The creator of WordPress opens up about becoming an internet villain, why he’s taking a stand, and the future of open source | Matt Mullenweg (founder and CEO, Automattic)

22:58So it was sort of was how they hate battle -tested things. I guess kind of like a Microsoft culture or whatever where you like really like I 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 great advocates for open source. Yeah, it's so interesting. I just had the community notes team on the podcast. And that's an amazing example of community of open source meta as adopting it from Twitter slash X. Speaking of open source, one of the interesting, maybe most common ways people hear about open source these days is AI and AI models.

23:33And there's a couple areas here. One is you wrote this really interesting post where you talk about how meta talks about llama as an open source project. But it's you call it a false false profit. What is what is it about llama that is an open source? So what are people missing when they see you llama? And they're like, oh, and meta is amazing open sourcing everything. Lama, you can obviously download and run locally and all these sorts of things, right? You have to use their sales service. However, there's a clause in it that says if you're above a certain threshold of monthly active users, I figure what it is.

24:04It's big. It's like 750 million. So it's pretty high. You need a license from them. And so 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, you're kind of at the whims of this company. Who you might be aligned with or you might be an enemy with. And also how do you define that? So for example, like our WordPress like our products don't have 750 million like that to registered users. But we reach billions of people per month in terms of visitors. So is that a, you know, is that defined? So it's just ambiguity there. So I still think what they've done is amazing.

24:47And I like that they're releasing it. I was very confused for why they exist on calling it open source because they actually met as been a huge open source contributor react. You know, they have incredible improvements to the PHP engine, which we benefit from a lot. So like they're actually a big open source contributor. I think Mark Zuckerberg really understands and loves open source too. My best guess now. I don't have any inside information here, but there's, I think they're calling it open source because there's some European regulation about open source versus proprietary AM. So I think they're, I think it might be like a rear regulatory thing because clearly they understand this as an open source.

25:24So when I wrote the blog post, I was just kind of confused and thought like, oh, maybe if I like, you know, get this message out there, they'll change. 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. I think it was a react that they were doing something with the licensing or like a patent restriction on. And the WordPress community actually got metadata changed that and reverse something they were doing to lock it down. So yeah. I consider my role as an open source advocate to actually be my primary thing, you know.

26:04And it's very much my life mission. I hope to work on WordPress to rest of my life, but also like just open source in journal. So I also like, you know, support, troop will and dream like anything else that's open source. I'm going to be a supporter of because think when people choose that versus proprietary software, we're increasing the freedom and liberty in the world. And so I would love that every sort of like it's incumbent on us that make open source to make about a user experience, to make about a product. So that people choose it. And then you know, the world becomes more free, not less free.

26:36And it also feels it's important to you to, I don't know, open source washing like avoid people using the term on it's not true. And it's interesting in this case, the 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? Yeah. So that there's a, and it's actually like an open source. You know, OS, I, there's like a formal definition for like what's make it, what makes an open source license. And there's actually many dozens of open source licenses and it's sort of public domain license doesn't have the things.

27:10So it's also their stance that this is not an open source license. 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. It's such a good point that the code that these models are trained on was open source code because that's all they have access to. They don't have like 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, yeah, models are trained on code you wrote and open source community. That's beautiful. It's one of the safest things to train on right because the license of open source like very explicitly allows that.

27:48You know, I also like to think about, you know, I have some window where my creative output is useful to society. And if you fast forward like 50 or 100 years, I do believe that the utility for proprietary software eventually approaches zero. So like when we're sending people to Mars, the operating system of the rockets and the devices and everything like that is not going to be built on the windows NT kernel. As amazing feed of engineering that like that proprietary kernel is 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 allows a Cambrian espralseion of things built on top of it, a renaissance of ideas.

28:35You want to be involved with the consorse. And so I really hope that more and more people I'm a little bit of evangelist here, you know, I'm a missionary where I really want to encourage more and more people to consider. At least making part of their time, even just a few hours a week, you know, contributing to open source because it could be part of something that is a huge impact. And it's fun, especially if you're like a younger developer or designer or PM or whatever, like you can't walk up the Facebook and change your homepage. Or say I'd like to change this feature, but you could come to an open source project, you know, some of which has, you know, hundreds of millions of users.

