Matt Mullenweg on the future of open source and why he’s taking a stand

[00:00] 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. Please put your hands together for Matt Mullenweg. Matt Mullenweg has been making some questionable moves recently. There's a lot going on with Matt and WordPress these days. 20 plus years of good sentiment burned in days. You were like a 100% beloved hero of open source and internet. And now you're like in this a lot of people don't like you. If you were kind of inside baseball with WordPress, it's actually a lot of people who have been unhappy with me over the years. [00:30] of the world thought I was terrible. And now I feel like it's up to like 4% or 5%. People that don't know what the hell's going on. What's just like the high level overview of what's going on? There's a company called WP Engine. By 2018, they got bought out by a private equity firm called Silver Lake. You know, since 2019, WP Engine has kind of changed a bit. They started using the trademark. They're offering something called WordPress. They refer to it as like a bastardized, hacked up version of it. It's diluting our brand. Why do you think so many people are looking at you as the bad guy? [01:00] seven times before Truth has time to get out of bed. [01:07] Today my guest is Matt Mullenweg. Matt is the co-creator of WordPress, which powers 40% of websites on the internet today [01:14] including whitehouse.gov. He's also the CEO of Automatic, which is valued at over $7 billion. [01:20] and owns products like WordPress.com, [01:23] Tumblr, WooCommerce, Gravitars, and Pocket Casts, [01:27] There is a lot of drama these days around Matt and WordPress and within the open source community, so I thought I'd have Matt on to address many of the criticisms head on that he hasn't addressed in other places, and also just get the full story on what's going on. We also chat about what incepted him to spend over half his life at this point on open source and creating WordPress, also why products like Llama are what he calls fake open source, and his perspective on AI and open source,

[01:57] means for the future and his approach for deciding what companies to acquire within automatic if you enjoy this episode don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or youtube also if you become an annual subscriber of my newsletter you now get a year free of notion and superhuman and perplexity pro and linear and granola check it out at lenny's newsletter.com with that i bring you matt mullenweg [02:23] This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're building a SaaS app, at some point, your customers will start asking for enterprise features like SAML authentication and SCIM provisioning. That's where WorkOS comes in, making it fast and painless to add enterprise features to your app. [02:40] Their APIs are easy to understand so that you can ship quickly and get back to building other features. Today, hundreds of companies are already powered by WorkOS, including ones you probably know, like Vercel, Webflow, and Loom. WorkOS also recently acquired Warrant, the fine-grain authorization service. Warrant's product is based on a groundbreaking authorization system called Zanzibar, which was originally designed for Google to power Google Docs and YouTube. [03:10] authorization checks at enormous scale while maintaining a flexible model that can be adapted to even the most complex use cases. If you're currently looking to build role-based access control or other enterprise features like single sign-on, SCIM, or user management, you should consider WorkOS. It's a drop-in replacement for Auth0 and supports up to 1 million monthly active users for free. Check it out at workos.com to learn more. That's workos.com.

[03:40] you [03:41] This episode is brought to you by Vanta, and I am very excited to have Christina Cassioppo, CEO and co-founder of Vanta, joining me for this very short conversation. Great to be here. Big fan of the podcast and the newsletter. Vanta is a longtime sponsor of the show, but for some of our newer listeners, what does Vanta do and who is it for? [04:11] certifications like SOC 2 or ISO 2701. Today, we currently help over 9,000 companies, including some startup household names like Atlassian, Ramp, and Langchain, start and scale their security programs, and ultimately build trust by automating compliance, centralizing GRC, and accelerating security reviews. That is awesome. I know from experience that these things take a lot of time and a lot of resources, and nobody wants to spend time doing this. That is very much our experience, [04:41] company to some extent during it. But the idea is with automation, with AI, with software, we are helping customers build trust with prospects and customers in an efficient way. And you know, our joke, we started this compliance company so you don't have to. We appreciate you for doing that. And you have a special discount for listeners. They can get $1,000 off Vanta at vanta.com/lenny, that's V-A-N-T-A.com/lenny for $1,000 off Vanta. [05:08] Thanks for that, Christina. [05:09] Thank you.

[05:11] Matt, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast. [05:17] Thanks. It's a big fan, long time listener, so happy to be on. [05:21] I'm a longtime fan. I've been wanting to get you on this podcast for so long, and this is such an interesting time to be chatting with you. There's a lot going on with Matt and WordPress these days, so it's really interesting. It's almost good that we waited a little bit to talk, so we're going to get into a lot of that stuff. But I want to start with just what is it that you do, Matt? What are all the things you're involved in? Give people a sense of just the things you're working on. [05:44] So first, when I was 19, I co-founded an open source project called Wordpress with Mike Little. And we started just blogging software, then became sort of a full site thing, and then became like a platform. [05:59] that really tons of stuff is built on. And now it's kind of transitioning into this cool WASM, can be embedded anywhere, run locally, or make mobile apps. It's really interesting seeing WordPress used as an engine for powering things I would say [06:14] don't even look like a website which is a [06:16] Kind of wild to me, but that's kind of the beauty of the open source. People do things with it that you don't expect. Ended up dropping out of college, moving to San Francisco, and then worked at CNET for a year as a product manager, actually. That's how they are. I want to talk about that, but go on. [06:29] And then, you know, had this vision where [06:32] Instead of downloading the software and setting up a database and everything, we made a SaaS version of WordPress. I pictured at CNET. They didn't want to do it, so I was like, "Okay, I got to do this." I left and started a company called Automatic. The idea was to create a

[06:46] Essentially, like complement the core WordPress software with some commercial services, things that run in the cloud. [06:51] Like Akisman Anti-Spam, which is our sort of machine learning. I guess you call it AI now, but like Anti-Spam System. Or Jetpack, which is like iCloud for WordPress. It does the backups and the real-time sync and everything like that. So that was 19 years ago. [07:08] So that's now grown to be... [07:11] you know, over 1700 people. [07:13] in actually 90 countries. So we've actually been fully distributed and remote and asynchronous from the start. [07:18] which I think is one of our superpowers. I actually wasn't the CEO in the beginning, but in 2014, so I guess 11 years ago, I became CEO. The original CEO was... [07:29] Well, I guess I was in the very beginning, but then I hired Tony Schneider to be CEO probably four or five months in. [07:34] And yeah, so that is a very full-time thing. And Automatic does a lot of products. That's WordPress.com, WooCommerce, which is open source Shopify, which is now over half our revenue. And then we have some really cool apps, so like Beeper, Day One, SimpleNote, Pocket Cast. We're trying to fill up your home screens with open web, open source things that are very privacy and user-centric. [07:59] So that, you know, running that company is is definitely like a full time job. [08:04] Uh-uh. [08:05] I still run WordPress.org and the WordPress project, so I'm the lead developer there. And so sort of manage all those. [08:12] releases in the community and the directories and all the sort of things we do on WordPress.org. There's this cool thing called OpenVerse we took over from Creative Commons, which is like a way you can find sort of open licensed images and audio and video.

[08:26] So basically, [08:27] If you notice a throughput through all these things, it's open source. [08:31] On the nights and weekends or side, a few hours a week, I do some angel investing. So I've done over 100 angel investments through an entity called Autry Capital. [08:40] If anything's in the WordPress space, I invest in it through Automatic. But if anything's a little more further afield, I do it through Autry Capital. I've done some really exciting investments there, everything from... [08:54] sort of name brands like Stripe and SpaceX, but also like it was in the seat of Calm or a lot of home automation stuff like Ring, August, SmartThings. [09:05] Just check out Audrey.co. It's got some fun stuff in there. Daylight Computer, which is one I'm very excited about right now. And I guess finally, I love San Francisco. So I have a... [09:15] co-owner of a cool grungy jazz club in North Beach called Keys with Simon Rowe. [09:21] And asso too. [09:23] Wednesday through Saturday night, you want to see some awesome live jazz, check out Keys. [09:28] Wow. Okay. You said too much. I get it now. Jazz Club, I was not aware of. I got to check this out. It's called Keys Club. [09:36] Yeah, Keys Jazz Bistro. It's over on Broadway. Columbus is kind of right around there. Amazing. That was new to me. Going back to automatic, I think people don't get the scale of this thing. So just to mirror back a few things and even add to what you've said, 1,700 people work there, 90 different countries. [09:53] Um, [09:54] Also, you didn't share this stat, something like 43% of the internet websites are

[10:00] build on WordPress, run on WordPress? Yeah, so [10:03] When we started, a lot of websites were built on custom CMSs, and there was a lot of fragmentation in the space. [10:09] By now, WordPress has grown to be over 40% of all websites in the world. [10:14] which is 10x to number two, which right now is Shopify. Right. They're like at 4%. I was looking at that list. They're around 4%, yeah. That's unreal. Yeah. [10:21] It used to be open source was the top three. Unfortunately, I do have a Drupal [10:26] Joomla and Drupal have fallen behind. And so now it's like Shopify, Wix, Spare Space. [10:32] are the top ones. But WordPress is still, you know, because we have this flywheel of open source community, its movements, you know, it kind of [10:41] has this, you know, like the open source, like Linux or Apache or Wikipedia, it has some positive flywheel effects when it takes off. [10:48] Awesome. Okay. And then there's a few other things you didn't mention. I want to get to this later, but I'll just mention now. You guys own Tumblr. You bought Tumblr, which I don't think a lot of people necessarily know. Sorry, I forgot to mention Tumblr. We're going to get into that. Yeah. Yeah, running a social network is definitely the hardest thing I've ever attempted. I thought we knew what we were doing because WordPress ran so much of the web. I thought every content moderation thing you could ever deal with, but social networks are a whole other ballgame.

