Inside Outside Innovation Ep. 189 - Ward Sandler, Co-founder of MemberSpace on No-Code, Members Only & Remote Work
Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder, sits down with Ward Sandler, cofounder of MemberSpace, a company that helps turn any part of a website into members-only. They talk about the no-code movement, what it takes to build a remote workforce, and all things entrepreneurship.
Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast that brings you the best and the brightest in the world of startups and innovation. I'm your host Brian Ardinger, founder of Inside Outside.IO, a provider of research, events, and consulting services that help innovators and entrepreneurs build better products, launch new ideas, and compete in a world of change and disruption. Each week we give you a front row seat to the latest thinking, tools, tactics, and trends, in collaborative innovation.
To read the full transcript of this interview go to insideoutside.io.
Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host Brian Ardinger, and as always, we have another amazing guest. With me this week is Ward Sandler. Ward is the co-founder of MemberSpace. Welcome to the show Ward.
Ward Sandler: Hey Brian, thanks for having me.
Brian Ardinger: Hey, I'm excited to have you on the board. I actually got connected with you because I had written a blog post about the whole no-code movement and how there really are no more excuses that people can have about, I can't find developers. I can't find different ways to build my stuff. And I mentioned MemberSpace as one of those no code movement platforms out there that's making this democratization of innovation a little bit easier. I want to have you on the podcast to talk about this whole no-code movement.
Ward Sandler: We started MemberSpace before “no code” or #nocode was like really a thing. We've been around since 2015 and no code I'd say has come up more in like the last two years really. But that being said, we've always been really focused on non-technical entrepreneurs. Especially for what our software does, we allow you to turn your website, any part of your website into members only in a few clicks. Like that's what we do. And for a lot of folks, that's what they want, but they don't want the headache of having to hire a developer, dig into code or anything like that. So we've been quote unquote no code from the jump. And that's always been an ethos of ours, is we want to make this really easy for anyone to use.
Brian Ardinger: So tell me a little bit about MemberSpace and how did it get started and your journey as an entrepreneur.
Ward Sandler: We used to be a consulting company. We did everything from custom software or to eCommerce sites. Then we narrowed in on Squarespace just building, designing, and supporting Squarespace websites. Funnily enough, it was very specific, but it was a huge need. Lot of volume of customers. And from there we found that one of the biggest requested features was membership because Squarespace doesn't have it out of the box. So people wanted to have member only pages on their Squarespace site. We figured that out by visiting the Squarespace forum and sorting the list by most voted. And that was like one of the top features. And we read through the comments and basically realized, you know, there's no real good solution for that. So we built a real quick MVP in like a month or two launch that had great feedback and then kept iterating and adding features. And it's taken off since then and we've expanded outside of Squarespace. Now we're available on basically any website.
To read the full transcript of this interview go to insideoutside.io.
For More Information
- memberspace.com - Link to the podcast in resource section
- @wardsandler or @memberspace
If you want to learn more about the Inside Outside team, content, or services, check out insideoutside.io or follow us on Twitter @theIOpodcast or @Ardinger. Until next time, go out and innovate.