29:13You could go to WordPress or, you know, gosh Bitcoin or you know, there's all these things are open source. Chromium Firefox, like and you could actually change, you know, feature or project management things or changes design or improve it. And that's I think really really special. And so the thrill for me of like knowing that code I wrote is now executing, you know, millions of times per seconds. And 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. Like such a thrill and I've been sort of chasing that and enjoying that ever since.

29:53Say someone wants to actually do this. Where do they go? What do they do this? Do they just like pick a project, go to WordPress .org and like here's how you contribute. What's like a next step there? Yeah, a big project that you use or like. I mean, that's obviously a nice one. For WordPress, we have this. It's called make .wordpress .org. You know, it's where we make WordPress. And there's, you know, different groups is its ability. There's design. There's the core code. There's plugins. There's all sorts of ways. So really, whatever your talent is, there's people to translate. There's people who do support.

30:27There's people who write documentation. There's people who organize events. And so whatever you feel like your talent in the world is, either that you have or that you want to cultivate. You know, there's so many people. I mean, I learned how to code. Well, building WordPress. Basically, I didn't have as too much formal training there. So it's a great way to to love your skills as well and work with some of the best developers in others in the world. This also made me think about AI agents are coming out on Devon and all these AI driven by coding agents. Your prediction when most of the code contributed to the open source projects will be Devon and AI agents such type projects.

31:09I think Google talked about 25 % of their code or characters committed or now sort of AI assisted. 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. But I think over the next five years, it definitely approaches maybe a majority. And I'm actually very, very excited. So, you know, all the big challenges that we have is a very open platform is we have this open plugin and theme architecture. So the 60 ,000 plugins and themes and the way WordPress works is these plugins themes can modify every single part of the code so you can really customize everything.

31:51However, many of these plugins and themes don't have the same sort of robust security and review process that core has. So that's where when you hear about security issues with WordPress, it's very rarely in core anymore. You know, we haven't had a remote exploited. I think five years or six years or something. But in the plugins, it can be somewhat more frequent. And so one thing I'm very, very excited about the next year or two is actually more automated scanning. Because obviously that code basis is so many tens of millions, maybe over 100 million lines of code at this point. It's impossible for humans to review that.

32:26So we kind of rely on developers to review that and manage. And of course, we have like bug boundties and everything that's not. So when things are 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. The other thing that's really exciting is like right now, you see people building apps and stuff. And it's just sort of custom generated code. But I think the next generation of these models or sort of the next layer there is because, you know, as everyone knows, like just writing the code is just one part of it.

32:57It's maintaining it that really becomes the life cycle of it. It's to brands new book is all about maintenance, right, which I'm very excited about. Yeah, he's publishing I think with a 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 and they're starting to do that is when the open source model as you say like, hey, build me a website. It actually installs WordPress and then builds on top of that and then customizes on top of that. Then you get for free that core engine that's always being audited and updated and getting, you know, past key support or whatever that the new things are sort of continuously.

33:36And then your custom stuff can be on top of that. I think it's actually a lot more powerful than sort of building something proprietary or custom from the ground up. I love this book on sub maintenance. There's a my sister's partner had this has this quote that I've always come back to life is maintenance. 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, you know, it's backpack. And I get to like maintain this thing, make you be nice nice jacket like everything is maintenance. Everything your life just means.

34:06And I wonder what that's what the books about. Well, that's why I think technical debt is one of the most interesting concepts. You know, there's so many companies as well that maybe have like big market caps, but I feel like they might have billions or tens of billions of dollars of technical debt. And you can cast you in the interface or how their products integrate with themselves or things. And I think about that a lot in our own company. And we definitely have some products. I was a little bear is coming on because you have like such great product people like we have some variable quality around several things right now.

34:37If you check out gravity right now, I'm actually really proud of it. I think a really great user experience very slick. But there's like parts of why I always say I'm the unhappyest WordPress user in the world. So there's like parts of WordPress WordPress .com that a little embarrassed and ashamed of like we kind of have to. 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 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.

35:05You know, all those kind of looks and crannies of the these your experience and also ruthlessly editing cutting as much as possible. Because we've just launched a lot of stuff over the past 21 years that maybe is not as relevant today or it doesn't need to be there. That sounds like excellent work for you for this AI agent of the future. That's coming soon. There's one other area when I mine 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. I'm curious just what lessons you've learned about what it takes to build a successful community online, especially.