[11:18] Fun fact number one is [11:20] You were super involved in the Bay Lights project. [11:22] Thank you. [11:23] I didn't know this. [11:24] For people that don't know what the Baylight, if you're in San Francisco, you definitely know what the Baylight project is, and I'm sure you love it. [11:30] For people that don't know what this is about, what is this project and how have you been involved? Why have you been instrumental to make this a thing? [11:37] Baylight's at... [11:38] There's two famous bridges in San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge, which is kind of the iconic one. There's actually the Bay Bridge, which is the workhorse of San Francisco. It has like the most, it's one of the busiest bridges in the country. And it's really beautiful from an engineering point of view. [11:53] And so kind of a [11:55] a vision between Ben Davis and artist Leo Villarreal, who's an amazing light artist, actually had his start at Burning Man, was to put [12:04] Gosh, I forget the number. I think 18,000 LEDs. [12:06] on the side of the bridge, like on all the cables, and create this really beautiful, gentle kind of like... [12:14] algorithmic [12:15] light piece, light art piece. And [12:20] The... [12:21] Ben Davis was dating an artist friend of mine and we were over and having drinks on my patio. We were looking at the Bay Bridge. I had this kind of thing where there's some lights at the top of the Bay Bridge. [12:30] I was like, oh, wouldn't it be cool if those lights were like Christmas lights and they could do patterns or something? You know, it's the lights to keep planes from hitting it. [12:36] I was like, "Oh, you could program that." [12:38] He was like, "Yeah." It was almost like that. [12:40] the social network thing where like a million is cool but a billion be really cool he was like you know that would be cool but what if we put the whole side of it and uh so that uh i was like oh cool and um sort of made an angel investment and that um

[12:54] that thing they hadn't raised anything or had there was i don't even think an entity at that point i was like you know to get you started [13:00] I forget what it was, 100 or 150K. So I gave him that first bit. And then it kind of blossomed into a thing. [13:07] And then sort of fast forward, I remember there's that timeline, but they were kind of at a... [13:12] the final bit of fundraise and they weren't able to close that last bit. [13:17] I actually mortgaged my condos and donated the last million, million and a half. [13:22] to finish out that project. [13:24] The Baylights were online for 10 years. The technology degraded, and so the environment's very harsh. So actually, we just completed a fundraise and are reinstalling the Baylights. [13:34] They were calling it Baylights 360. So now it'll be both sides of the bridge. [13:38] It'll be visible from also Oakland and the Treasure Island because the first version, the city was very worried about the drivers seeing the lights and it might distract them. So we had to angle them that you could only see it from San Francisco, which is... [13:51] was a compromise we didn't love, you know, because like, yeah, we love the East Bay and everything else like that, too. So new version is coming online. [13:58] Hopefully later this year in the fall. [14:00] And and also that that turned into a nonprofit called Illuminate, which I'm on the board of. [14:04] run by Ben Davis, who I mentioned previously, that does cool public art stuff around the city. So they're responsible for the [14:10] you know, the Grace Lights, all the JFK Boulevard stuff, where that's been has the murals and like the beer garden and all the chairs, that's all illuminated. So they do fun. [14:20] Their thing is radical public art. So the thing is, it's like art that needs to be free and accessible. And I think that's so important for San Francisco. Like we have great institutions, the SFMOMA, the Opera, et cetera, that have huge budgets, like $100 million a year.

[14:33] and illuminate for, you know, [14:35] literally one tenth of that [14:36] It's created something that millions of people can enjoy, you know, and I like to think that [14:43] Anyone along the Embarcadero? [14:45] You know, you might be going through a tough time. Obviously, we have [14:48] people who are struggling with mental health and homelessness and everything like that. But like maybe seeing a little bit of art can help [14:54] raise your soul a little bit. And that's how I think about philanthropy as well. Like, you need to work on the base issues, you know, the fundamentals at the bottom of Maslow's highly-grade needs. And then you also have to work on the things that, like... [15:07] Raise your soul a little bit. So, arts. [15:09] So I like that barbell approach to philhenchpy. [15:12] Elon has a great quote along those lines. You can't just work on solving problems all day. You need something inspiring to think about and to work towards. First of all, thank you for doing this. If you live in SF, you're like, this makes the city better, just having this around. I didn't realize you were involved in helping people. [15:27] Come up with the idea itself. I know that you did the mortgage at your house to make it possible. I can't take any credit for the idea. I had a Jason idea and they had a way cooler one with a real artist and everything like that. I was just happy to be a… It's like being an angel investor. You can support the entrepreneurs and the people who actually really do it. [15:49] Yeah, okay. And the other funny thing you said is about they were worried about the angle of the lights distracting people. What's funny is when I drove across the bridge, you can only see it. [15:56] when you're driving towards San Francisco looking backwards. So I'm like looking in my rear view mirror and the mirror turning around to like kind of and that's it feels more dangerous. Lights shining in my face. You know, they call it impossible works of art. There were like 13 agencies that had to sign off. They were worried the lights would distract birds or seals or environmental reviews. And it was really a.

[16:17] and [16:19] A lot of public bureaucrats and everyone had to make that happen. There was like 20 places where someone could have said no and it never would happen. So it's very inspiring to see the CD come together. [16:30] Also, San Francisco, I feel like it's entering a new chapter right now, going from the doom loop to the boom loop. I'm a big believer in the city. So much innovation has come here, from food. [16:41] The burrito, fortune cookies, all these sorts of things are from San Francisco. So like obviously all the tech innovation that we're all familiar with. It's kind of the city of the future. [16:50] And I don't know what it is in the water. [16:52] from the 60s till now, cultural innovations, things that happened and influenced the whole world, Burning Man, Grateful Dead, etc. That all starts in San Francisco. [17:01] So it's exciting to be here. This episode back, as they say on Twitter. Okay, someone very close to you told me that you're an excellent rapper. [17:10] I'm not going to ask you to wrap. [17:11] But if you ever want to answer any questions in rap form, feel free. [17:17] Oh, man, that would be fun. I've dreamed about being able to do a Q&A in Rhyme, but I don't think I'm that talented yet. I'm planting the seed. Okay, so I want to get into the... [17:30] all the drama that you're in this world in right now, but I want to first lay the foundation of how you got into this and where this all came from. So let's talk about just the origin story of you in open source. [17:39] You've been... [17:40] More than half your life you've been working on open source, you've been working on WordPress, specifically WordPress is such a [17:46] core community within the open source community. What's kind of the origin story of you becoming obsessed and, I don't know, open source-filled?

[17:56] I was a broke kid in Houston, Texas, and my passions were... [18:01] Jazz, you know, Houston has actually amazing music programs in the public schools. And so I was very fortunate to go to some of the best [18:12] civil arts programs, including my high school, called the High School for Performing Visual Arts, where Beyonce went, Robert Glasper, a lot of amazing folks went there. And so, [18:23] Music was a big part of my life. [18:25] And actually economics. So I had this fun teacher, Scott Roman, who... [18:30] created [18:32] Participate in our school in the Federal Reserve Challenge, which was run by... [18:37] The Federal Reserve that sets the interest rates and backs the national banking system and everything like that has this competition for high school students. It ended up being the first academic competition this art school ever won. [18:49] Yeah, first year we kind of... [18:51] Didn't get that far our second year. We went all the way to nationals. So I got to meet Alan Greenspan. Ben Bernanke was our judge. Um... [18:57] went to DC. So that was very, very exciting. [19:01] And so you'll be exposed to like us having great liberal arts education. You know, the ideas of Frederick Hayek, Agnes Smith, Alexander Hamilton, Ben Franklin, Thucydides, you know, all these sorts of things. [19:13] That philosophy really influenced me. [19:16] And you combine that with that music lessons were expensive, so we couldn't really afford them. So I would barter and trade. I'd build websites for local musicians in exchange for lessons. And so these websites, I would start to put software on like forums or different things. And that kind of exposed me to open source. So my father was also an engineer. He worked for oil companies and things, but his world was all Microsoft. It was all proprietary. And I was kind of grew up and...

[19:44] early days of the internet. So it was SlashDots and Jeffrey Zeldman talking about web standards and all these things like our [19:52] are really kind of the [19:53] the social milieu and zeitgeist that I grew up in. So I am [19:57] Combining all this philosophy I studied felt that like [20:02] Open source was actually the most important idea of our generation. [20:05] So, like if the founding fathers were around today, I think they would be open source advocates. [20:11] As you think about it, as more and more of a life's are changing, [20:15] influenced and actually controlled by the software we use. If we don't have fundamental freedoms attached to that software, [20:22] We're not truly free. [20:24] So. [20:25] you know, uh, [20:27] The WordPress is under a license called the GPL, which has four freedoms. [20:31] The freedom to use the software for any purpose so you can use it for anything whether I agree with you or not the terms of services you could do whatever you want with it. [20:39] the freedom to see how the software works, open up the hood, [20:42] See how it works? See every line of code? [20:45] You can audit it. Freedom to change it is the third freedom. [20:49] And then finally, the freedom to redistribute those changes so you can share them. And the GPL has a fun little hack where if you share them, you have to provide those same freedoms to who you share it with. [20:58] So let's call it a viral open source license. [21:00] as opposed to the MIT license, or some of the others that aren't. [21:04] Yeah, I just kind of decided that this was what I was going to devote my life to. [21:07] And, uh... [21:09] So that became getting involved with some early open source projects. WordPress was actually a fork of a abandoned open source project called B2.

[21:16] So the code base actually started with something that was already out there that I was a user and contributor to, kind of volunteer on the forums and contributed code. [21:23] and then when it was abandoned, um, [21:25] and myself and Mike sort of [21:27] We're one of like four or five different forks that started that kind of picked it up and tried to continue it for for for our own use and then later for a larger community. [21:35] It feels like a lot of people are coming around to exactly your worldview. I was just watching a video of Jack Dorsey talking about how we're just controlled by algorithms. We don't know how they work. [21:47] And we're not in control of our lives. Have you seen that video? [21:51] No, but I actually love that also some people who maybe made their first billion or whatever from proprietary software then come back. And it's so cool to see folks like… [22:04] Marc Andreessen or Bill Gurley, you know, be huge advocates for open source. I actually remember one of my early meetings with that. [22:11] I'm working in Drusen. [22:14] I didn't realize that at the time. I thought it was Tony Schneider and I were sort of fundraising, [22:20] Mark really grilled us. He's like, how can you build a business on open source? How can you be remote and distributed? [22:27] Like look around Silicon Valley, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun, every great company has had an office. Like, how are you going to build something that can change the Internet with people all around the world? And just had this long, like hour long debate. And I was like, we walked out of that. It's like, wow. [22:44] That was the worst meeting ever. They just hate everything we're doing.

[22:47] And then the next day they were like, hey, we're interested. I was like, what happened? I didn't realize that he had kind of this idea where he wanted to attack the ideas and see how we defended it. It was how they battle tested things. I guess... [23:02] Kind of like a Microsoft culture or whatever, where you really grill the idea. I just wasn't familiar with that. But it's so cool now that some of these folks that I've learned so much from are such good advocates for open source. [23:14] Yeah, it's so interesting. I just had the Community Notes team on the podcast, and that's an amazing example of open source. Meta is adopting it from Twitter. [23:25] Speaking of open source, one of the interesting, maybe most common ways people hear about open source these days is AI and AI models. [23:33] And there's a couple areas here. One is you wrote this really interesting post [23:37] where you talk about how meta [23:38] talks about. [23:39] LAMA is an open source project, but you called it a false profit. What is it about LAMA that isn't open source? What are people missing when they see LAMA and they're like, oh, NetMeta is amazing, open sourcing everything. [23:52] Lama you can obviously download and run locally and all these sorts of things, right? You have to use our SaaS service. However, there's a clause that [23:58] in it that says, "If you're above a certain threshold of monthly active users," I forget what it is, like, [24:04] It's big, it's like 750 million, so it's pretty high. [24:08] You need a license from them. [24:10] And so... [24:11] That does not give you the freedom to use the software for any purpose. Right. If at some point you have to ask for permission, [24:17] You're kind of at the whims of this company who you might...

