2012.

Omer (10:53.880)
Okay, cool.
So both of you guys are now working on this business together.
You're looking for consulting work and you did that for several years before you came up with the idea for member space, right?

Guest (11:10.370)
Yeah, we were just kind of trying our best to find whatever was out there.
Like we would go to networking things, we would be posting on online job boards.
I think we even looked on like Craigslist.
Like it was pretty much anything we could find, we tried to do because like Ryan was saying, we saw it as being paid to practice and to learn.
We were lucky enough that we had those enterprise sales jobs previously that we had a good amount of money saved up.
So we weren't like stressed about having to pay rent the next month or the next three months or anything like that, like that.
So we had a constraint of we wanted to build the business, but we weren't like terrified of running out of money either, which was very lucky.
But yeah, we were just kind of scrambling to any work we could find.
We did.
We built websites, we built custom e commerce stores, we built custom software applications, like kind of anything.

Omer (11:53.849)
And then did you guys at one point decide that you were going to focus on Squarespace sites or was that just kind of part of what you were doing alongside all of these other development projects?

Guest (12:05.270)
Well, at first we were kind of scrambling and then we sort of focused to do, okay, let's just do sort of larger five figure type software application projects.
And like, that seemed good, but it was a bit of a roller coaster in terms of revenue.
So like we'd get a good project in, we'd be flush with money in the business, and then the project would end and we wouldn't have another one to start right away and then there would just be like no revenue coming in.
So that was obviously like emotionally terrible.
So eventually we kind of were like, you know, I was sort of analyzing our sales and how things were going and I realized something that I had said no to like 90% of the leads that had come into us in our contact form on our website.
And the reason was, was because they were for like small little website builds and projects.
And we're like, oh no, we're not interested in those, unless you have five figures, we're not.
We don't even want to talk to you.
And then I realized, you know, what, if I could just build this in something simple like Squarespace, we could charge, you know, make a few hundred dollars, maybe a thousand, whatever, and then maybe get them on some kind of a maintenance plan, like a support plan of some sort, so we can get that recurring revenue.
Because it was around that time that Ryan and I were starting to learn more about SaaS and that business model and the beauty of recurring revenue and compounding and all of that as it grows.
So we were like, how can we do that?
So, so the Squarespace model sort of naturally evolved from there, and we started getting clients.
As soon as I said, hey, we'll build you a website, $99 a month support, it kind of immediately took off.
It was just something a lot of people needed.
And I think one of the things that separated us was our communication.
We were very good at communicating with clients and being prompt and detailed and all of that.
And I think they just weren't used to that level of service because we were coming from doing large projects for clients who are paying us a lot of money.
And so to take that level of service and apply it to like, you know, a $500 website build kind of blew people away.
And so we got, you know, a good reputation built up.
We got some good word of mouth type stuff, and we had happy clients who were paying us monthly for maintenance.

Omer (14:04.750)
Got it.
And from what I understand, you guys continued with that model until what, around, like it was around 2015 maybe, that you started to come up with the idea for member space.

Guest (14:19.160)
Ryan, you want to take this one?
Sure, yeah.
So around 2015, we started just thinking about the SaaS world.
We've gone to the microconf conference and just learned this whole new world.
And we kind of wanted to have a more stable, reoccurring revenue business.
But what do you do?
Right?
So, yeah, we just started looking into the Squarespace community because it was just a community that we knew well and that we were serving.
And we like to say we didn't come up with the idea.
Our customers told us what the idea was, so we started scouring the forms and just digging into the community.
And one of the things that we found that was really a pressing need from the forms and from some of our own Squarespace customers was the ability to have logins on their Squarespace site and protected content.
So, yeah, in 2015, we just started prototyping just a basic Login application.
It was really a pure MVP.
And we launched that in January of 2016 just to get some feedback and to give some more context by basic login application.
Literally you would install a little snippet of code on your Squarespace site and then you could tell us which pages you want to protect so that only members could get to them.
And.
And then people could get to those pages by signing up for free to be members.

Omer (15:40.480)
Okay, so there was no payment or anything.
It was literally like, I can lock down some pages on my site and ask people to log in to access it.

Guest (15:49.360)
Yeah.
So like you're essentially collecting email addresses in exchange for access to certain pages.
And it was like super, super basic.