35:48This is probably influenced by economics and jazz, right? So an economics is all about systems thinking, right? And what are the incentive structures of how you set something up? And then jazz is all about collaboration. All 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. And to send that we've been successful, I think it's that you we give people something to believe in, you know, philosophy or worldview. Even silly things like, you know, we had this tagline in the footer of the WordPress .org when we started it's still there.

36:25It says code is poetry. Okay, this idea that we're not just writing code like we're trying to create something that can have elements. We name every WordPress release after a jazz musician, you know, for the past 60 releases or so. So those sorts of things bringing like a little art and soul 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 more than just a paycheck or more than just, you know, the utility, the basic utility of the software. So it's not just a software. It's also like, how are the meetups?

37:05How are people getting together? What have been so you running? How do people are their forms? How do people contribute? Is there office hours or town halls? I do a lot of Q &A. So like, you know, what are the things you're doing around the software that's allowing people to get involved? That's inviting contributions as long as people to build on top of it. You know, study platforms, write a bit like Microsoft and others. And so our whole ecosystem of plugins and themes is part of what's made WordPress so successful in the mode that we have. The core features of a CMS, you can kind of write with a few developers in a few weeks or something.

37:38Like it's kind of not, you know, it's based on current operations. But to replicate those 60 ,000 plugins and themes, gosh, no one's done it. It's a huge mode. And in preparation, so there is concrete platforms, you know, Shopify has third party ecosystem and things like that. But it's never a true platform. And that is true platform. It's when your ecosystem makes more money than the core does. And so many times, whether it was the Facebook platform, putting in the air quotes or the Shopify platform, you know, if companies build on it and then they get the rug pulled out from after them because they're too successful.

38:15And then the sort of thing you're building on the site, oh, we want that money or we want that growth. And they sort of change to API or remove your access or, you know, there's so many examples of this, especially on like, I think Facebook can Shopify and others where, where like 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. We had love to offer you some warrants where we own a lot of your company or we're going to shut it off or, you know, those sorts of things. And again, you don't have freedom unless you're building on open source.

38:46That's why more and more companies and people are choosing. If they're going to build a business on top of something else. If you build on open source, you have that guarantee. Even if, you know, I grew devil horns and became evil and automatic decided to know, you know, whatever. What press 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 really important. What is segue to all of those drama that's swirling around you these days? I think a lot of people do feel like there's devil horns that have appeared.

39:22And so I'm excited to dig into this stuff. I think I find that every time you go on a podcast these days, if we don't get into this, everyone's just like, why are Matt not answering these questions? Let's get into the hard stuff. So I have some, I'm going to ask you some hard questions. For people that don't know what the hell is going on. They're like, what are you even talking about? Or just have a sense, something is swirling with WordPress and Matt. What's going on? What's just like the high level overview? What's going on? Yeah, so to set it, you can get WordPress from WordPress .com. Or, you know, that's, but also you can get WordPress from dozens of other hosts.

39:56The biggest in the world are like, GoDaddy, Hostinger, Newfold. It's not the biggest, but it isn't the top 10 or something. It has about 700 ,000 WordPress installs. There's a company called WPNG. In 2019, WPNG has started as like very WordPress oriented. And they contributed a lot to the community and everything like that. They're very respectful about, you know, distinguishing some of themselves from core. It's people really realized it wasn't officially associated and everything. In 2019, they got bought out by a private equity firm called Silver Lake. And, you know, anyone who follows business, you know, when private equity buys something, there's some of the good ones.

40:36But there's also many, many stories about how they can really kind of hollow things out. You know, really optimize their profits, come user -hostile. Actually, recently read a story where one of the reasons there was a shortage of fire trucks, these LA fires, was that the fire truck manufacturers have been kind of rolled up by private equity firm. And they've been raising prices and like their supply constraint and things like that. So there's literally like a shortage of fire trucks right now because of private equity. And of course, if you look at healthcare or other things like this, so many examples of a private equity can really, I think be one of the darker parts of capitalism.

41:12So, you know, since 2019, WPNG has kind of changed a bit. And they really stopped contributing to core and they started using the trademark in a, you know, a way that was very confusing in the marketplace. And, you know, particularly in the past year, year and a half or so, we're just getting a lot of, I've got a lot of support for requests for WPNG. And, you know, we do surveys which find that, you know, 20, 30, 40 % of people thought they were officially associated. Because how they were presenting using our logo and presenting the brand and everything like that was very confusing to people.

