Ward Sandler & Ryan Bennett, MemberSpace
From Squarespace Forums to a Niche SaaS Business
Ryan Bennick and Ward Sandler are 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 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 - a $600 project that became the best money Ryan ever made. Over the next few years, they slowly grew their consulting business. And eventually, they 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. The forum topic had over 100,000 views. So Ryan and Ward built a simple tool. It didn't do much - literally just locked pages so only members could access them. But people loved it. So they kept listening to their users and 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 launched their niche 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.