Omer (15:56.800)
Got it.
And then like, how did you get the word out?
Did you just post it out there on these forums and tell people about it who'd been kind of asking for this type of feature?

Guest (16:06.050)
Yeah, there was this cool thing in the Squarespace forums.
I don't know if they still do it, but you could like view topics by most, like viewed or voted or something.
And the one about membership logins was like 100,000 views.
It was crazy.
And you could actually subscribe to topics in the forum.
So that meant that if anyone replied to the topic, everyone who was subscribed would get an email notifying them of the reply.
So for this membership topic, I basically posted there saying that we have this free beta available for people to try out that did the basic functionality we just described.
And we pretty immediately got a lot of people to sign up.
We got to like 100 people signed up very quickly.
I mean, it was free, so it's not the craziest thing in the world.
But I think the fact that that notification email got sent out was kind of like a built in email list that we sort of cheated the system on there.
And then we also posted in some Facebook groups, like specifically Facebook Squarespace groups, to kind of just let people know this was an option now.

Omer (17:04.370)
And what type of feedback were you getting?
Did people like it?
Were people sort of instantly hungry for more?

Guest (17:11.410)
Yeah, I mean, of course people want more.
It was so basic.
But the fact was we solved the core problem.
Like when I was reading through that initial thread in the Squarespace forums, what most people were looking for was just a way to lock down pages, even if it was just to collect an email address.
That was actually one of the most common use cases.
It wasn't even to charge necessarily.
So we were solving the core problem that a lot of people wanted.
And what we built The MVP for some people was good enough.
They were like, this is great.
It'd be awesome if you had feature X, Y and Z.
But what you have right now is actually pretty good.
That was amazing because we thought this was super, super basic.
It was really just a proof of concept and it was immediately valuable to people.

Omer (17:53.860)
And it took, from what I understand, like about five months after you shipped that prototype to get your first paying customer.
So tell me a little bit about that.
Like, okay, you've got this tool out there, it's solving a problem.
And then how did that turn into something that you felt that you were going to start charging for?
And how did you have to change the product to get to a point where you felt that people would be willing to pay for it?

Guest (18:28.570)
You want to take this one, Ryan?
Sure.
So, yeah, one of the most requested features that we had by far was the ability to let people sign up and pay for a subscription plan to get access to these pages.
So we utilize the whole Stripe ecosystem and just built a basic integration with Stripe through a system called Stripe Connect and we built it into our product.
So member space uses its own billing system that our customers use.
So our ethos was we're going to make sure the product is functioning well as we're getting customers so that we know it's working well for our own customers.
So when we release the ability to let our customers charge, we also started charging our own customers that were signing up.
We gave people like a grace period that had signed on with us for free before.
But In April of 2016, we started our own charging and got our first paying customers.

Omer (19:25.800)
Great, so you've got your first paying customer.
And then do you remember like how many more people you got signing up in like the first month that you'd sort of put this product out there?

Guest (19:37.390)
I'm trying to remember, Ryan.
I know we got to $1,000 in MRR relatively quickly.
Maybe it was within two months, I think.
Does that sound right?
Yeah.
In April of 2016.
I think our revenue that month was like 400 some dollars.
And then by the next month we were into the thousand dollar MRR territory.
Yeah.
And I remember one funny thing that we had was at the time the URL was mymemberspace.com because memberspace.com was taken and we wanted to buy it and we asked the guy how much they want it for.
I think it was like 2 or $3,000 or I think 3,000 and 2500.
Yeah.
And then Ryan was like, how about we buy it once we have that amount of mrr this way, it's like, okay, if we buy, it's only one month's worth of revenue, we'll have that revenue the next month.
And so I think by the following month, we had it that much revenue.
We're like, cool, and we just bought it.
But at the time, that was a huge purchase for us.
We're used to buying domains for 9 to $12, and to buy a domain for $2,500 was like a crazy big purchase for us at the time.

Omer (20:43.590)
I'm curious, like, why did you think it was important enough to get that domain?

Guest (20:50.630)
I mean, you know, it just looked a lot cleaner, little easier to remember.
I mean, people were calling it member space.
Sometimes people would call it my member space.
And that just kind of sounded weird to me.
So, you know, it's probably not the most important thing.
It probably didn't make a huge difference either way.
But I think we just, we both thought it just would look a lot more, I guess, I don't know if professional as the word, just more legit, I guess would be the word if it was just pure member space dot com.

