Sunsetting a product is a strange milestone to celebrate. Yet here we are: fondly saying goodbye to Calculator Studio.
It was GRID’s original product - our attempt at building “the new face of spreadsheets” - a way to better communicate the insights and decision-making power of spreadsheet models. It never took off the way we intended, but it found a market we hadn’t anticipated: businesses building online calculators that let their buyers run the numbers - price, ROI, savings, energy consumption, carbon footprint, calories, even decide the right blinds and biking frames - before making a decision.
It had a good run: over 500 paying customers at the peak, and some 250,000 sign-ups along the way. (The Notion-embedding wave alone brought tens of thousands of enthusiastic users - which we later learned had no inclination to ever pay for anything :)
It never truly broke out. And lately it sits squarely on the train tracks for AI: all but the most complex calculators are within reach of a few prompts to an AI coding tool. I’ve written before about what those train tracks mean for SaaS.
But! From day one, Calculator Studio ran on something we built ourselves: a complete spreadsheet stack: viewer, editor, charting and - by now - the most sophisticated independent spreadsheet engine in the world. This turned out to be the real asset. Our pivot to being the best agentic spreadsheet stack is working and growing: that same technology now powers spreadsheet capabilities inside some of the most exciting AI products out there, including some household names.
To everyone who built a calculator with us over the years: thank you!
I’ve gotten to know so many amazing people through this product - users, customers, and genuine enthusiasts. We surely had our share of hard-core Calculator Studio fans.
That’s why this is a celebration: we’re switching off a product, but keeping everything it gave us - the lessons, the connections, and the technology that’s now a solid foundation for greater things to come.