[24:22] be aligned with, or you might [24:24] be an enemy with, you know, and also how do you define that? So, for example, [24:29] Like on WordPress, like our products don't have 750 million on that. [24:34] registered users. [24:36] but we reach billions of people per month in terms of visitors. So is that a [24:40] And how is that? [24:41] So there's just ambiguity there. [24:44] So I still think what they've done is amazing. And I like that they're releasing it. [24:48] and [24:49] I was very confused for why they insist on calling it open source because they... [24:53] Actually, Meta's been a huge open source contributor. React, they've had incredible improvements to the PHP engine, which we benefit from a lot. So they're actually a big open source contributor. I think Mark Zuckerberg. [25:04] really understands and loves open source too. [25:08] My best guess now, I don't have any inside information here, but there's [25:11] I think they're calling it open source because there's some European regulation. [25:15] about open source versus proprietary AI models. So I think they're [25:20] I think it might be like a weird regulatory thing, because clearly they understand this is an open source. So when I wrote the blog post, I was just kind of confused and thought like, oh, maybe if I like [25:29] you know, get this message out there, they'll change. And, um, [25:33] And then when they didn't, I was like, oh, there must be something else going on. I think it might be this regulatory thing. We were actually a big part of actually many, many years ago. [25:41] I think it was React that they were [25:43] doing something with the licensing or like a patent restriction on. And the WordPress community actually got meta to change that. [25:49] and reverse uh something they were doing to lock it down so um

[25:54] Yeah. [25:55] I consider... [25:57] My role as an open source advocate to actually be my coach, [26:01] primary thing. [26:02] you know. [26:03] And it's very much my life mission. I hope to work on WordPress the rest of my life, but also just open source and journal. So I also support Drupal and Joomla. Anything else that's open source, I'm going to be a supporter of because I think when people choose that versus proprietary software, we're increasing the freedom and liberty in the world. [26:24] And so I would love that every sort of... [26:26] Like it's incumbent on us that make open source [26:30] to make a better user experience, to make a better product so that people choose it. And then, you know, the world becomes more free, not less free. [26:36] It also feels it's important to you to [26:38] I don't know why open source washing like avoid people using the term when it's not true. And it's interesting in this case that like the thing that makes it not truly open source is the limit. There's a limit where you can no longer use it the way you want. Is that the issue? [26:53] Yeah. So there's actually like an open source OSI. There's like a formal definition for like what makes an open source license. And there's actually many dozens of open source licenses and sort of public domain licenses and other things. So... [27:10] And it's also their stance that this is not an open source license. [27:14] Something else that I think is really interesting when it comes to AI and open source, you wrote about this and it blew my mind. Such a good point that the code that [27:23] these models were trained on was

[27:26] open source code because that's all they have access to. They don't have Windows code. They don't have Shopify code. And what a cool, I don't know, another success story slash, I don't know, I guess, how do you feel about that? All these AI models are trained on code you wrote in. [27:41] in the open source community. [27:42] That's beautiful. It's one of the safest things to train on, right? Because the license of open source very explicitly allows that. [27:48] You know, I also like to think about [27:51] I have some window where my creative output is useful to society. [27:55] And if you fast forward like 50 or 100 years, [27:59] i do believe that the utility for proprietary software eventually approaches zero [28:04] So like when we're sending people to Mars, [28:07] the operating system of the rockets and the devices and everything like that is not going to be built on the Windows NT kernel. [28:15] as amazing feet of engineering that like that proprietary kernel is. It's going to be built on an open source kernel, you know, Linux or BSD or something like that. And so like if you want to be part of something that sort of becomes the fabric of humanity's foundation, like things that… [28:30] allows a Cambrian explosion of things built on top of it, a renaissance of ideas. [28:36] You want to be involved with open source. [28:37] And so I really hope that more and more people, I'm a little bit of an evangelist here, you know, I'm a missionary where I really want to encourage more and more people to consider. [28:47] at least making part of their time, even just a few hours a week, you know, contributing to open source because [28:52] could be part of something that [28:54] It has a huge impact. [28:56] And it's fun, especially if you're like a younger developer or designer or DM or whatever. Like...

[29:02] You can't walk up to Facebook and change their homepage or say, I'd like to change this feature. [29:08] But you could come to an open source project, you know, some of which have, you know, hundreds of millions of users. You could go to WordPress or... [29:16] you know, uh... [29:17] gosh, Bitcoin. Or all these things are open source, Chromium, Firefox. And you could actually [29:25] change a feature or project management things or change the design or improve it. And that's, I think, really, really special. And, uh, [29:32] sort of the thrill for me of like knowing [29:35] that code I wrote is now executing [29:39] you know, millions of times per second in millions of servers around the world. That kind of thrill, that high is like kind of when I first had my first open source contribution, [29:49] like such a thrill and i've been sort of chasing that and enjoying that ever since [29:53] Say someone wants to actually do this. Where do they go? How do they do this? Do they just pick up a project, go to wordpress.org, and here's how you contribute? What's the next step there? [30:02] Yeah, pick a project that you use or like. I mean, that's obviously a nice one. [30:06] For WordPress, we have this, it's called make.wordpress.org. It's where we make WordPress. [30:14] And there's different groups. There's accessibility. There's accessibility. [30:18] design, there's the core code, there's [30:21] There's plugins, there's all sorts of ways. So really, whatever your talent is, there's people who translate, there's people who do support, there's people who write documentation, there's people who organize events. [30:30] So whatever you feel like your talent for the world is, either that you have or that you want to cultivate,

[30:38] I mean, I learned how to code while building WordPress. Basically, I didn't have too much formal training there. So it's a great way to up-level your skills as well and work with some of the best people. [30:50] developers and others in the world. [30:53] This also made me think about AI agents are coming around, Devin and all these AI-driven bots. [30:57] Coding agents. [30:59] You have a prediction at when most of the code [31:02] contributed to the open source projects will be [31:05] Devon and AI agent such type projects. [31:09] I think Google talked about 25% of their code or characters committed are now sort of AI-assisted. And [31:17] And they're probably on the bleeding edge. I don't know how much of WordPress's code right now is AI assisted or something like that. [31:26] Wow. [31:27] But I think over the next five years, it definitely approaches... [31:31] Maybe a majority. [31:32] Thank you. [31:33] And I'm actually very, very excited. So, you know, one of the big challenges that we have as a very open platform is we have this open plugin and theme architecture. So the 60,000 plugins and themes. Yeah. [31:45] And the way WordPress works is these plugins themes can modify every single part of the code, so you can really customize everything. [31:51] However, many of these plugins and themes don't have the same sort of robust... [31:55] security and review process that core has so that's where when you hear about security issues with wordpress it's [32:01] very rarely in core anymore. We haven't had a remote exploit in [32:05] knock on wood, I think five years, six years, something. But in the plugins, it can be somewhat more frequent. And so one thing I'm very, very excited about

[32:15] the next year or two is actually more automated scanning. [32:17] Because obviously that code base is [32:19] is so many tens of millions, maybe over 100 million lines of code at this point. It's impossible for humans to review that. [32:26] So we kind of rely on developers to... [32:29] review that and manage. And of course we have like bug bounties and everything to that. So when things get reported, we fix it quickly. But I can't wait for more automated scanning there. And I think that could vastly upgrade the security of open source. [32:40] The other thing that's really exciting is like right now, [32:43] You see people building apps and stuff, and it's just sort of custom-generated code. [32:48] But I think the next generation of these models, or sort of the next layer there is probably this [32:53] You know, [32:54] As everyone knows, just writing the code is just one part of it. It's maintaining it. [32:59] That really becomes the life cycle of it. And Stuart Brand's new book is all about maintenance, right, which I'm very excited about. [33:06] He's publishing, I think, with Strike. And it's actually kind of open source. He's open sourcing the book. So as you can see it being written online. But anyway, to go back, I think that if... [33:17] And they're starting to do that is when the open source model is you say like, hey, build me a website. [33:21] It actually installs WordPress. [33:23] and then builds on top of that, and then customizes on top of that, then you get for free [33:28] that core engine that's always being audited and updated and getting, you know, past key support or whatever the new things are sort of continuously. And then your custom stuff can be on top of that, which I think is actually a lot more powerful than sort of building something proprietary custom from the ground up. [33:43] I love this book concept of maintenance. My sister's partner has this quote that I've always come back to: "Life is maintenance.

[33:52] You basically, like, everything you acquire and deal with, like, you get a generator for your house, you have to maintain that forever now, you get, like, [33:59] You know, this backpack, okay, now you have to maintain this thing, keep a nice jacket. Everything is maintenance. Everything in your life is just maintenance. And I wonder if that's what the book's about. [34:09] Well, that's why I think technical debt is one of the most interesting concepts [34:14] There's so many companies as well that maybe have big market caps, but I feel like they might have billions or tens of billions of dollars of technical debt. [34:22] You can cast you in the interface or how their products integrate with themselves for things. And I think about that a lot in our own company. [34:28] We definitely have some products. Also, a little bear is coming on because you have such great product people. We have some variable quality around some of our things right now. If you check out Gravitar right now, I'm actually really proud of it. It's, I think, a really great user experience, very slick. [34:43] But there's like parts of... [34:45] Well, I always say I'm the unhappiest WordPress user in the world. So there's parts of WordPress and WordPress.com that I'm a little embarrassed and ashamed of. Like we kind of have to... [34:53] We have a really large surface area that we cover with relatively few people. And so there's some parts we haven't looked at in a little while that we need to get around to. And it's a big focus for us this year is actually kind of going back to basics, back to core, and improving all of those kind of nooks and crannies of the zero experience. And also ruthlessly editing and cutting as much as possible. [35:13] Because we've just launched a lot of stuff over the past 21 years that maybe is not as relevant today or doesn't need to be there. [35:20] That sounds like excellent work for this AI agent of the future. That's coming soon.

[35:26] There's one other area I want to mine... [35:28] And that's community, community building, building this ecosystem that you've created around WordPress. It might be the most, one of the most successful, biggest communities on the Internet, but [35:41] I'm curious just what lessons you've learned about what it takes to build [35:44] a successful community. [35:46] online especially. [35:48] This is probably influenced by economics and jazz, right? So, and economics is all about systems thinking, right? And what are the incentive structures? [35:57] of how you set something up. [36:00] And then jazz is all about collaboration. [36:03] Right? So if there's something unique I have for your audience, I would say it's don't just build a product, build a movement. [36:11] And to the extent that we've been successful, I think it's that we give people something to believe in. [36:16] philosophy, our worldview. [36:19] Even silly things like, you know, we had this tagline in the footer of the WordPress.org when we started. It's still there. It says, code is poetry. Yeah. [36:27] This idea that we're not just writing code, we're trying to create something that [36:31] can have elements. We name every WordPress release after a jazz musician. [36:35] for the past 60 releases or so. So those sorts of things, bringing a little art and soul [36:41] and some fun into it as well. It doesn't have to be serious all the time. I think, you know, they can give something to believe in and work on and aim towards. That's a [36:53] more than just a paycheck or more than just the base utility of the software.