41:47And as you know, if you don't protect your trademark, you lose it. And also, the version of WordPress that they were offering actually wasn't our core vision of the functionality of WPNG. So, to save money, they were actually turning off features like revisions. So a cool part about WPNG, that actually only has favorite features, is every change to every single poster page is saved forever. Just like Wikipedia. So, if you make a mistake, you can always undo it. And of course, as you know, like building a great product, that sort of user safety of an undo is so critical. Now, obviously, you have to store these revisions.

42:20So it takes a more database space. Now, it's trivial to make a bytes. So on modern databases, it's not that big deal. But the save money, they actually turned us off. So they broke the undo feature in WordPress to essentially save money. And so, you have this thing where they're offering something called WordPress. It's kind of, I think I referred 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. And so, it came to a head.

42:52So, 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 use this or change how you're doing things. And, you know, 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. And I said, what's going on here? 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.

43:22They tried to shop it around and sell it. They weren't able to find a buyer. They said, well, they don't have any IP. And it feels like they're using your trademark. So, they're going to have trouble with you. They don't have a license of things like that. So, while they were negotiating with us, it appears they were also like preparing this lawsuit against us. So, again, I've been very fortunate in my business career that, you know, we've invested in dozens of companies. We've acquired lots of things like buy large 99 % of the time. People have dealt with in business have been ethical, straightforward, honest.

44:02I haven't really faced any like ball -faced lying or duplicitous behavior. Very, very rarely, you know, people who just, you know, say one thing and do another or fraudulent in their behavior. But I think that was happening here. And so, so 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, came to a head and at work camp US in September, I was like, okay, well, she's still not going to, like even agree to negotiate, you know. I'm going to give this presentation about how I think both private equity has messed up a lot of open source projects in the past.

44:42And how in particular, there will be pension is done some very bad or evil things. And they were like, okay, go for it. So, did the presentation. I think it was on a Thursday, for Friday, kind of spicy. People were like, oh, can't believe you did that. And in a Monday, they launched this with Quintamannual, which is kind of the baddest, nastiest law firm. It's like who Elon uses when he sees people. Launches big, you know, multi -million dollar lawsuit against both me personally. And WordPress .org, so like the WordPress community and automatic. And also, you know, they're spending millions of dollars a month on both lawyers and PR.

45:26So, they're doing, you know, if you read, I got to choose this celebrity that they were recently talking about this, like the dark PR stuff. Or they're like, like live, live, like live, like live, like, yeah, yeah. So, all that stuff is happening. So, there's, and I warned, you know, people, I think in the presentation, I said, hey, there's going to be a smear campaign against me. And internally in the company, I was like, hey, they're going to dig up everything that's ever happened. Anything bad, anyone's ever said to me, it's kind of like all of a sudden, like a news item. And that has happened.

45:58It's been true. So, right now, there is a portion of the internet that does think I have devil horns and everything. 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 me. But, you know, 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 in a way that ultimately can destroy everything you've created. So, this is probably the fourth time the internet has decided on the main character or, or, or really evil.

46:32And the previous ones we don't remember anymore. It's hot nacho or the Easter massacre of themes or like these are the things that aren't even on my way to pd page anymore. But, those are really big days of time. Those are your incidents. Those are one like historical battles. No, these are things that, yeah, I was involved in. It's cool names of things. Including some things I had screwed up. Like hot nacho is definitely a group of my aunt very early in the WordPress side. But, well, I'm not gonna fall those through. Let's put those are great names. This episode is brought to you by Lume. Lume lets you record your screen, your camera, and your voice to share video messages easily.

47:08Record a Lume and send it out with just a link to gather feedback at context or share an update. So, now you can delete that novel length email that you were writing. Instead, you can record your screen and share your message faster. Lume can help you have fewer meetings and make the meetings that you do have much more productive. Meeting start with everyone on the same page and and early. Problem solved, time saved. We know that everyone isn't a one take wonder when it comes to recording videos. So, Lume comes with easy editing and AI features to help you record once and get back to the work that counts.