Omer (21:15.040)
And presumably by that point, you guys had enough confidence that what you'd built there was something there.
Like this wasn't, you know, like a project that.
That was going to max out at a couple of thousand dollars.
You clearly seeing signs that you were solving an important enough problem that people were willing to pay for it.
And there was signs of a good business opportunity there.

Guest (21:39.150)
Yeah, I mean, like, we were getting good feedback, tons of feature requests and growth.
Right.
Things are going up and to the right.
We were gaining hundreds.
If not, I think we were making $1,000 net new MRR a month pretty quickly.
So things are going pretty good.

Omer (21:54.190)
And at what point did you guys decide, okay, we're going to stop doing the consulting work?
Were you still doing that in parallel or once you started making a few thousand dollars, you were like, no, we're just going to jump in and do go all in with this business.

Guest (22:09.660)
No, in the beginning, we were doing it all in parallel.
So we had a small team doing the Squarespace stuff.
I think we had two other people doing the squarespace work plus Ward.
And the team was basically helping fund me to help build out the product and Ward a little bit.
Once it basically paid for my income, we started pulling in other resources and then slowly shifting.
So we never really just were like, all right, we're going to count on the revenue.
We waited till we had the revenue to really Transition the whole team into the member space product.
Yeah.
And that took a while.
That was over a year, I'd say.

Omer (22:47.330)
Okay, but during that time you guys weren't doing a lot to kind of focus on growth.
Right?
It sounds like just getting the word out on the forum and just word of mouth.
Were they kind of like the main drivers of growth around that time?

Guest (23:04.030)
Yeah, that and we had pretty good SEO because our product, it's a little different.
Right.
We're a third party that is like a bolt on to an existing website.
So it just wasn't a normal thing.
Like there were WordPress plugins, but that's, that's for WordPress.
For other types of websites like Squarespace, there is no plugin marketplace, there is no official add on marketplace.
We were kind of at a new sort of a category of kind of.
And so because of that, the SEO terms were not super competitive.
And I did some initial research when we were launching and all that to kind of make sure we were targeting the correct terms.
And not that I'm an expert or anything, but I think I did good enough to get us a good amount of traffic.
That's still where the majority of our traffic comes from, is just pure Google SEO.

Omer (23:46.570)
Wow.
Okay.
And I know you guys don't talk about specific revenue numbers, but we can say that, you know, you guys are, you know, a multiple six figure, very healthy revenue and you guys are profitable.
How long did it take you to sort of get to that point?
Because I guess it's, it's happened pretty fast, right?
I mean go from April 2016, first paying customer, so just over three years.
Is that about right?

Guest (24:26.630)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's been growing consistently every month.
Like the number of months that we did not have a net growth, I can count on one hand.
And it was because of specific situations.
Like we like created new payment plans and encourage people to actually downgrade in some cases.
Or if we had like, you know, a server issue and we were offering discounts, you know, that kind of a thing.
It was never just like naturally growth went down.
It was always because of some explicit event.
So any, any month that wasn't like, that was always a net growth month.
So yeah, things.
And that's the beauty of compound SaaS is once it starts growing and just keeps going, just add time and it gets pretty amazing pretty quick.

Omer (25:06.920)
Right.
And I know you guys have really, you know, you mentioned this a little bit earlier, but the customer focus and just taking care of customers is, is really important to you guys and I know Every business likes to say we care about customers until you try to call them and you're on hold for 20 minutes hearing how important you are to them.
Right.
But tell me, like, a little bit about what that means to you guys.
Because, like, if you go to memberspace.com there's an email address, Right.
There's a phone number.
You call the phone number, somebody on the team actually answers the phone.
Where did that sort of customer focus?
Like, was that something you guys are just.
It just kind of was part of what you did.
Is it something that you just realized early on was really important?
And then how has that sort of translated into the way you run the business?

Guest (26:03.430)
Sure.
So I think.
I think part of that comes from our background in enterprise sales.
Just because we spend so much time with customers.
Like, we'd have deals that we'd start and it would be over a year until they would close.
So this really long process, multiple meetings, sometimes we'd like, fly out and meet these people and talk to them and just help move the process along.
So we were used to talking on the phone to people and really trying to understand what their issues were and help them, help them through the process.
And I think we just saw when we created our product that if we can really make a big impact on one customer and just take the time to actually help them, you know, sort of the Zappos site model, like, do whatever you can to help them, that's going to go a long way and people are going to, you know, hopefully talk about us.
So our customer support then.
And I think one of the main things still now is one of our best marketing channels.
So, yeah, we spent a lot of effort ourselves and then, you know, have a overly large support team, I think, for the, for the kind of product that we have.
But for us, it's worth it to like, just really help our customers and help them, you know, get set up and with any issues they have.

