Matt Mullenweg on WordPress, Open Source, and Building a Successful Tech Company

Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress and CEO of Automattic, joined the podcast to discuss his journey building WordPress and Automattic, his philosophy on open source software, and recent controversies in the WordPress community.

Origins of WordPress and Open Source Passion

Matt shared how he first got interested in open source as a teenager in Houston:

"I was a broke kid in Houston, Texas and my passions were jazz and economics. I would barter and trade - I'd build websites for local musicians in exchange for lessons. These websites exposed me to open source software."

He explained how this led to his passion for open source:

"Combining all this philosophy I studied, I felt that open source was actually the most important idea of our generation. If the founding fathers were around today I think they would be open source advocates. As more of our lives are influenced and controlled by the software we use, if we don't have fundamental freedoms attached to that software we're not truly free."

This philosophy drove Matt to get involved with early open source projects, eventually leading to the creation of WordPress:

"WordPress was actually a fork of an abandoned open source project called B2. The codebase actually started with something that was already out there that I was a user and contributor to. When it was abandoned, myself and Mike Little were one of like 4-5 different forks that started to continue it."

Building Automattic and WordPress.com

After dropping out of college and moving to San Francisco, Matt worked briefly at CNET before starting Automattic:

"I had this vision where instead of downloading the software and setting up a database and everything, we could make a SaaS version of WordPress. CNET didn't want to do it, so I left and started Automattic."

The idea was to complement the core WordPress software with commercial services:

"Things that run in the cloud like Akismet anti-spam, which is our machine learning AI anti-spam system, or Jetpack which is like iCloud for WordPress - does the backups and real-time sync and everything like that."

Automattic has since grown to over 1,700 people in 90 countries. Matt explained their distributed approach:

"We've actually been fully distributed and remote and asynchronous from the start, which I think is one of our superpowers."

The WordPress Ecosystem

Matt shared some stats on WordPress's massive scale:

"WordPress has grown to be over 40% of all websites in the world, which is 10x the number two which right now is Shopify at around 4%."

He explained how the open source nature of WordPress has been key to its growth:

"Because we have this flywheel of open source community, it has some positive flywheel effects when it takes off."

Matt also highlighted how Automattic's commercial products like WordPress.com have helped drive WordPress adoption:

"One of the things people don't necessarily appreciate as much about why WordPress has been so successful is because of Automattic and things like Akismet doing anti-spam or WordPress.com having a free version of WordPress that has introduced over 100 million people to the software in a way that you could just sign up for free."

Recent Controversies

Matt addressed some of the recent controversies and criticisms he's faced in the WordPress community, particularly around trademark issues with WP Engine:

"There's a company called WP Engine. By 2018 they got bought out by a private equity firm called Silver Lake. Since 2019, WP Engine has kind of changed a bit. They started using the trademark, they're offering something called WordPress - I refer to it as like a bastardized hacked up version of it. It's diluting our brand."

He explained that WP Engine was using WordPress branding in a confusing way:

"When we do surveys we'd find that 20-30-40% of people thought they were officially associated because how they were presenting using our logo and presenting the brand and everything like that was very confusing to people."

Matt said they tried to negotiate with WP Engine for 18 months before things came to a head:

"We kind of contacted them and said 'Hey you need a trademark license or something if you're going to use this.' We tried to negotiate something and had many different term sheets over the months offered and different things and they just kept kind of stretching it out."

This eventually led to Automattic blocking WP Engine's access to WordPress.org and a lawsuit being filed against Matt and Automattic.

Matt acknowledged the controversy has damaged his reputation in some circles:

"Previously like 1% of the world thought I was terrible and now I feel like it's up to like 4 or 5%. So it's still not the majority, but as you know something negative you feel seven times more than something positive."

However, he maintains they are in the right and felt compelled to stand up to protect WordPress:

"If you're really open and open source sometimes you have to stand up to bullies and you have to fight to protect your open source ideals otherwise people could take advantage of it in a way that ultimately can destroy everything you've created."