47:42Save time, align your team, stay connected, and get more done with Lume. Now part of it, Lassian, the makers of JIRA. Try Lume for free today at loom .com slash Lenny. That's l -o -o -m .com slash Lenny. So, you mentioned this talk. You gave it word camp and you said at the beginning of the talk. Like, I'm, oh no, afterwards you're like, I was really nervous to give this talk. And obviously, you can see why. Just like what, what finally convinced you this was time? Was it just to go, as you described, scorched earth nuclear. Was it like word camp is coming up and this is the moment to go public with this?

48:20Is there something else that kind of crossed the line? It was a unique opportunity because we were essentially saying that paid. WWE engine isn't going to be allowed to sponsor word camps anymore. They're not going to be like, because we, again, up to that point, really done everything to bring them in and have them be part of the community. So, I really had to also explain to our community, like, hey, why we're going to be at Sweden this company. That a lot of people saw as is doing good. If you go to the WWE engine website, they have whole pages about how much they contribute, give back, and how they, you know, they do kind of green washer, open source wash, a lot of what they do.

48:56So, all their marketing brandy was around this positive stuff. And so, I was like, hey, we need to just explain this case. Yeah, it can, my defaults, and how we've worked with, by the way, every other company in the WordPress space, many of which are much, much larger, and make sometimes billions more in revenue than WWE engine, is collaborative. So, like, if there's a trademark violation, usually it's not even lawyers going to fall. It's just like this email we have a conversation, we do a call, we talk about it, you know. That's how things get resolved. And that's my default, I'm a lower amount of fighter.

49:31And that's why this thing doesn't happen very often. You know, I like to say that, yes, if I was a WordPress community, or whatever was doing this like every year, every couple of months, yeah, you should worry about it. But it kind of happens like every like 10 years. 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 WPNG in this case. One is they were using the trademark, both WordPress and WooCommerce. Without license and they're just abusing it, confusing people. A lot of people thought WPNG was actually automatic in WordPress official.

50:05They weren't contributing to the project. They were just making basically a bunch of money and not doing the work to off this company they bought. And they're just kind of hollowing it out. Is he described? And then they're also cutting corners, making the product worse. And that kind of reflects on the whole brand of WordPress. 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 life.

50:41Maybe it's that maybe it's just taking advantage of the community. Just like what's the thing that you think is the root of this? Just like, oh, this needs to stop. Well, I guess the one thing I'd add to your list was as this was happening, they were pretending to good faith and negotiate. And in fact, at one point, the executive, we were talking about her joining automatic and running WordPress out of work. And I think what she thought the VPN was going to sell. So she was thinking about what was next. So yeah, a lot of this stuff was, I think that Duplicis' behavior also kind of forced this to an age more than even those other things that you mentioned.

51:18There's lots of companies that don't contribute back. And it's not as big a deal. But yeah, the legal issue was definitely the trademark thing. So let's push it to the edge. I think just the magnitude of the issue, they would refer to themselves as WordPress engine and client meetings and other things. They would very carefully or about how they would imply their association with the project. Obviously, as you can tell on socials, a lot of people are just really upset. And a lot of people blame you. They're just like I said, every time you're on a podcast or in Twitter, people are just like, Matt, what about this?

51:57What the sucks? Why are you doing this? And I want to go through some of those things. But just not many people go through like, like I think you were like a hundred percent beloved hero of open source and internet. And now you're like in this, a lot of people don't like you. Just does a human. Just what is that? How do you work through that? How do you deal with that? What's that been like? 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. And like when we introduced something like Gutenberg, people hated it. Actually, when we introduced a visual editor, people hated it.

52:29These are huge controversies in the WordPress history. And when it actually hasn't been a fork or WordPress around all this latest stuff, but there was when we introduced Gutenberg. It's when it called Classic Press where people actually forced the software. So how I would describe it is previously like one percent of the world thought I was terrible. And now I feel like it's up to like four or five percent. So it's still like not the majority. But as you know, something negative. You feel seven times more than something positive. And when people are angry with you, they're more likely to like, it's kind of like restaurant reviews or whatever.

53:10They're more likely to leave a bad review than a good review. And you know, the people who, you know, WordPress, you know, 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. And part of the reason these folks are so good is like they don't spend all their time on Twitter or Reddit arguing with folks. 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 introduced. And so you kind of, I've done my best actually because I, you know, from the open source item really used to engaging with things.