Omer (27:15.600)
And I think that's a big appeal because there are a lot of products out there that.
Well, number one, they make it hard for you to contact somebody.
Right.
So you go there and.
And maybe you go to the help page.
Like, there's nothing on the homepage.
You have to go to help page.
And then the help page will give you a knowledge base and some articles, and you'll have to search for what you're interested in.
And if you can't, you know, it's that if that's not, you know, giving you what you need, then maybe right at the bottom of all those links, there might be another link saying, you know, more information or get more help.
And then that takes you eventually to a Contact Us page.
And for you guys it's like, hey, it's right there in front, you know, on the homepage.
So a lot of companies make it really hard for you to contact them and you went the other way and you made it super easy.
But I think that's part of the appeal of the product and the type of people that you're targeting.
So if somebody, you know, a non technical entrepreneur, what's one of the biggest obstacles that they have to building something like this is, oh my God, I'm going to have to deal with a whole bunch of technical issues that I'm not comfortable with.
And when I deal with these companies, they point me off to these articles that sort of feel like gobbledygook and half of the stuff doesn't make sense to me.
And so I think there's a real differentiator and some real value in people knowing, oh my God, I can actually pick up the phone and I can talk to one of the members of the team and they're always there when I need them.
And from, you know, when I look through the site and some of the testimonials from customers like support keeps coming up over and over again.
So I think just there's such a great lesson there in terms of if you can really not just say customers are important, but really find ways to understand what they struggle with and make them feel more comfortable and help them when they have problems.
I think that's just huge.
It can't be understated.
Yeah.

Guest (29:22.380)
Really?
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think this is like sort of our over the top support.
And when I started learning about the SaaS world, there was this whole sort of mantra of like we're going to have this passive income.
And maybe not in some of the communities that we're involved with, but there's definitely communities out there that they want to have this sort of passive income.
Like you build this software thing and then people just sign up and you get paid.
And I don't think it's that easy.
I think you have to, if you want to grow a reoccurring revenue business, like it's hard, you have to scratch tooth and nail to get every customer and it's, you know, giving our customers the best support we can is the only way I think we know how to do it.
Yeah.
Plus neither of us would say we're strong at marketing, so we didn't really know what else to do.
So we knew we were good at communicating and being good at customer support.
So, so we did that and we focused on building features that people wanted and we had decent SEO and that was kind of it.
That was what kind of carried us the whole way.

Omer (30:22.000)
Yeah, and I think that's a really good lesson there in terms of understanding what your strengths are and playing to them.
Like, are you guys familiar with masterclass.com no.
So it's basically a service, subscription service where you can sign up and you have all of these, you know, successful people in their field, mostly creatives who run masterclasses.
So you can have Gordon Ramsay giving you a masterclass on cooking, or Bob Iger on strategy and leadership and Steve Martin on comedy.
And so there's a whole bunch of them.
And I was watching one the other day with Sarah Blakely, who's the founder of Spanx, right.
And one of she's was the first self made female billionaire.
And like she started this business with like $5,000 of her savings and it's turned into this massive business.
And she said something similar where she's like, you know, I sort of sat down initially and I was like, made a list of like all my strengths.
And she said I actually only had one thing in my strengths column, which was I could sell.
Because she'd been spending years selling fax machines door to door and getting kicked out from all kinds of places and just helped her in terms of, you know, how to get your foot in the door, build resilience, all of that stuff.
And so that was like something for her that she just really played to her strength.
Right.
And so I think there's a lot of wisdom there.
I want to talk a little bit about kind of this idea of running a calm company.
And I know you guys prescribe to a lot of the sort of kind of the company of one type mindset, which is, you know, based on kind of Paul Jarvis's book.
But you sort of came to that realization in terms of how you wanted to run the business, like before you read that book, right?
And it was like, oh, then you read the book and it was like that's this actually other people thinking like that.
So tell me a little bit about that.
Like how did that come about?
Because it wasn't always like that, right.
In the early days it was pretty crazy.
And then how did you sort of make that transition?

