Squarespace To Go Private in $6.9 Billion Deal With Permira 32
Squarespace said on Monday it has agreed to be taken private by private equity firm Permira in an all-cash deal valued at approximately $6.9 billion. Under the terms of the agreement, Squarespace stockholders will receive $44.00 per share in cash, representing a premium of about 29% over the company's 90-day volume weighted average trading price.
Upon completion of the transaction, Squarespace will become a privately held company. Founder and CEO Anthony Casalena will continue to lead the business and be one of the largest shareholders following the deal. "Squarespace has been at the forefront of providing services to businesses looking to establish themselves online for more than two decades. We are excited to continue building on that foundation, and expanding our offerings, for years to come," said Casalena in a statement.
"We are thrilled to be partnering with Permira on this new leg of our journey, alongside our existing long-term investors General Atlantic and Accel, who strongly believe in the future of Squarespace," he added.
Upon completion of the transaction, Squarespace will become a privately held company. Founder and CEO Anthony Casalena will continue to lead the business and be one of the largest shareholders following the deal. "Squarespace has been at the forefront of providing services to businesses looking to establish themselves online for more than two decades. We are excited to continue building on that foundation, and expanding our offerings, for years to come," said Casalena in a statement.
"We are thrilled to be partnering with Permira on this new leg of our journey, alongside our existing long-term investors General Atlantic and Accel, who strongly believe in the future of Squarespace," he added.
The Enshittification (Score:3, Informative)
Re: The Enshittification (Score:2)
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I don't know the background for this decision, but if PE is involved, at a $7b valuation, then you can be pretty sure that someone is expecting free cash flow of at least $1/year to make this worthwhile.
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Mostly, I hear about Squarespace via advertisements in podcasts and youtube channels I subscribe to. I'm sure that I've interacted with websites powered by squarespace, but I couldn't point to any specific examples. I also don't personally know anyone that's used them.
What about vendor lock-in? (Score:3)
If you outgrow Squarespace or otherwise want to leave, you'll want to export your data. Upon researching this comment I am surprised to read it is possible to export as much website data as there is. Not everything of course. Not by a long shot. https://support.squarespace.co... [squarespace.com]
I recommen
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I recommend Drupal....
Perhaps if your data are unimportant. It requires MySQL (or derivatives), which has a policy of "alter the data to fit the constraints". It's fine if you don't value your data, but don't let it within a thousand miles of anything important.
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I recommend Drupal....
Perhaps if your data are unimportant. It requires MySQL (or derivatives), which has a policy of "alter the data to fit the constraints". It's fine if you don't value your data, but don't let it within a thousand miles of anything important.
I semi-sorta see your critique, however I'm at a loss to understand what kind of data can't be constrained by MySQL or its derivatives. You gotta put it somewhere. What other options exist for a decent CMS? And surely an open-source CMS is superior to closed-source Squarespace for important data, isn't it?
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...I'm at a loss to understand what kind of data can't be constrained by MySQL....
Give it an invalid timestamp, and it will alter the timestamp to something within the column constraints rather than to reject the timestamp as invalid. Give an integer column a money amount, and MySQL will (used to?) truncate the money amount to an integer rather than reject it as an invalid type. Those are show stopping design errors, and is enough to have removed MySQL from consideration for anything. I have no idea if any of that has been fixed, but it no longer matters.
What other options exist for a decent CMS?
Add PostgreSQL support, and Drup
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Thank you very much for taking the time to answer my question with your earned experience. I've yet to setup Drupal with PostgreSQL but that's clearly on my task list now. I know it has been possible for years and there's excellent sessions about it on drupal.tv [drupal.tv]. I just needed the push from someone like you.
Re: What about vendor lock-in? (Score:2)
Brochureware! (Score:2)
Gotta give it to you. And it seems to suit a need for someone wants something simple and quick. Personally I don't build original content ”online“ only and discourage it. (Things like this excluded. I do not save off comments offline, but sometimes will compose in an editor.) But cloud for thee and not for me. I'm pretty sure Drupal and the like have the capability to sync to your host in a logical and userfriendlyway. Shame more people don't do it.
Anyway, this seems like a maneuver aimed at gai
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If all you want is a fancy brochureware website with hardly any cost, no security concerns or upgrade fees, (not unlike github pages [github.com]) here's the easy trick:
Use the latest version of Drupal and go nuts with all your CMS desires. But, do you really need a Contact Us form? That's the number one dynamic website feature requested. If you can live without that, and maybe a comments section, than why not a Static Website?
So build it using the Drupal CMS to make your life easy and export secure, static, non-php con
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It's Squarespace. They don't have far to go to be worse.
I mean, the content's already locked up in their proprietary CMS anyways and they own your domain name, so it's literally all lock-in.
Even a basic hosting service gets you WordPress and other things so you're not trapped.
I'm not sure how a crap service can get crappier. The people using them are already trapped.
Re:You'd be an idiot to be a public company today (Score:5, Interesting)
There are plenty of companies that shouldn't be public, but what is going here is Anthony Casalena has plans, and those plans do not include risking giving up the control of the company that he has had for over 20 years. He wants OPM to execute his plans rather than selling some of his at-face-value $1.8B shares or issuing new shares which would dilute him. There is a another deal that is going to follow this one in $1B range. What is he going to buy that he could not get with a stock deal? Automattic?
Abandon Ship (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're a Squarespace employee, now is a good time to start looking for a new job. Private Equity goes hand in hand with massive layoffs.
Squarespace is horrible (Score:2, Insightful)
About to do my fifth interaction with support without my email issues being solved. Fuck Google for transferring my domains to these cunts.
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About to do my fifth interaction with support without my email issues being solved. Fuck Google for transferring my domains to these cunts.
What is the reference to Google?
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So far I've been lucky (fingers crossed). When Google sold Domains and Sites to Squarespace I feared the worst. I created and maintain a rather large programming tutorial site and thought for sure the transition would cause issues. Nothing yet (again, fingers crossed). I don't use their email though so I seem to have dodged that bullet. Squarespace hasn't touched the Sites interface leaving it as Google had it. I hope that stays the same.
Re:Squarespace is horrible (acquired cuz Google) (Score:2)
Fuck Google for transferring my domains to these cunts.
That's the REASON for any acquiring party! They (private equity) want Google to offload more non-core services to outside companies like itself, use the "successful" transition from Google to Squarespace as example, as for why Google should offload the them (private equity-owned Squarespace).
$44 X-factor (Score:2)
Expect this company to roll into Elon’s Twitterverse X.com
The playing field is consolidating around lifestyle
6.9 (Score:1)
so proud