[36:58] Um, [36:59] So, [37:00] It's not just... [37:01] software, it's also like [37:04] How are the meetups? How are people getting together? What events are you running? Are there forums? How do people contribute? Is there office hours or town halls? I do a lot of Q&A. So what are the things you're doing around the software that's allowing people to get involved, that's inviting contributions, that's allowing people to build on top of it? I've studied platforms quite a bit like Microsoft and others. [37:26] And so our whole ecosystem of plugins and themes... [37:29] is part of what's made WordPress so successful in the mode that we have. [37:32] The core features of a CMS is [37:35] You can kind of write with a few developers in a few weeks or something. Like, it's kind of not, you know, it's basically current operations. [37:43] But to replicate those 60,000 plugins and themes, gosh. [37:46] no one's done it. It's a huge moat. And, uh, [37:51] And proprietary services can create platforms. Shopify has a third-party ecosystem and things like that. [37:56] But it's never a true platform and not a true platform. [38:00] It's when your ecosystem makes more money than the core does. [38:04] And so many times, whether it was the Facebook page, [38:07] I'm putting that in air quotes, or the Shopify platform, companies build on it and then they get the rug pulled out for them after them. [38:14] because they're too successful. And then the sort of thing you're building on decides, oh, we want that money, or we want that growth. And they sort of... [38:21] change the API or remove your access or, you know, [38:24] There's so many examples of this, especially on like [38:27] I think Facebook and Shopify and others where people got too successful and all of a sudden they knock on the door and say, oh, that's a mighty nice app you have there.

[38:35] We'd love to offer you some warrants when we own a bunch of your company or we're going to shut it off or, you know, those sorts of things. [38:42] And again, [38:44] you don't have freedom unless you're building on open source. That's why more and more companies and people are choosing. [38:49] if they're going to build a business on top of something else, [38:52] If you build on open source, you have that guarantee. [38:55] even if I [38:57] You know, I grew devil horns and became evil and automatic decided to know, you know, whatever. Like, yeah. [39:02] WordPress would still belong just as much to you as it would to me. People can fork the code. They can still own it. They can still build on top of it. So those things, I think, are... [39:11] Yeah, really important. [39:13] What a segue to all of this drama that's swirling around you these days. I think a lot of people do feel like there's devil horns that have appeared. And so I'm excited to dig into this stuff. [39:23] I find that every time you go on a podcast these days, if [39:27] We don't get into this. Everyone's just like, "Why is Matt not answering these questions? Let's get into the hard stuff." So I'm going to ask you some hard questions. For people that don't, [39:38] know what the hell's going on. They're like, what are you even talking about? Or just have a sense. Something is swirling with WordPress and Matt. I don't know what's going on. [39:45] What's just like the high-level overview of what's going on? [39:48] Yeah, so to set it, [39:50] You can get WordPress from WordPress.com or us, but also you can get WordPress from dozens of other hosts. The biggest in the world are GoDaddy, GoDaddy.com. [39:59] Hostinger, New Fold. It's not the biggest, but it is in the top 10 or something. It has about 700,000 WordPress installs. There's a company called WP Engine.

[40:08] In 2019, WPN just started as like very WordPress-y. [40:13] oriented and they contributed a lot to the community and everything like that. They're very respectful about, you know, distinguishing themselves from core. Some people really realized it wasn't officially associated and everything. [40:24] But in 2019, they got bought out by a private equity firm called Silver Lake. [40:29] And anyone who follows business, when private equity [40:33] buy something. [40:35] There's some good ones, but there's also many, many stories about how they can... [40:39] really kind of hollow things out, you know, really optimize our profits, become user hostile, [40:44] um, [40:45] I actually recently read a story where one of the reasons there was a shortage of fire trucks in these LA fires. [40:51] was that the fire truck manufacturers... [40:53] have been kind of rolled up by a private equity firm [40:55] and they've been raising prices and like their supply constraint and things like that. So there's literally like a shortage in fire trucks right now because of private equity. [41:02] Of course, if you look at health care or other things like this, so many examples of a private [41:07] Equity can really [41:08] I think, be one of the darker parts of capitalism. [41:11] So, you know, since 2019, WP Engine has kind of changed a bit. [41:16] and they really stopped contributing to core and they started using the trademark [41:23] in a [41:24] in a way that was very confusing in the marketplace. [41:28] And, you know, particularly in the past, [41:31] year, year and a half or so. [41:32] which is getting a lot of support. [41:34] for requests for WP Engine. And when we do surveys, we find that [41:38] 20, 30, 40% of people thought they were officially associated because how they were using our logo and presenting the brand and everything like that was

[41:46] Very confusing to people. And as you know, if you don't protect your trademark, you lose it. [41:50] and also the version of WordPress that they were offering, [41:53] actually wasn't our core vision of the functionality of WordPress. So to save money, they were actually turning off features like revisions. [42:00] So a cool part about WordPress that actually is one of my favorite features is every [42:04] change to every single poster page is saved forever. [42:07] Just like Wikipedia. [42:08] So, [42:09] If you make a mistake, you can always undo it. [42:12] And of course, as you know, like building a great product, that sort of user safety of an undo. [42:16] is so critical. [42:17] Now obviously you have to store these revisions, so it takes up more database space. [42:22] Now, it's trivial. It's megabytes. So on modern databases, it's not that big a deal. But the same money, they actually turned us off. [42:28] So they broke the undo feature in WordPress to essentially save money. [42:32] And so you have this thing where they're offering something called WordPress. [42:35] It's kind of... [42:36] I think I refer to it as like a bastardized, hacked up version of it. It's diluting our brand. And then it's also people think it's official. So even close friends of mine were like, oh, yeah, I signed up for this thing. I thought I was supporting you. [42:48] And... [42:49] Thank you. [42:50] So it's came to a head. So past 18 months, they've also, you know, we kind of contacted them and say, hey, you need a trademark license or something like if you're going to. [42:58] use this or change how you're doing things. [43:01] And, uh, [43:03] you know, [43:04] kind of 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. [43:12] And I said, what's going on here? [43:15] I think part of what was going on is last year they tried to sell the company. So private equity usually holds things for like five to seven years. So they were kind of five years into this. They tried to shop it around and sell it.

[43:24] They weren't able to find a buyer. They said, well... [43:26] They don't have any IP, and it feels like they're using a trademark, so they're going to have trouble with you. They don't have a license and things like that. So, yeah. [43:35] While they were negotiating with us, it appears they were also preparing this lawsuit against us. [43:41] So, [43:42] Again, I've been very fortunate in my business career that [43:45] um [43:47] We've invested in dozens of companies. We've acquired lots of things. Yeah. [43:52] I [43:54] By and large, 99% of the time, wow. [43:58] People I've dealt with in business have been ethical, straightforward, honest. [44:02] I haven't really faced any like bold-faced lying or duplicitous behavior. [44:07] Very, very rarely, you know, people who just, you know, say one thing and do another or [44:12] fraudulent labor behavior. [44:15] But I think that was happening here. And so I also just wasn't prepared for it. I was thinking I was a little naive and kind of didn't realize what was going on for a while. So it came to a head. And at WorkCamp US in September, I was like, "Okay, well, if you're still not going to [44:30] like even agree to negotiate, you know, um, [44:35] I'm going to give this presentation about how I think both private and equity has messed up a lot of open source [44:41] projects in the past, and how in particular, Adobe Banjin has done some very [44:47] bad or evil things. And, uh, and, [44:50] And they were like, okay, go for it. So I did the presentation. [44:54] I think it was on a Thursday.

[44:56] for friday kind of spicy people are like oh can't believe you did that and uh [45:01] And on Monday, they launched this with Quinn Emanuel. [45:05] which is kind of the baddest, nastiest law firm. It's like who Elon uses when he sues people. [45:10] launched this [45:12] big multi-million dollar lawsuit against both me personally [45:16] and WordPress.org, so like the WordPress community, and Automatic. [45:20] And, um, [45:21] And also, you know, they're spending millions of dollars a month on both – [45:24] lawyers and PR. [45:26] So they're doing, you know... [45:29] If you read, oh gosh, who was the celebrity that they were recently talking about this? Like the dark PR stuff? Where they're like boosting things on social networks? And... Blake Lively, yeah, yeah. [45:38] So all that stuff is happening. So there's and I weren't, you know, people I think in the presentation, I say, hey, there's going to be a smear campaign against me internally in the company. I was like, hey, they're going to dig up everything that's ever happens. [45:52] Anything bad anyone's ever said to me is going to all of a sudden become like a news item. [45:56] And I would [45:57] And that has happened. It's been true. So right now, there is a portion of the Internet that does think I have devil horns and everything. [46:06] Um, [46:07] Fortunately, this is not my first rodeo. I know a lot of people think like, "Oh, Matt was nice for 20 years and then got mean." [46:13] One thing, if you're really open and open source, sometimes you have to stand up the bullies and you have to fight to protect your open source ideals. Otherwise, people could take advantage of it. [46:21] in a way that ultimately can destroy... [46:23] uh everything you've created so this is probably the fourth time the internet has decided i'm the main character or or really evil and uh

[46:33] The previous ones we don't remember anymore. It's Hot Nacho or the Easter Massacre of themes or like these other things that [46:38] that aren't even on my Wikipedia page anymore. But those are your incidents. Those weren't like historical battles. [46:46] No, no, these are things that, yeah, I was involved in. That's cool names. Including some things I had screwed up. Like Hot Nacho was definitely screwed up on my end very early in the WordPress side, but... [46:55] Wow, okay, I'm not going to follow those threads, but those are great names. [47:25] productive. Meetings start with everyone on the same page and end early. Problem solved, time saved. We know that everyone isn't a one-take wonder when it comes to recording videos, so Loom comes with easy editing and AI features to help you record once and get back to the work that counts. [47:42] Save time, align your team, stay connected, and get more done with Loom. Now part of Atlassian, the makers of Jira. Try Loom for free today at loom.com slash lenny. That's L-O-O-M dot com slash lenny. [47:58] So you mentioned this talk you gave at WordCamp, and you said at the beginning of the talk, like, I'm...