53:49And I think that's been one thing I've learned from this is like in some forums, like it doesn't matter how you engage. And especially if you have like, you know, bots or other things running there like I'd leave comments on Reddit, it'd immediately get like 40 downloads. I'm like, hey, this is an article about me and I'm adding a fact to the thing like, why is it getting downloaded? This is very relevant to the discussion, but it's literally hidden. So like when you see that thread, you'd have to click like three or four times to see the comment I had left. And so it can really kind of change the perception.

54:20And then when you read these things, I think it's just very human nature, even very folks very close to me. Like, do you read a thread? And it's all like super negative. It's hard to not be influenced by that because we're social creatures. So 100%. Now the good news is I've had lots of, you know, sort of like credibility weighted, you know, support from, you know, people like Mark Bannyoff or, you know, other open source leaders. Or the core people in WordPress, you know, Betias, Mary Hoverd, all the core committers, the international community actually like, just in Japan, like they don't care about this stuff.

55:00And so these are actually, if you look by like number of commits and lines of code and everything like that, the folks who actually are most crucial in WordPress. So I feel like that's been a good balance as well for me because our days were like, gosh, am I an idiot? Or, you know, it could be really down like reading all these things. 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 into to do a great software, great work. Yeah, the internet can be brutal. Let me go through a couple specific things that people point out because I think you've been on a lot of podcasts and people haven't asked you these questions.

55:36And 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 that this is just caused in the WordPress community. I'll read you a couple quotes. Real people are receiving fewer projects in the WordPress, on WordPress because C suite or seeing 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. Just thoughts on that and the impact that is out on the community.

56:05Yeah, I think this is until this gets resolved. But by the way, I hope it is soon. I think there's no business reason for this to continue like I really hope that they come to a settlement or something. We're ready. They could end this tomorrow. They wanted to the VV engine could. So we can't. We're just defending right now. So yeah, it's really incumbent on them. All of our competitors, by the way, are like great. WordPress, the king on the hill, all of a sudden we can use this. And so there's also not just from a WV engine, but also from all the competitors to WordPress. And all the people who would love to capture some of our users or market share.

56:43They're really leading into this. So I've seen white papers. I've seen all sorts of things where people talk about this. We're actually in the next couple days going to publish something really cool on the WordPress or 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. It's quite healthy. And so not saying that there isn't, you know, examples of where someone lost a project or something like that. I'm sure it's happened. You know, it's the internet's big WordPress has so many millions of users and developers and everything that you're going to get some examples.

57:18But by the numbers things are actually quite healthy. And in some ways, it's not that there's no presses, bad press. It's raised awareness of WordPress quite a bit. So people who haven't talked about WordPress in years and are like, oh, it's talked about it. And so a little bit of drama. I think I wouldn't do this all the time, but a little bit can be a good thing. Okay. So another one of them, 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, you move the trademark to be owned by the foundation.

57:52And automatic cat is exclusive rights to use the trademark. And I think people are like, oh, was it, I thought it was the foundation owned it, but maybe Matt still owns it. And then you're trying to monetize it through this agreement WMP engine. Is there anything you can share there that'll make people feel and see your side of the story? Yeah, this is totally fair because it's complicated. But people are saying like, this has been private. This has all been very public and documented on the internet from the beginning. So WordPress .org is always been me personally. And I think because it's part of the reason we started there is .com was not available.

58:31So we started. So like, that's why we started on the .org and things like that. And people also assume .org means non -profit. There's all things. And that's sometimes true, but it's not always. It's not a requirement of the .org domain. 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 five years of the project to work over that automatic is owned everything out rights.

59:00And again, I had investors in the board and that was under control of that. Now as automatic became more successful, I was able to consolidate some voting rights and other things. And at least later advocate. Also remember I was like 21 when all this was happening. So it was not like maybe the most savvy about legal stuff for didn't always have the best advice. So later as I learned more, I was like, oh, you know, I want to actually take this out of the company and create a nonprofit. And so we ended up creating a nonprofit. Now there are rules around five or one three C nonprofits around the IRS are actually very strict.

59:38So that's also something else people assume is that, oh, doesn't the nonprofit run the software. And we applied for that originally and it was denied by the IRS. So we actually weren't able to put WordPress .org or the software itself under the nonprofit. But we were able to have sort of an educational purview. So what was eventually proved was sort of like running the meetups and other things for WordPress doing educational stuff. We sponsor a lot of like learning to code or running workshops and other. We have these cool thing I'll do action where we'll do like weekend where we take much of nonprofits and build websites for them and stuff like that.