Guest (32:29.250)
Yeah, I mean I'd say 37 signals basecamp guys.
Jason and DHH definitely had a huge impact, like philosophically on us in terms of how to run a business and what kind of things to value and prioritize.
And, you know, I think Ryan and I both would admit to some unhealthy behaviors when we were first starting in terms of hours worked and all of that, but we.
You pretty quickly realize through cause and effect that you get burned out or you get tired, you get cranky.
It's just.
It's not fun anymore.
And so you got to do something about it.
And I think that's when we started to set boundaries for ourselves a little better.
In terms of when you're done working, closing the laptop, not just working at all hours when you're starting your own business, I think a lot of people will probably struggle with that because it can bleed over into your life, and you don't have to stop working at all if you don't want to.
And that's the problem.
Especially when you're struggling and you're trying to get things going, you always feel like you should be working.
So it's a difficult problem to navigate.
But I think the 37 signals, guys, basecamp guys, and then Paul Jarvis, I think, does a really good job of explaining how to keep things calm, focus on being profitable.
Only hire when you need to hire.
Don't just grow for growth's sake.
Grow because it's going to help you or help your customers in a tangible way, not just to make more money.
And that's really helped us a lot, I think.

Omer (33:45.690)
Is it true you got everyone on the team to read it doesn't have to be crazy at work?

Guest (33:49.370)
Yeah, we shipped copies to everybody and had the mandatory homework assignment to read it.

Omer (33:55.260)
Yeah.
And, you know, when we were talking about this earlier, Ward, you had said, hey, you know, we're really lucky that we were able to do this.
But, you know, in the early stages of starting a business, you don't always have that luxury.
And, you know, sometimes you do have to work long hours or crazy hours to kind of get things done or to get by.
But I think the point here is it's more about you shouldn't sort of accept that as the normal way of running a business.
And you should always aspire to something more meaningful, something that's going to help you to be able to sustain this kind of for the long term and also just lead a more balanced life.
Right.
And sure, you might not be able to get there today or tomorrow or even next year, but I think it should be an important goal that all of us think about that building a business or a SaaS business is important and it's a lot of hard work, but finding a way, a balanced way to do that.
And I think this idea of not always just kind of growing for growth's sake, in many ways, that's not conventional wisdom.
Right?
I mean, everyone's like, well, you should grow 50% year on year, and if you're not doing that.
And I was speaking to somebody who got into an accelerator recently and immediately he was just saying, like, you know, hey, we've been growing at a pretty healthy rate kind of month over month, but they're telling us that's not good enough and it should be twice that much.
And, you know, and immediately they were already feeling a lot of pressure, like they weren't good enough because they were sort of put in this environment where it's like, hey, yeah, you're growing, but not fast enough.
So it's.
I think it's always refreshing once you talk to people who have a different perspective on that.

Guest (35:43.450)
Yeah, 100%.

Omer (35:45.850)
Okay, cool.
So, yeah, I mean, I guess we should talk about one thing like that.
Like, so far the business has been focused on a membership solution for people building sites on Squarespace, but you've expanded that out now and you're basically, what, trying to support member space on most publishing platforms out there.
Like, what's the plan there?

Guest (36:11.540)
Yeah, I mean, basically the goal with member space is to allow anyone on any website to add membership functionality to that existing site.
And at first we were only doing that for Squarespace, but now we're available on wix, weebly webflow, custom HTML like static sites like Jekyll, and we're probably moving to WordPress soon too.
And yeah, that's kind of the idea is we want people to not be tied to a specific website cms.
Like, if you want to go from wix to webflow, you should be able to do that without interrupting your membership business, without having to have people recreate accounts or re enter billing details.
Like that seems kind of crazy to us.
So that's the advantage of being a third party and not being natively built into a CMS is that you can move with us and your customers don't get interrupted.