[48:03] Oh, no, afterwards, you were like, I was really nervous to give this talk, and obviously... [48:08] you can see why just like what what finally convinced you this was time was it just [48:13] to go, as you described, scorched earth nuclear. Was it like WordCamp is coming up and this is the moment to go public with this? Was there something else that kind of crossed the line? [48:23] It was a unique opportunity because we were [48:26] Essentially saying that paid. [48:28] WP Engine isn't going to be allowed to sponsor WordCamps anymore. They're not going to be like a... [48:33] Because we, again, up to that point, really done everything to bring them in and have to be part of the community. So I really had to also explain to our community, like, hey, why we're going to be excluding this company. [48:44] that a lot of people saw as doing good. If you go to WP Engine website, they have whole pages about how much they contribute and give back and how they do kind of [48:53] green wash or open source wash a lot of what they do. [48:55] So all the marketing branding was around this positive stuff. [48:59] And so I was like, hey, we need to just explain this case. [49:03] Yeah, again, my defaults. [49:06] And how we've worked with, by the way, every other company in the WordPress space. [49:09] many of which are much, much larger and make sometimes billions more in revenue than WP Engine. [49:15] is collaborative. So like if there's a trademark violation, usually it's not even lawyers get involved. It's just like there's an email. We have a conversation. We do a call. We talk about it. [49:24] you know, um, [49:25] That's how things get resolved, and that's my default. I'm a lover, not a fighter. [49:31] And that's why this thing doesn't happen very often. I like to say that, yes, if I was

[49:37] of WordPress community or whatever was doing this like every year every couple months and [49:41] Yeah, you should worry about it. But it kind of happens like every like 10 years. So. [49:45] So if I could mirror back the issues that you ran into, and I want to go through this a little bit more, the problems you had with WAP Engine in this case. One is they were using the trademark. [49:54] both WordPress and WooCommerce. [49:57] without license and they're just abusing it, confusing people. [50:00] A lot of people thought WP Engine was actually automatic and WordPress official. They weren't contributing to the project. They were just making basically a bunch of money and not doing the work off the company they bought, and they're just kind of hollowing it out, as you described. [50:15] And then they're also cutting corners, making the product worse, and that kind of reflects on the whole brand of WordPress. [50:22] That's a great summer, yeah. Awesome. I'm curious just like which of those three or is it something even else that most bothered you about this? Like what's just like this is the thing that's eating me? And if I had to guess, it'd be like damaging the legacy potentially of this thing you've worked on for most of your lives. [50:41] Maybe it's that. Maybe it's just taking advantage of the community. [50:44] uh just like what's the thing that you think is the root of this just like uh it just this needs to stop [50:49] Well, I guess the one thing I'd add to your list was [50:52] As this was happening, they were... [50:54] pretending to good faith negotiate. [50:57] And in fact, [50:59] At one point, the executive, we were talking about her joining Automatic and running WordPress.org. I think when she thought WP Engine was going to sell, she was thinking about what was next.

[51:11] Yeah, a lot of this stuff was, I think that duplicitous behavior also kind of forced this to an age more than even those other things that you mentioned. There's lots of companies that don't contribute back. And it's not as... [51:22] Take it. [51:23] deal. [51:25] But yeah, the legal issue was definitely the trademark thing. So, push it to the edge. I [51:32] the magnitude [51:34] have the issue. Maybe they would [51:36] refer to themselves as WordPress engine and client meetings and other things. They were very cavalier about how they would imply their association with the project. [51:46] Obviously, as you can tell on socials, a lot of people are just really upset and a lot of people blame you. There's just like I said, every time you're on a podcast or Twitter, people are just like, Matt. [51:56] What about this? Why this sucks? Why are you doing this? And I want to go through some of those things, but just... [52:00] Not many people go through like, like I think you were like a 100% beloved hero of open source and internet. And now you're like in this, a lot of people don't like you. [52:11] Just as a human, just what is that? How do you work through that? How do you deal with that? What's that been like? [52:17] You know, if you were kind of inside baseball with WordPress, [52:19] It's actually a lot of people who have been unhappy with me over the years. And like when we introduced something like Gutenberg, you know, people hated it. Actually, when we introduced a visual editor, people hated it. These are huge controversies in the WordPress history. And when, you know, there actually hasn't been a fork or WordPress around all this latest stuff. But there was when we introduced Gutenberg. It's one called Classic Press. [52:40] where people actually forked the software.

[52:42] Wow. [52:43] So how I would describe it is previously like 1%. [52:48] of the world thought I was terrible. [52:51] And now I feel like it's up to like four or 5%. So it's still like not the majority. But as you know, something negative, you feel seven times more than something positive. [53:02] And... [53:03] and [53:04] And when people are [53:06] angry with you, they're more likely to like [53:09] It's kind of like restaurant reviews or whatever. They're more likely to leave a bad review than a good review. And the people who... [53:16] WordPress [53:18] 98% of all the core developers have stayed and contributed and are working on the next version and are supportive and all these sorts of things. [53:28] And part of the reason these folks are so good is they don't spend all their time on Twitter or Reddit arguing with folks. [53:34] And also the arguments could be very frustrating because people don't engage in good faith. They don't really change their mind when new facts are. [53:41] are introduced. And so you kind of [53:45] I've done my best, actually, because I, you know, from the open source side, I'm really used to engaging with things. [53:49] And I think that's been one thing I've learned from this is like, uh, [53:52] in some forums, it doesn't matter how you engage. [53:56] And especially if you have like [53:58] bots or other things running there, I'd leave comments on Reddit [54:01] It immediately get like 40 down votes. I'm like, hey, [54:04] This is an article about me, and I'm... [54:07] adding a fact to the thing like why is it getting downvoted this is very relevant to the discussion but it's literally hidden so like when you see that thread you have to click like three or four times to see the comment i had left and so it can really kind of change the uh perception

[54:21] And then when you read these things... [54:23] Um, [54:24] I think it's just very human nature. Even folks very close to me, if you read a thread and it's all super negative, [54:30] It's hard to... [54:32] to not be influenced by that because we're social creatures. [54:35] So 100%. [54:36] Now, the good news is I've had lots of [54:39] It's sort of like [54:40] Credibility waited. [54:42] Um, [54:43] the support from, you know, [54:45] people like Mark Benioff or [54:47] other open source leaders or the core people in WordPress, Viteas, Mary Hubbard, [54:53] all the core committers [54:55] The international community actually, like just in Japan. [54:58] They don't care about this stuff. And so these are actually, if you look by number of commits and lines of code and everything like that, the folks who actually [55:05] are most crucial in WordPress. [55:07] I feel like that's been a good balance as well for me because there are days where I'm like, gosh, [55:12] Am I an idiot? Or, you know, it could be really down, like reading all these things. [55:17] So that is part of what allows me to balance and get back to that sort of positive, optimistic space that I think you need to be in to change. [55:24] to do great software and great work. [55:27] Yeah, the internet can be brutal. Let me go through a couple of specific things that people pointed out because I think you've been on a lot of podcasts and people haven't asked you these questions. And I think a lot of people are just like, "But Matt, what about this? This is really bad." So let me just ask you a couple of things here. One is there's just like a frustration in the community around the instability [55:46] that this has just caused in the WordPress community. I'll read you a couple of quotes. [55:50] Real people are receiving fewer projects on WordPress because C-suite or C-wordpress is unstable because of this feud. And I work at Enterprise, and we're very concerned about the stability of this platform on our projects.

[56:01] Just thoughts on that and the impact that is had on the community. [56:05] Yeah, I think this is until this gets resolved, which by the way, I hope it is soon. [56:09] And I think it's... [56:11] there's no business reason for this to continue. Like I really hope that they, you know, come to a settlement or something. We're ready. They could end this tomorrow. They wanted to, that'd be vision could. So, um, [56:21] We can't. We're just defending right now. So, you know, it's really incumbent on them. [56:26] All of our competitors, by the way, are like, great. [56:29] WordPress, the king on the hill, all of a sudden we can use this. And so there's also not just from [56:37] WVN engine, but also from all the competitors to WordPress and all the people who would love to capture server users or market share. You know, they're really leaning into this. So, yeah. [56:45] I've seen white papers. I've seen all sorts of things where people talk about this. [56:49] We're actually in the next couple of days going to publish something really cool on the WordPress on our blog, though, that shows like if you actually look at the numbers, like the activity, number of commits, plugin updates, downloads, installs of WordPress since September 20th when this all started. [57:03] It's quite healthy. And so I'm not saying that there isn't examples of where someone lost a project or something like that. I'm sure it's happened. [57:11] You know, the Internet's big. WordPress has so many millions of users and developers and everything that you're going to get some examples. But by the numbers, [57:20] Things are actually quite healthy. [57:23] In some ways, it's not that there's no press is bad press. It's raised the awareness of WordPress quite a bit. So people who haven't talked about WordPress in years are now like, oh,

[57:31] Let's talk about it. And so a little bit of drama, I think, [57:35] I wouldn't do this all the time, but a little bit can be a good thing. [57:38] Okay, so another one of the most common frustrations I've seen on the internet, people complaining, is around the trademark. I don't know all the details, but my understanding is there's kind of a [57:48] You move the trademark to be owned by the foundation. [57:52] and Automatic had exclusive rights to use the trademark. [57:55] And I think people are like, oh, was it? I thought it was the foundation owned it, but maybe Matt still owns it. [58:00] and then you're trying to monetize it, [58:02] through this agreement WMP Engine. Is there anything you can share there that'll make people feel and see your side of the story? [58:10] Yeah, this is totally fair because it's complicated. [58:13] But people are saying like, [58:15] This has all been very public and documented on the Internet from the beginning. So... [58:22] WordPress.org has always been me personally. [58:25] And I think because it's [58:28] Part of the reason we started there is [58:29] Dot-com was not available. So we started so like that's why we started on the dot org and things like that but I think people also assume dot org means nonprofit or something and I [58:41] That's sometimes true, but it's not always. It's not a requirement of the .org domain. [58:45] Then when I found it automatic and when we did register the trademark, that actually was registered under automatic. So it used to be for the first [58:53] you know five years of the project or whatever that [58:55] Automata just owed everything outright. [58:58] I [58:59] and [59:00] Again, I had investors and a board, and that was –

[59:04] under control of that. [59:06] Now, as Automatic became more successful, I was able to consolidate some voting rights and other things. [59:12] and at least later advocate. Also, remember, I was like 21 when all this was happening. So it's not like... [59:18] maybe the most savvy about legal stuff or didn't always have the best advice. So later as I learned more, I was like, oh, [59:24] you know, [59:25] I want to actually take this out of the company. [59:28] and create a nonprofit. [59:30] And so we ended up creating a nonprofit. Now the rules around 501.3 non-profits around the IRS are actually very strict. So that's also something else people... [59:40] assume is like, oh, doesn't the nonprofit run the software? [59:43] And we applied for that originally and it was denied by the IRS. [59:47] So we actually weren't able to put WordPress.org [59:50] or the software itself under the nonprofit. [59:55] But we were able to have sort of an educational purview. So what was eventually approved was sort of like running the meetups and other things for WordPress, doing educational stuff. We sponsor a lot of like learn to code or, you know. [1:00:06] running workshops and other things [1:00:08] countries, we have this cool thing called do action where we'll do like, you know, a weekend where we take a bunch of nonprofits and build websites for them and, you know, stuff like that. So the nonprofit does a lot of exciting things there. And then also negotiated with the sort of [1:00:23] investors and everyone at Automatic. [1:00:26] to sort of actually [1:00:29] put the trademark on the foundation. [1:00:32] The compromise there was that [1:00:34] you know, automatic at this point is running WordPress.com.