1:00:17So the nonprofit has a lot of exciting things there. And then also negotiated with the sort of investors and everyone at automatic to sort of actually put the trademark and the foundation. Now the compromise there was that automatic at this point is running WordPress .com. So to continue running that which at the time I've had already tens of millions of users and everything, it needed a commercial license. And so kind of the compromise is that the foundation would kind of own the trademark and license it out for non commercial purposes. I had a license to run WordPress .org, you know, because obviously I need that.

1:00:59And then automatic would retain the commercial license and the ability to sub license that so to sell that to others. 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. So the sort of power in each of those that I think sort of checks and balances inside of it, which is on purpose. Wow, okay. I get why it's complicated. I get why people would be confused. This makes me think about opening. I had a really strange structure and I got in a lot of trouble. And I feel like when you're 21, you're like, oh, this makes a lot of sense.

1:01:34What a great concept would come up here. And then all this complexity just adds to a lot of confusion around what's going on. So thank you for trusting that. Another, there's a kind of a related question. I've seen a couple of times. There's just why don't you let that .org be run by a community. Why not just like give that up to someone else and not just you. Thoughts there. Yeah. And the frame of that question is kind of interesting because it implies like I'm the only person making WordPress, which is obviously not true. If you look at the daily commits and activity and everything, it is run by the community.

1:02:06So it's hundreds of volunteers every day that are actually doing the day to day work and making the data decisions and everything happens. So there has been a radical delegation. However, there's ultimately a hierarchy. And I'm kind of the CEO. So I'm like a final, final decision maker. And so I think what people advocate for around this government's point of view is like, okay, well, install a board on top of you. That's, you know, ultimately makes decisions for the product or things like that. And there are other open source projects that have this structure. Not only have been successful as WordPress.

1:02:47So, you know, I think your audience in particular like is great software ever created by committee. Or does it more often reflect a vision of a leader or, you know, something that can allow us to, and I think particularly, you know, WordPress not just remaining relevant, but actually it's celebrating growth over huge technological shifts over the past two decades. You know, when we started, there was like dynamic web apps or DHTML or JavaScript wasn't really thing and then like social web and then iPhones and then all the 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.

1:03:27Like most products do not remain relevant over multiple generational changes like that. And that's been because sometimes we've had to make very unpopular decisions. Like if Gutenberg is a huge part of why WordPress is relevant today. And it's actually an open source project we do is to block editor. It's actually bigger than WordPress, you know, because it's not just used on WordPress. It's used on every WordPress site, but also like Tumblr, other people. I would actually love a Squarespace or Wix adopted Gutenberg. It's meant to be like a really open source framework. But anyway, if we had voted for whether we should do that or not, everyone would have voted against it or the majority would have.

1:04:02It was really a few core people of us in the community, you know, Matias, myself, other廖企юбри드, Ella, and Joaz that said like, hey, you know, this is the future. And it's going to take 10 years to do. And it's going to be a long bet. It's going to suck for the first three or four years. And so everyone's going to hate it in the beginning. But then later, you know, with iteration, we've had I think now 200 releases of Gutenberg. We do sort of a very strict every two weeks release schedule since it started. It's going to get pretty good. And it's at that point now. It's actually getting pretty darn good.

1:04:34And the next phase of it actually so excited about it's going to be collaboration. So all the like the real time co -editing like Google Docs and Ocean has is coming out to this open source thing. And with the technological changes, we're actually able to do a peer to peer. So we don't need a centralized server. We can use WebRTC and other cool technologies. So I mean, I'm going sideline. But I think that, you know, that's sort of more. And if you look at a lot of great companies, like, you know, there's a board or whatever. But like ultimately, there's an executive. And so the most iconic companies or generations are ones where the executive has, you know, pertains some majority voting control or other things like that, which I've been able to with automatic and with WordPress.

1:05:16And, you know, I definitely think about succession planning and everything like that. But if for when I'm gone, 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 try to be a steward. And there are ultimately a lot of check and balance on that because again, the community could leave. They could fork the software. People could change. And so, you know, you're in charge, quote unquote, but you're also at surface. So it's a lot more being like a mayor than a CEO. And that you ultimately are accountable to the folks who are contributing and new users and everything like that.