Omer (36:57.320)
Yeah, yeah, I think that's a really useful kind of feature.
I guess if you say in terms of, you know, for me having run a membership site, right, with my own SAS club plus community number one, it's really hard to get started because you're sort of overwhelmed by all of these decisions and you can kind of almost get into Analysis paralysis in terms of am I making the right decisions, am I choosing the right cms, am I choosing the right membership platform or plugin?
Because people always tell you you're going to be stuck with that forever and it's going to be a real pain for you to be, you know, able to have a move to a different platform or whatever.
And so I think knowing that, you know, if you can use a product that kind of makes that easier to switch from one platform to another and sort of gives you that flexibility, I think is like super important.
One thing I want to talk to you about before we sort of wrap up is like, maybe, you know, Ryan, maybe you can take this one, is you guys have been bootstrapped and self funded pretty much from day one, but at some point you decided to raise some money and work with our friend Tyler Tringas over at Earnest Capital.
So tell me a little bit about that.
Like what was the thinking and the motivation there and what's sort of the plan for raising the money?

Guest (38:20.340)
Yeah, sure.
So Ward and I kind of grew up in the bootstraps SaaS community even before we had a SaaS product.
So we've gone to microconf a number of years now, well before we had member space as a product.
But just learning about that whole world, bootstrapping, knowing that you can build a product, a SaaS product, without having to take a bunch of money.
And we've never been huge fans of the VC world because it's either you grow or you fold, right?
Once you take that money, you need to grow at a certain rate or else you run out of money and then the decision is to fold or raise more money and then the process starts again.
So we've just never been a huge fan of taking on that kind of responsibility.
So yeah, we've been bootstrapping member space for pretty much up until about a few months ago, up until about June.
And yeah, we joined the Earnest team and we just did that mainly for the mentorship.
They just came with like a really high quality class of mentors that we can access.
So that's the kind of thing that appealed to us the most.
You know, we wanted to spend some more money on some marketing initiatives, but mainly it was to get like high quality list of people that could be our mentors.
And I think one of the best ways to do that was for them to have some interest in our enterprise.
It's not a huge investment as far as capital, but I think it was a step in the right direction for us.
There's this whole new movement.
It's, you know, Rob Walling's doing it with Tiny Seed and there's a number of small accelerators, if you want to call them accelerators that you know they're investing in companies but they're not requiring that you have to grow because they want you to be profitable.
They want to take money out of the business when you take money out of the business business.
So it sort of aligns a lot of interests where the VC world just does not work for a lot of this sort of small, medium SaaS companies.

Omer (40:15.110)
Yeah, I think that's a really good point.
So I think, yeah, I think there are quite a few.
I mean obviously Earnest Capital is the one that probably is top of mind now as we've been talking.
But yeah, Rob Wallings, Tiny Seed and God, there's a few others I was thinking of.
I can't remember right now.
Anyway, we'll include a link in the show notes or some links in the show notes.
If folks are looking to raise some money and you're sort of early stage ish type company, maybe we can include some links there that people might find useful.
Okay, so we should wrap up and move on to the lightning round.
So this is the first time I've ever done a three way interview.
So what we're going to do I think is like I'll ask the question and then I'll kind of get an answer from both of you.
So why don't we do this like I'll ask a question then maybe Ryan, you go first and then Ward you go right, right after him.
Does that sound good?

Guest (41:11.690)
Yep, sure.

Omer (41:14.250)
All right, here we go.
Dun, dun, dun, dun.
What's the best piece of business advice you've ever received?

Guest (41:19.930)
Before you react, just stop and think about what you're going to do.
Take your time.
I mean that can apply to many other things, but it applies in business as well.
Yeah, I would say focus on helping your customers actually solve their problems.

Omer (41:36.500)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?

Guest (41:39.060)
Into Thin Air.
It's a classic mountaineering book and it tells a lot about mountaineering, which I like a lot, but also about human dynamics and how decisions are made.
I'd say Deep Work by Cal Newport.
It really helps to bring priorities and focus front and center even though the world's getting more and more distracting.

Omer (41:57.220)
Is it true he doesn't have any social media accounts?

Guest (41:59.460)
Supposedly, yeah.

Omer (42:01.940)
I haven't been able to find anything, but I heard him on a talk once and I was like, wow, what's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful entrepreneur.

Guest (42:10.740)
I guess the ability to take risk or just the unknown and accept that some people just cannot take on the kind of level of risk that you take on as an entrepreneur.
But I think having some measured risk tolerance is really important.
Yeah, I'd say grit.
So just the ability to keep going, that's a big part of entrepreneurship, is surviving long enough to realize how to be successful and to stop making the same kind of mistakes over and over again.

Omer (42:38.569)
Yeah.
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?