[1:00:37] So to continue running that, which at the time had already tens of millions of users and everything, it needed a commercial license. [1:00:44] And so kind of the compromise is that [1:00:47] The [1:00:48] Foundation would kind of [1:00:50] own the trademark and license it out for non-commercial purposes. [1:00:54] Um, [1:00:55] I had a license to run WordPress.org. [1:00:58] because obviously I need that. And then Automatic would retain the commercial license and the ability to sub-license that, so to sell that to others. [1:01:06] So this is kind of the grand compromise and create this tripartite structure. You know, I was very inspired by the three branches of government. [1:01:15] power in each of those that I think sort of checks and balances. [1:01:18] um [1:01:19] each side of it, which is on purpose. [1:01:22] Wow, okay. I get why it's complicated. I get why people would be confused. This makes me think about... [1:01:27] OpenAI had a really strange structure and that got them in a lot of trouble. And it feels like when you're 21, you're like, oh, this makes a lot of sense. What a great concept has come up here. [1:01:36] All this complexity just adds to a lot of confusion around what's going on. [1:01:39] So thank you for addressing that. [1:01:41] Another, there's kind of a related question I've seen a couple times, is just why don't you let .org be run by a community? Why not just give that up to someone else and not just you? Thoughts there? [1:01:52] Yeah, and the frame of that question is kind of interesting because it implies, like, I'm the only person making WordPress, which... [1:01:58] is obviously not true. If you look at the daily commits and activity and everything, [1:02:03] Um, [1:02:04] It is run by the community. [1:02:06] So it's hundreds of volunteers every day that are actually doing the day-to-day work and making the day-to-day decisions and everything else.

[1:02:13] It's happened. So there has been a radical delegation. [1:02:18] However, there's ultimately a hierarchy and I'm kind of the CEO. So I'm like the final, final decision maker. And so I think what people advocate for around this governance point of view is like, okay, we'll install a board on top of you. [1:02:32] That's... [1:02:34] uh, [1:02:35] ultimately makes decisions for the product or things like that. [1:02:39] And there are other open source projects that have this structure. [1:02:43] None of them have been successful as WordPress. So, you know, I think your audience in particular, like, [1:02:49] is great software ever created by committee. [1:02:53] or does it more often reflect [1:02:57] a vision of a leader. [1:02:59] or [1:03:00] Something that can allow us to, and I think particularly, WordPress not just remaining relevant, but actually accelerating growth over... [1:03:08] huge technological shifts over the past two decades. [1:03:11] You know, when we started, there was like, [1:03:13] you know, dynamic web apps or DHTML or JavaScript wasn't really a thing and then like, [1:03:19] social web and then iPhones and then all this sort of stuff that's changed over time. And we've surfed a lot of these technological changes, which is very, very hard to do. Like most products do not remain relevant. [1:03:29] over multiple generational changes like that. And that's been because sometimes we've had to make very unpopular decisions. [1:03:36] Like Gutenberg is a huge part of why WordPress is relevant today. [1:03:39] It's actually an open source project we do. It's the block editor. [1:03:42] It's actually bigger than WordPress.

[1:03:44] Because it's not just used on WordPress. It's used on every WordPress site, but also Tumblr, other people. I would actually love if Squarespace or Wix adopted Gutenberg. It's meant to be a really open source framework. But anyway... [1:03:57] if we had voted for whether we should do that or not, [1:03:59] everyone would have voted against it, or the majority would have. [1:04:02] it was really a few core people of us in the community, you know, Matthias, myself, other core contributors, Ella, Andrew Oz, that said like, hey, this is the future. [1:04:12] And it's going to take 10 years to do. [1:04:14] And it's going to be a long bet. It's going to suck for the first three or four years. [1:04:17] And so everyone's going to hate it at the beginning. [1:04:19] But then later, with [1:04:21] iteration. We've had, I think, now 200 releases of Gutenberg. [1:04:25] We do sort of a very strict every two weeks release schedule. [1:04:28] since it started. [1:04:29] I've [1:04:30] It's going to get pretty good. [1:04:31] And it's at that point now, it's actually getting pretty darn good. [1:04:34] And the next phase of it, actually, I'm so excited about, it's going to be collaboration. So all the real-time co-editing that Google Docs and Notion has is coming out to this open source thing. And with the technological changes, we're actually able to do it peer-to-peer. So we don't need a centralized server. We can use WebRTC and other cool technologies. [1:04:49] Anyway, I'm going sidelining, but I think that... [1:04:54] you know, [1:04:55] That's sort of more... [1:04:58] And if you look at a lot of great companies, like, you know, there's a board or whatever, but ultimately there's an executive. [1:05:03] And some of the most iconic companies of our generations are ones where [1:05:08] The executive has, you know, retained some majority voting control or other things like that, which I've been able to do with Automatic and with WordPress. And...

[1:05:16] I definitely think about succession planning and everything like that. [1:05:19] but [1:05:20] uh, [1:05:21] If or when I'm gone. [1:05:23] I don't want to pass it to a committee. I want to pass it to someone else who can have a role similar to mine and really sort of [1:05:30] Tried to be a steward. [1:05:31] And... [1:05:33] There are ultimately layers of check and balance on that because again, [1:05:37] The community could leave. They could fork the software. People could change and sell. [1:05:42] You're in charge, quote unquote, but you're also at surface. [1:05:46] So it's a lot more being like a mayor than a CEO. [1:05:49] and that you ultimately are accountable to [1:05:53] the folks who are contributing and new users and everything like that. So I do feel like [1:05:58] There is a balance there. [1:06:00] Some of this as well is that there's some people who aren't part of leadership who feel like they should be. So if you look at like the Yost decree on things, these are folks who actually aren't like don't have commit status. They haven't contributed WordPress over the years and server normal hierarchy of, you know, the meritocracy of how you get like. [1:06:15] the ability to commit code or things like that. And they're like, hey, I want to lead a release. And so that's cool, dude, but there's a process. We have different people lead releases over the years, but they kind of work their way up to it. [1:06:28] This makes so much sense to me. It's one of the themes of the podcast, just the power of a singular visionary and leader, founder mode, as we've all heard, as it's trending these days. You made famous, yes. I wouldn't say that. [1:06:42] Yeah, Brian shared it, but then Paul Graham coined it afterwards, and then I renamed the title of that episode, Founder Mode. Oh, really? Actually. Kind of if I zoom out, what I'm sensing here is there's people that have this vision,

[1:06:54] ideal of how something like this should run, but they've never actually worked at a place where a non-profit board runs it. [1:07:02] runs a thing, and I've seen what that actually looks like. [1:07:04] And so I think there's like a big disconnect between the ideal in theory and like how does great stuff get built. [1:07:11] And one of the things I think we've tried to demonstrate [1:07:13] with WordPress is actually... [1:07:15] It's kind of like an open source side and a non-profit side and a for-profit. [1:07:20] working in concert. [1:07:21] So, one of the things people don't necessarily appreciate as much about why WordPress has been so successful [1:07:28] is because of automatic. [1:07:29] 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. You don't have to pay for hosting or download it yourself or things like that. [1:07:42] So that kind of for-profit, non-profit... [1:07:45] open source working in concert, I think is... [1:07:48] a really interesting model that we're starting to see [1:07:50] A lot more companies, too. [1:07:52] It's actually very exciting to me that some of the things that [1:07:55] were controversial when we started, like open source or distributed work. [1:07:59] are now the default for so many exciting new startups. And this whole ecosystem of really, really cool open source, like cal.com for open source calendar. There's so much cool stuff out there that I... [1:08:11] Actually, there's a whole generation of younger entrepreneurs that I find very, very inspiring because they're also bringing modern design and web development and everything to open source, which is very neat. [1:08:21] I anticipate a block post one day. I told you so, guys. Open source, remote work. I imagine there's a few more things there.

[1:08:27] - [1:08:29] There's one other thing I want to address. I haven't seen you talk about this. It comes up a bunch. It's around, this is like very in the weeds, but I think it's really important to people, and there's something here for a lot of people. The way you guys forked advanced custom fields. So I think what happened here is you guys forked an existing plugin. I think somebody else's plugin. [1:08:48] and then kind of [1:08:49] push people to this plugin versus the original plugin. Um, [1:08:53] What can you share there? [1:08:55] Yeah, this is very complex. But so... [1:08:58] WordPress.org has kind of like an app store. [1:09:01] Uh-huh. [1:09:02] After WP Engine started [1:09:05] suing us and creating millions of dollars of legal fees and things, we block their access [1:09:11] to WordPress.org. [1:09:12] So this plugin they had, Advanced Custom Fields, [1:09:15] I wasn't able to be updated. [1:09:17] At the same time, a number of security issues were found in it. [1:09:21] including some we've reported. [1:09:24] And so there had to be an update to it. Uh, [1:09:27] So we're like, okay, we'll ship... [1:09:29] Update for you. [1:09:31] essentially. And then we're like, "Okay, I think we need to call it something different, right? Because it actually isn't." [1:09:38] There isn't any more. And they still offer advanced custom fields on their own. People can download it from them, et cetera. Um... [1:09:45] So we made secure custom fields. [1:09:48] which was originally under the same directory listing. [1:09:51] So again, because we want all the users of it to get the security updates. [1:09:56] This is controversial.

[1:09:58] And actually, [1:09:59] that they actually got a preliminary injection. So the judge said reverse this. So this has all been reversed, by the way. [1:10:04] There now is a separate fork under a separate listing of secure custom fields, which actually we have... [1:10:10] you know, a team on it, developers, designers, and we're creating, just like WordPress is a fork. We've actually forked this. Actually, WooCommerce was a fork. A lot of things have worked. So we forked it and now have a new name, new everything that we're doing a lot of product innovation and like proving. So, [1:10:27] There's a separate project now. [1:10:28] and separate directory listing for secure custom fields. So that's kind of fast forward to today. [1:10:33] They now have access to WordPress.org again. [1:10:35] They have updated the plugin. Everything's kind of back to how it was before. [1:10:39] And there's another separate thing called secure custom fields that the WordPress project is officially supporting. [1:10:45] So I'm hearing essentially you block WP Engine as a part of this. We're just going to simplify WordPress, reduce confusion. There being bad actors in the space, so we're going to [1:10:55] In that block, there's a dependency where people couldn't do a thing that they needed to do. [1:10:59] So you're like, and as the one that exists, there's a problem with it. So we're going to... [1:11:03] uh, [1:11:04] make that dependence, like release a version that you can actually use and fix the security issues. [1:11:09] That was the intention. I think that there was a lot of perceptions around it that were different. But yeah, that was the goal. Okay. [1:11:14] Great. So maybe just the last question. We talked about just like a lot of people see you with devil horns these days. They think you're doing a lot of you're doing bad things and they don't like. [1:11:24] approach you're taking. You talked about there's this WP Engine spending a lot of money on PR and hiring this agency. I guess, is there anything else that, like, why do you think so many people are

