The Pitch Day Prize
Our Pitch Day competition invited WOTW team members to share ideas for products that could make life easier for clients and devs alike. The event featured an AMA from Graham, our Squarespace client liaison, and team members presented their ideas to Kelsey, Mal, Zack Gilbert-Kreiling of World of the Website, and Kendall Harrell from Squarespace Enterprise. The winner will not only have their product developed by World of the Website, but also netted a $250 prize.
And the winners of PItch Day are — drum roll, please — Katie Stipanovich and Shelly Morse! Katie is our whip-smart Operations Manager, who keeps WOTW organized and efficient, and Shelly is a developer extraordinaire, who has worked on some of our company’s most beautiful and functional sites.
While both products are currently in development — and we can’t reveal too many details yet — we sat down to chat with Katie and Shelly to get a sneak preview of their idea and learn about their and what they’ll do with the winnings.
How did you come up with your product idea?
Katie Stipanovich: My idea was something that will REALLY help our clients get unstuck as they plan for their products.
Shelly Morse: I walked into Pitch Day completely misunderstanding the prompt (whoops, lol). Little did I know that World of the Website was aspiring for bigger things. So I started thinking about what common difficulties I hear from clients. A big one immediately jumped to mind and I knew there had to be a better way.
What problem does it solve?
KS: I tried to start with a pain point that i’ve seen our clients work through when they are getting us their content.
SM: My main goal with building websites is for people to feel proud to show off their sites to the world. A really big part of that is imagery. People want to feel like their imagery authentically represents them, and often times that’s a really daunting task to curate or find online. This tool would support that common thread.
What were some of the highlights of the Pitch Day process?
KS: Just seeing what the others came up with and putting goofy easter eggs in our presentations.
SM: Permission to dream! I love that WOTW encourages this. We’re big on solving problems for clients (which is why a lot of us even started coding on Squarespace in the first place), so the creation of World of the Website feels like such a natural step for this team. Also loved hearing Graham from Squarespace Enterprise talk about his career journey and how his time at Squarespace came to be!
Why do you think your pitch won?
KS: I think that my solution was something that we could all relate to as we help clients prep.
SM: The hand-curated selection of Silicon Valley GIFs on every slide really sold it.
What are you going to do with your winnings?
KS: Put it towards a little staycation with my husband.
SM: You'll never know that I won, but there will be signs...(insert lots of dog photos).
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