Guest (42:43.850)
I'm screwing this one up.
Productivity tool.
All right.
I mean, I think it's become basecamp.
It's really helped, you know, take our whole team and helped us communicate pretty pretty well together, especially as we've gotten bigger.
Yeah, I'm a big fan of, like, Apple Notes.
On my phone and computer, whenever something comes across my mind that I need to remember to do or whatever, I could just kind of jot it down easily, and it syncs so I don't remember it later.
And then I keep that in priority order.
This way I know what I need to get done every day, and nothing really slips through the cracks.

Omer (43:17.860)
I got to tell you a funny story about that while we're on there.
It's like I spend more time than I should always trying to find a good notes app playing around.
I mean, I've had Evernote for years and then Notion and all of these other things that come along.
And then all the time, I say to myself, in the meantime, I'll keep that information in Apple Notes.
And it's like, well, that's the one that's actually working for me.
But it's kind of funny that, I don't know, maybe it's just because it's kind of just built in on the iPhone, and it just looks like this little tool.
You sort of underestimate how much it can do, but if you get under the hood, there's actually a lot of functionality in there that makes it pretty useful.

Guest (43:58.590)
Yeah, I mean, I'd argue they've actually expanded it way beyond what I personally feel like it needs to do.
I just like the utter simplicity of it, that it just gets out of the way.
You click notes and then you start typing, and then you're done taking notes.
Like, it's just as.
You couldn't make it simpler.

Omer (44:12.660)
What's a new or crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the extra time?

Guest (44:17.780)
Yeah, so I'm not really good at ideas when I Tried to come up with my own ideas.
They never worked out.
So if I were to try to pursue a new business, I would instead, like we did with member space, find a community or group of people that I would want to serve.
Sort of a lot of the Amy Hoy mentality, but that's what I would do.
Yeah, I don't even think about other businesses.
I'm all in on member space.
That's the only one I really think about.

Omer (44:42.320)
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?

Guest (44:46.240)
I like to travel internationally, and Nepal's one of my favorite place.
So I've been there two times now, and I think I'll probably go back a few more times.
Just really like the mountains.
I've been doing Brazilian jiu jitsu, actually, for the last six months or so, and just really getting into it.
Cool.

Omer (45:03.800)
And finally, what is one of your most important passions outside of your work?

Guest (45:09.080)
I have two, I think that are my favorite things.
Sliding down snow on skis really fast and going rock climbing.
So I'd say helping my family however I can.
I travel to exciting places with my partner, Rebecca, and I'm really focused on, like, being healthy, like eating healthy, living healthy, lots of vegetables, that kind of thing.

Omer (45:29.990)
Awesome.
Well, thank you for joining me today, both of you.
It's been fun, kind of looking back and sort of telling the story of how you guys went from enterprise sales into SaaS founders doing a lot of development and design work day in, day out, and as well as all the other stuff that you have to do.
And I think it's really been interesting to talk about the way you, you know, you run the business and your sort of philosophy towards customers and sort of how to find balance.
I think that's going to be really inspiring for a lot of people, if nothing else, just to think differently.
Like, don't just assume that things have to be a certain way if it doesn't feel right to you.
So I think that's going to resonate with a lot of people.
And also just the fact that you guys didn't have sort of a technical background and in terms of, you know, coding and stuff like that, but you found a way to learn those skills.
And I would say in many ways it's becoming easier and easier because there's so much of a push these days now to help, you know, everyone, whether it's a budding entrepreneur or a kid in elementary school to learn coding.
So, hey, there's never been a better time for me thinking about it.
Now's a good time to start learning to code.
So if people want to check out member space, they can go to memberspace.com and if they want to get in touch with you guys, what's the best way for them to do that?

Guest (47:00.680)
Yeah, I'm on Twitter at Ward Sandler.
Or you can always just talk to our support team.
They're honestly there to help with anything you need.
So it's just supportmberspace.com and Ryan.
So if you want to get in touch with me, you could just send me an email, ryan@memberspace.com and I'll be sure to get back to you.
Yeah, I'll throw mine in there, too.
It's wardememberspace.
Com if you couldn't figure that out.

Omer (47:24.320)
All right, great.
Well, thanks, guys.
It's been a pleasure.
I wish you all the best of success with MemberSpace, and thanks for taking the time to join me.

Guest (47:33.280)
All right, thanks.
Sure thing.

Omer (47:34.720)
Cheers.