[1:11:35] looking at you as the bad guy. [1:11:37] Is it mostly that you think? Just like, where do you think it's coming from? Why are comments always so negative? [1:11:43] And we talked a bit about it, but anything more there? [1:11:45] I don't know if I can say why. [1:11:48] I do think one thing I've learned is that a lot of these things we've talked about are nuanced. So one essentially thing I've learned in this process is that it's hard to explain this stuff. [1:11:58] in, you know, 240 characters. [1:12:01] or [1:12:02] Yeah, that [1:12:03] Some mediums do not lend themselves well to discussing this. And so I tried. But I'm participating less on Reddit or Twitter and trying to do more long form things like this. [1:12:15] where you can actually have the context, and things can't be taken out of context, [1:12:19] Also, I think there's something where [1:12:21] Social networks sometimes are tuned to promote outrage. [1:12:25] And it was very interesting. We ran a sentiment analysis recently. We were kind of like looking at different social networks, analyzing all the comments and, you know, [1:12:32] And we found actually that the negative, the sort of devil horn, [1:12:36] fraction. [1:12:38] on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram was like 8%. [1:12:43] It's actually pretty small. [1:12:45] On Reddit, it was like, [1:12:46] bigger, I forget the exact number, but on Twitter it was 52%. [1:12:51] You're like, "Whoa." [1:12:52] What's going on there? And so there's something in the algorithm. And again, we can't see how the algorithm works or what the incentives are, but it can promote kind of the... [1:12:59] the most controversial things. And I think that's not a novel story. [1:13:03] perception like there's a lot of discussion around how social media might be creating more fragmentation in society and and I think this is just an example of that where when you have networks when people are getting the majority of their information from social networks and those networks are not designed to provide nuance or balance or even promote truth necessarily you know misinformation can get spread far more than um

[1:13:24] What's the saying? A lie gets around the world seven times before truth has time. Get out of bed. [1:13:33] There's been a lot of that, so there's actually been a lot of misinformation and untrue things that go viral, and then the correction, you know... [1:13:39] The untrue thing gets like 700,000 views and the correction gets like 20,000 views. So there's been some of that happening. [1:13:47] You know, one [1:13:48] When mainstream media has covered this, it's actually been a lot better. So there's been some actually really good articles in... [1:13:55] You know, some business publications and other things that sort of look at a more nuanced and balanced view. And I think the podcast has been pretty good. [1:14:04] definitely on Twitter, like I think, [1:14:06] You can get a version of all of this that is... [1:14:10] Both, I think, not entirely true and also pretty more negative. [1:14:15] Yeah. [1:14:16] I imagine people are going to be like, "Lenny, you didn't ask him this thing. Here's the thing he said that I want to learn more about. I'm sure I missed some stuff." But from an outsider's perspective, [1:14:26] This all makes sense. There's a company like [1:14:28] I don't think PE companies are bad innately, but their job is... [1:14:32] by a company and make it run more efficiently. [1:14:35] And then [1:14:35] oftentimes sell it for more. So it makes sense that they buy a company [1:14:39] Make it more efficient, cut some corners, don't put a lot of effort into making it awesome. Even though I'm sure there's awesome people working in there trying really hard to make it great, [1:14:47] and [1:14:48] Basically what I'm feeling is you just... They got to a point where this is hurting... [1:14:52] the ecosystem, they're feeling really

[1:14:54] dishonest with working with you and there's just a stalling technique. [1:15:00] And so... [1:15:01] Makes sense to me why you just have to stand up and fight back and [1:15:05] And it's hard. It's hard to do that. [1:15:08] Is there anything else... [1:15:09] I'll on this thread before we move on to a different topic. Anything else you want to share before we close out this chapter? [1:15:14] Well, if people have more questions, they can come to WordCamp Asia. I do. I'm going to do an open Q&A there. [1:15:20] We do town halls in the WordPress Outer Word community. There's a Slack. People can get on and ask questions. So there is kind of like a lot of open ways to engage. Awesome. [1:15:30] I'm definitely happy to do that. [1:15:32] I'm probably not going to do it on Twitter as much, but like, oh, you know, when there's longer form opportunities to have a discussion here, particularly if it's more like real time like this. [1:15:40] Al. [1:15:41] I'm very happy to. And that's why if you look at it, there's actually a big difference. WP Engine has not done any podcasts. [1:15:49] And no press. They don't respond to journalists. They don't talk about this. And I've done the opposite where I'm really trying to be out there and engage. And everyone's like, why don't you just let the lawyers do the talking? And it's like, well... [1:16:00] But we have community. And also, I feel like we're in the right. So when you're in the wrong, you probably say only have the lawyers talk. When you're in the right, like... [1:16:07] I think you should be out there and tell the story. [1:16:10] I remember at the end of your WordCamp talk, you were like, any questions after this big controversial talk? And I'm curious how it felt. Like all the questions initially were nothing to do with this. [1:16:18] It's what it felt like. You're just like, oh, they already had these questions. They didn't even know what you said, maybe. And I bet you're just like, wait, does anyone hear what I just said? Did it feel like that?

[1:16:28] Well, also, that's really a WordPress community event. So it's a lot of core developers and things. So they have WordPress questions. So that is something. You're like, hello. I've now done hundreds and hundreds of these town halls and QAs, and I really enjoy it because you never know what's going to come up. Yeah. Okay. I want to talk about all the companies that you're... [1:16:46] bought and will buy in the future. It's kind of like you're building a little Berkshire Hathaway. I think you've described it that way. It's kind of what it's feeling like. And Tumblr is really interesting. I didn't, like, until I started prepping for this, I didn't even know you guys own Tumblr. [1:17:00] I haven't heard this story. Why did you guys buy Tumblr? What is going on with Tumblr? It was like a big deal back in the day. Where's the current state of Tumblr? What is the story [1:17:10] Oh, Tumblr's so interesting. I mean... [1:17:13] At the time, [1:17:14] I think it was one of our best competitors. They created this really amazing sort of hybrid of blogging and social networking. And if you kind of zoom back... [1:17:23] A lot of things that are now standard on other social networks. [1:17:26] Like even the ability to embed an image with a post. Mm-hmm. [1:17:28] Again, it was not supported originally on Twitter and other things. Remember, they used to have, what was it, like tweet image or you have to link out to other things to post an image to Twitter? It wasn't native functionality. [1:17:40] Tumblr had these multiple post types. You could post a chat, an image. They were, I think, one of the first to support video. So they did a lot of, I think, product innovation under the leadership of David Karp. [1:17:51] It's like a really amazing... [1:17:52] Entrepreneur and Product Leader. [1:17:54] Funny story, both David and I were at CNET at the same time.

[1:17:58] What an alumni group. Whoa. I've seen it. [1:18:02] They could have kept both of us probably, but anyway, the... [1:18:06] Tumblr then, I forget the year, but they sold, I think the same time that Instagram date for a similar amount, $1.1 billion. To you or to someone else? [1:18:16] Instagram bought by Facebook, obviously. Right, right. Tumblr. And Tumblr bought by Yahoo. Oh, wow. Who was at the time... [1:18:23] Again, Yahoo, we don't think about it now, but I feel a little old. But at the time, Yahoo was one of the internet giants and had recently... [1:18:31] Marissa Mayer, who was one of the [1:18:35] The big early people at Google, I think part of creating the API program and everything like that, was the CEO of Yahoo. This was, I think, one of her first big acquisitions. [1:18:45] Now subsequently, [1:18:47] Obviously, we know how Instagram went. I think people are like, I can't believe you bought this for a billion dollars. And obviously now it's worth hundreds of billions. So that's a really good... [1:18:57] our trajectory. [1:18:58] and [1:18:59] at Yahoo, [1:19:00] I think things became more challenged. So again, this is a little bit of history, but Yahoo then had this thing where [1:19:06] They owned part of Alibaba, which then became more valuable than the rest of the company. They had activist investors. I think they had some CEO switches. I think Rissemeyer leaves or gets fired at some point. There's all this turnover. And I think Tumblr really languished under their ownership. [1:19:23] And from what I can understand, the team was actually held back a lot from things they wanted to launch or ways they wanted to iterate. Then Yahoo...

[1:19:31] Mergers with AOL. [1:19:34] how [1:19:35] which is another kind of early internet thing. That goes for like a little while. So again, the tumblers just kind of stuck underneath this stuff. Tumbling along. [1:19:44] tumbling along and then that gets bought by Verizon. [1:19:47] Thank you. [1:19:48] Okay. [1:19:49] So fast forward to... [1:19:52] 2019 [1:19:54] Yeah. [1:19:55] Verizon wants to get rid of Tumblr. [1:19:58] And so they're kind of putting it up for sale. [1:20:00] and had a number of bidders. Automatic [1:20:04] I ended up buying it. [1:20:06] for a de minimis amount. I think it's been reported we bought it for like $3 million. What a deal. $3 million. But obviously that represented a lot of... [1:20:16] by destruction over the years. Tumblr had some tough times. They actually were banned from the App Store at one point for [1:20:23] not moderating things well enough and having [1:20:26] you know, kind of, [1:20:27] maybe a little too much porn. Obviously Twitter write it out for him, but like they might have, they were a little too out there with it and we're doing a good job filtering it. And, uh, [1:20:36] and keeping away from App Store reviewers or whatever. [1:20:40] And so Verizon, to their credit, though, there were people bidding more. Actually, I think a porn company was bidding on Tumblr that would pay a lot more money. They really were looking for an acquirer that they felt like would be a good steward. [1:20:52] And from my point of view, I had such incredible respect for Tumblr as a product and the community. [1:20:59] you know, [1:21:00] Still, despite all of this sort of stuff that had happened,

[1:21:03] uh... [1:21:04] I think that point still was like... [1:21:07] you know [1:21:09] I forget the exact number, but I call it 15, 20 million monthly active users. [1:21:14] So really sort of [1:21:15] active core and one of the things that's so fascinating is over half of that user base was under the age of 25. [1:21:22] and actually had a huge, I think it was like 25 or 30% LGBT plus. [1:21:28] And, um... [1:21:30] So, I think a very unique place on the internet where people could have a social network where they could be anonymous, they could put on different identities, they could be someplace their parents weren't, like Facebook or Instagram, like really still… [1:21:43] He could take a special spot. So we need to buy him. [1:21:47] Now, people are like, "Oh, you bought it for three million dollars," but we bought it sort of [1:21:51] taking on all liabilities, including, I think they were under investigation by the FTC, there were lawsuits, there was all this sort of stuff. So it was free like a puppy, not free like a... Not free like beer. [1:22:04] Yeah, and a pretty big team, I think 185 people. We were taking a lot of burn, burning a ton of cash. [1:22:11] And yeah, that was 2019. And so it's been, I think, a humbling experience, you know, running a social network. [1:22:20] It was very, very different from all the other products that we've done. And I think there's some incredible things about Tumblr and that... [1:22:26] I'm still very excited about. So we're like WordPress, [1:22:29] has primarily like a [1:22:31] desktop and web user base. Tumblr is obviously like 85% app based, has a younger demographic. And so part of the vision that now we're executing on is actually we wanted to create a path for people using Tumblr to actually being powered by WordPress on the back end. So Tumblr users could unlock themes, customization, plugins, etc. Actually we're in the process right now of migrating

[1:22:53] the half a billion Tumblr sites to WordPress. Probably one of the largest data migrations. That makes sense. [1:22:59] That's happened in a while. So we're [1:23:02] We're kind of trying to do this in a way that's invisible to users on the front end, so changing at the back end while maintaining the APIs and the interface and everything. So it's a fun engineering project. I kind of posted this kind of call to arms. [1:23:14] We got a lot of fun people applying for Automatic, and we hired a lot of great folks around this sort of like audacious project, this big, hairy, audacious goal. [1:23:22] And, uh... [1:23:23] So that's where it's at now. [1:23:24] I've sort of ran it personally for a few years while we're doing turnarounds. [1:23:31] But there's a great team there, and... [1:23:34] But still, I still challenge, you know, still not profitable. So we're still subsidizing it from the rest of automatics businesses. Fortunately, the rest of our business have done really well. So we were able to do that. But I definitely want to get to a place where it's sustainable. And one of the things we're also experimenting with is can Tumblr have not just an advertising driven model? [1:23:51] I think ultimately the incentives of advertising social networks [1:23:55] can lead to the kind of dynamics that you see [1:23:57] on the more negative side of like, [1:23:59] Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. And so really trying to create a subscription model [1:24:04] or a sort of like first party user-driven advertising where like you promote your blog posts or something like that. [1:24:11] or you promote a WooCommerce product or something where it's like not a third-party ad ecosystem, which I think has a lot of like... [1:24:17] Word code and malware and lots of stuff I don't love. [1:24:21] Wow, sounds like a lot you took on with this acquisition.