Acquisitions and Building a Tech Conglomerate

Matt discussed Automattic's approach to acquisitions, including high-profile purchases like Tumblr:

"We end up buying it, now people are like 'Oh you bought it for $3 million' but we bought it sort of taking on all liabilities including I think they were under investigation by the FTC, there were lawsuits, there's all this sort of stuff."

He explained their overall acquisition strategy:

"The vast majority of things we acquire, it's typically something that's done well and we want to accelerate it. Or sometimes acquihires where we're plugging it into one of our existing projects or we're taking the team and putting them on something we're already doing."

Matt highlighted WooCommerce as one of their most successful acquisitions:

"WooCommerce was a small company, I think 30-40 people based out of South Africa, and has obviously grown to - Automattic makes about half a billion dollars a year now and WooCommerce is the majority of that."

Building Community

Matt shared his philosophy on building the WordPress community:

"Don't just build a product, build a movement. To the extent that we've been successful I think it's that we give people something to believe in - a philosophy, a worldview."

He emphasized the importance of creating ways for people to get involved beyond just using the software:

"It's not just the software, it's also like how are the meetups, how are people getting together, what events are you running, how do people contribute, is there office hours or town halls."

Matt also highlighted how WordPress's plugin ecosystem has been key to its success:

"Our whole ecosystem of plugins and themes is part of what's made WordPress so successful. The core features of a CMS you can kind of write with a few developers in a few weeks, but to replicate those 60,000 plugins and themes - gosh, no one's done it. It's a huge moat."

Leadership Philosophy

Matt explained his approach to leading WordPress and why he's maintained control rather than handing it over to a board:

"WordPress not just remaining relevant but actually accelerating growth over huge technological shifts over the past two decades - that's been because sometimes we've had to make very unpopular decisions."

He gave the example of Gutenberg, WordPress's new block editor:

"If we had voted for whether we should do that or not, everyone would have voted against it or the majority would have. It was really just a few core people of us in the community that said 'Hey, this is the future and it's going to take 10 years to do and it's going to be a long bet, it's going to suck for the first 3-4 years.'"

Matt argued this kind of long-term thinking is enabled by having a strong leader rather than rule by committee:

"If you look at a lot of great companies, there's a board or whatever but ultimately there's an executive. Some of the most iconic companies of our generations are ones where the executive has retained some majority voting control."

However, he emphasized there are still checks and balances:

"The community could leave, they could fork the software, people could change. So you're 'in charge' quote unquote but you're also at service. It's a lot more like being a mayor than a CEO, in that you ultimately are accountable to the folks who are contributing and your users."

Future Plans

Matt shared some of Automattic's plans for the future, including migrating Tumblr to run on WordPress:

"Part of the vision that now we're executing on is actually we wanted to create a path from people using Tumblr to actually being powered by WordPress on the back end so Tumblr users could unlock themes, customization, plugins etc."

He's also excited about their new messaging product called Beeper:

"We added a new [mission] last year which is messaging. Relaunching in a few months, it's a product called Beeper which takes all your Telegram, Instagram DM, Signal, everything, brings it all into one app."

Matt sees this as an opportunity to work on something early-stage again:

"It's kind of fun to be working on something that's at the stage where WordPress was in like 2003-2004. WordPress is quite mature at this point, WooCommerce is kind of where WordPress was in like 2010, and then the Beeper stuff, the messaging stuff, is where we were in like 2003."

Key Takeaways

• Matt's passion for open source drove the creation of WordPress and has guided Automattic's approach
• WordPress now powers over 40% of websites, driven by its open source community and plugin ecosystem
• Recent trademark disputes with WP Engine have created controversy, but Matt feels compelled to protect WordPress
• Automattic has grown to a $500M/year business through strategic acquisitions and by complementing WordPress
• Matt believes maintaining control of WordPress, rather than handing it to a board, enables long-term thinking
• Future focus areas for Automattic include migrating Tumblr to WordPress and launching a new messaging product

Article created from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fves5chVZRA