[1:24:26] And I love that you said you ran it initially. So this is a good segue to maybe my last question. I'm curious where this goes. Just how do you... [1:24:34] Well, let me zoom out. There's a lot of people these days that are [1:24:36] excited about role of businesses. I'm going to buy a bunch of companies, make them better, make them awesome. [1:24:43] save money and just keep building this holding company sort of thing. You guys are doing that and it's working well. [1:24:48] What do you look for? How do you decide a company's right for automatic? What are the factors that are like, "We should buy this. We can turn this around and turn it into a big success?" [1:24:57] I don't know if I would do another turnaround like Tumblr. [1:25:02] again, or at least not for many, many years. It's definitely a different thing. The vast majority of things we acquire... [1:25:08] It's simply something that's done well. [1:25:11] and we want to accelerate it. [1:25:13] Or sometimes, you know, aqua hires where like 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. So it's a really talented team. You know, Tumblr, I think we ended up. [1:25:23] ultimately replacing like 85-90% of the team as well. So that's just very different. And [1:25:31] Thank you. [1:25:31] Yeah, so I do think there are different ways of doing it. But if you look at our other acquisitions, like day one, et cetera, like, [1:25:37] Founders still here many years later. We're accelerating like you know the stuff like that we brought it to Android or bring it brought it to web like that it's more of like taking something good and making it better and probably our best example there is is WooCommerce, you know, which was a [1:25:51] have a small company company, [1:25:53] I think 35, 40 people based out of South Africa.

[1:25:56] and has obviously grown to, you know, [1:25:59] Like I said, Automatic makes about half a billion dollars a year now and WooCommerce [1:26:04] majority of that. [1:26:06] Speaking of that, actually, I haven't shared the revenue number. I know it's public. Just give people a sense of automatics. [1:26:10] Revenue. Can you just share those numbers? Because I think it might blow people's minds. [1:26:14] I think we say publicly it's about a half a billion dollars in sort of ARR revenue right now. Incredible. Okay, I have a question for you. It's kind of a hot seat question as you talked. I feel like people are thinking this. So you've been talking about PE companies? [1:26:29] being often bad. [1:26:31] You're buying Tumblr. You talked about laying off a bunch of people, turning it all around. [1:26:35] How's that different from a Peeb company, Matt? [1:26:38] Yeah, and I agree with you that, like, [1:26:40] PE, just because it's private equity doesn't mean it's bad. And also, I say something people say is like, hey, wait, don't you have private equity investors as well at Automatic? [1:26:50] And we do. [1:26:52] Now they own usually a small percentage, like sometimes under 1%, and they don't have control of the company. So I think there's a distinguish. Is it a minority investment or a control investment? [1:27:03] and with WP Engine, Silver Lake controls the company. Now when they control the company, [1:27:08] I think there's a spectrum of actions. Obviously, being more efficient is great. [1:27:12] And we should all strive for that. And I think every business does, whether it's private equity or our business or things that are founder controlled, you always want to be more efficient. Now there's some spectrum there where you over optimize. [1:27:24] Or you could have dark patterns. Right now on WP Engine, it's very difficult to cancel your account.

[1:27:30] Wow. [1:27:31] Because actually, I think as of today, 45,000 sites have left. [1:27:36] So they're, I think, down to like 600. [1:27:38] Yeah. Um, [1:27:40] Well, because their customers have realized, like, hey, this isn't WordPress. This isn't, or they're suing the guy who started WordPress. So, like, maybe we should not support this commercially. [1:27:50] So, um, [1:27:51] We have this site WordPressEngineTracker.com that sort of shows in real time the sites that are leaving. It's kind of an exciting thing to see. [1:27:57] that number ticked up. [1:27:59] Actually, maybe a good example as well, like even though there's a lot of negativity, if you actually look at like how people are voting with their wallets. [1:28:05] Um, [1:28:06] They're leaving. [1:28:07] So I think you have to judge as well. Like just look at the track record. [1:28:11] So, [1:28:12] One of the things I'm very proud of with Automatic is we are an acquirer of first resorts. [1:28:17] Thank you. [1:28:18] And we have founders that have sold to us. Paul Main at day one is a great example that didn't need to sell. [1:28:24] You know? [1:28:25] It could be easily, they're wildly profitable. It could have run it themselves for a long, long time, but people choose to join because they feel like we'll be good stewards of it in the future. And ultimately just have to look at the track record. Um, [1:28:36] So I think, you know, don't judge it by what it's called. Judge it by the actions over time. And, um, [1:28:42] And I hope to continue building that reputation for a place that's a good steward of communities and software and everything else for many years to come. [1:28:52] Matt, we covered so much. Everything, I asked you all the hard questions and more. [1:28:56] Before we wrap up, is there anything else that you want to leave listeners with? Any last thoughts, comments, insights?

[1:29:01] stories. Oh, wow. [1:29:03] Yeah, follow me. I'm at Photomat, P-H-O-T-O-M-A-T-T on Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram, everything like that. I post a lot about other stuff. I post a lot about AI and open source and other things, some WordPress things in there as well. [1:29:17] You know, I have these life missions to democratize publishing and commerce. We added a new one last year, which is messaging. [1:29:22] So... [1:29:23] It's in beta mode right now, but relaunching in a few months is a product called Beeper, which takes all your... [1:29:28] Telegram, Instagram DM, Signal, everything brings it all into one app. [1:29:33] You can do some really cool stuff like that. [1:29:35] And especially when you start to imagine search, [1:29:38] for AI, local AI around that. So very, very excited about that relaunch. So I encourage people to check out the beta now. Go to beaver.com slash beta to get like the, [1:29:47] the new version, and we're going to relaunch that later in the year. So, uh, [1:29:51] Yeah, very excited about that. It's kind of fun to be working on something that's at the stage where WordPress was in like 2003, 2004. So WordPress is quite mature at this point. [1:30:00] WooCommerce is kind of where WordPress was in 2010. Then the Beeper stuff, the messaging stuff is where we were in 2003. [1:30:08] One thing that keeps me excited is working at different stages of this. [1:30:11] Yeah, this feels like a reason to be doing your approach to Berkshire Hathaway is just like stay active in early stage stuff and not just optimize established things. [1:30:22] So that's beeper.com by the way, awesome domain name. [1:30:26] Photomat, what's the story of Photomat? You're into photography, I imagine, is the story.

[1:30:31] Yeah, it's a little bit of a pun. So, you know, there's a photo is a photo mat is also like FOTO M-A-T-T is a place that you would go to like develop your photos back when you have film and develop things. So originally my username was Saxmat because I played the saxophone. [1:31:01] And as a distributed company, we do lots of meetups. [1:31:05] It became hard to carry my saxophone around, so my method of artistic expression became photography. And that's actually kind of how WordPress started, was actually originally a site where I could share my photos, you know, before Flickr, before Facebook and everything like that. [1:31:19] use this gallery software, actually open source gallery software, PHP software, to sort of share all the photos I was taking. And actually now on my website, I think I have over 38,000 photos I posted. [1:31:28] And... [1:31:29] yeah, that's... [1:31:32] It's still one of the things I really love. So it's also a username that was available everywhere. And I still do it. So I'm actually going to the... [1:31:39] Mahakumela, the big 300 million person gathering at the Ganges River in a few weeks. [1:31:46] One, I just decided to experience that, it happens like every 12 years, but two, I'm just really sad to like, [1:31:50] take some time to do photography. And, uh, [1:31:54] Yeah, I really enjoy it. [1:31:56] You forgot to mention your website, your WordPress site itself, where you blog, ma.tt. This is the domain, which is amazing. I will point people to one of my favorite...

[1:32:07] ritual you have on your blog, which is you share what's in your bag. You talk about how you travel, all this. And I think every year you're like, here's the gadgets I use most and bring with me everywhere, right? [1:32:18] It's my most popular post of the year by far. I'm not surprised. You need an Amazon just buy everything button. Yeah, because basically you're just... [1:32:26] Try and optimize for the least weight and most utility, right, out of all these gadgets that you're bringing with the onion chips. [1:32:32] Yeah, actually weighing it is something I just started doing this year. Because my back actually got really heavy, got like 35 pounds or something. [1:32:40] Yeah, some friends were like, "Hey, why don't we weigh everything and just go through it?" Make that a new variable. So now we're posting the weights. Oh my god. Okay. Anyway, we'll point you to that. [1:32:48] Thank you so much for doing this. This was awesome. [1:32:50] Lenny, thank you so much. And I really appreciate the ability to discuss these things in a longer form and also just your audience. And so, oh, I guess final thing I'll say is we're hiring a ton. So you have one of the most incredible audiences in the world. I recommend your podcast and newsletter. [1:33:03] to a lot of my colleagues. And so if you're someone who loves this kind of stuff, I think there's a big opportunity at Automatic to [1:33:09] to have an impact on these things. What roles are you hiring for most and where do people find these roles? [1:33:14] automatic.com, A-U-T-O-M-A-T-T-I-C. There's a work with us page. You kind of see how we work. We're fully distributed and committed to that forever. We sort of started that. Another interesting thing is we actually pay the same salaries globally. [1:33:30] So whether you're in California or Italy or... [1:33:35] Nigeria or wherever. [1:33:36] global salaries. So, um,

[1:33:39] So yeah, a lot of opportunities, and we're hiring for kind of everything. So I would say, but particularly like people with great design or product skills, we're [1:33:49] is probably one of the areas that you can have the biggest impact at automatic right now. All right. If you made it this far into the podcast, you should definitely apply. Matt, thank you. Thank you for being here. [1:33:58] Hi, everyone. [1:34:21] See you in the next episode.