1:05:56So I do feel like there is a balance there. 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 Yoast of Korea and things like these are folks who actually aren't like don't have commit status. They haven't contributed to WordPress over the years and server and normal hierarchy of, you know, the meritocracy of how you get like, you know, the ability to commit code or things like that. And they're like, hey, I want to be I want to lead a release. And so that, I mean, that's cool, dude. But like there's a, there's a process.

1:06:23We have different people leave releases over the years. But like, you know, they they kind of work their way up to it. This makes so much sense to me. That'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 a trending these days. I think I would say that it was shit. Yeah, Brian shared it, but then a program pointed afterwards. And then I renamed the title of that episode founder mode to. I really would actually kind of if I zoom out what I'm sensing here is there's like people that have this vision, ideal of how something like this should run.

1:06:57But they've never actually worked at a place like a more nonprofit board runs it runs a thing and I've seen what that actually looks like. And so I think there's like a big disconnect between the ideal in theory and like what how does great stuff get built. And one of the things I think we've tried to demonstrate with WordPress is actually there's kind of like an open source side and a nonprofit side and a for profit working in concert. So and one of the things people don't necessarily appreciate as much about why WordPress has been so successful is because of automatic. And things like a gizmo doing anti spam or WordPress calm having a free version of WordPress that is introduced over 100 million people to the software in a way that you could assign it for free.

1:07:40You don't have to pay for hosting or download it yourself or things like that. So that kind of for profit nonprofit open source working in concert. I think is a really interesting model that we're starting to see a lot more companies do. It's actually very exciting to me that some of the things that were controversial and we started like open source or distributed work. Or now that the fault for so many exciting new startups and this whole ecosystem stuff like really, really cool like open source like cal .com for open source kind of delete or so much cool stuff out there that actually there's a whole generation of younger entrepreneurs that I find very, very inspiring because they're also bringing like modern design and web development everything to open source which is very neat.

1:08:21I anticipate a block goes one day I told you so guys open source remote work imagine there's a few more things there. 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 varying the weeds but I think it's really important to people and there's something that 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 and then kind of push people to this plugin versus the original plugin. What can you share there?

1:08:55Yeah this is very complex but so WordPress .org has kind of like an app store. After WP engine started suing us creating millions of dollars of legal fees and things we blocked their access toward fresh .org. So this plugin they had advanced custom fields wasn't able to be updated. At the same time a number of security issues were found in it including something we reported and so there had to be an update to it. So we're like okay we'll ship the update for you essentially and they were like okay I think we need to call it something different right because it actually isn't there is anymore and they still offer advanced custom fields on their own people can download it from them.

1:09:44So we made secure custom fields which is originally under the same directory listing. So again because we want all the users to get the security updates. This is controversial and actually they actually got a preliminary injection so the judge said reverse this so this has all been reversed by the way. Then now is a separate fork under separate listing of secure custom fields which actually we have 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 forked a lot of things of works so we forked it now have a new name new everything that we're doing a lot of product innovation and like proving it.

1:10:26So there's a separate project now that separate directory listing for secure customers that's kind of fast forward to today. They now have access to WordPress not only again they have update the plugin everything's kind of back to how it was before and and there's a separate thing called secure custom fields that the WordPress project is officially sporting. So I'm hearing essentially you block WPN 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 block them in the block there's like a dependency where people couldn't do a thing that they needed to do.

1:10:59So you're like and it's and as the one that exists there's a problem with it so we're going to make that dependence like release a version that you can actually use and fix the security issues. That was the intention I think that there was a lot of perceptions around it that were different but yeah that was that was the goal. Okay, okay, 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 the approach you're taking. You talked about there's this WPN GEN spending a lot of money on PR and hiring this agency.

1:11:32I guess is there anything else that like why do you think so many people are looking to use the bad guy. Is it mostly that you think just like where do you think it's coming from? Why is it like comments always so negative and we talked a bit about it but anything more there. I don't know if I can say why. I do think one thing I've learned is that a lot of these things we talked about are nuanced. So one essentially thing I've learned in this process is that it's hard to explain this stuff in you know 240 characters or the some mediums do not lend themselves well to discussing this. And so I tried you know but I'm you know participating less than like Reddit or Twitter and trying to do more long form things like this we can actually have the context things can be taken out of context.

1:12:19Also I think there's something where you know social networks sometimes are tuned to pro outrage. And it was very interesting we ran a sentiment analysis recently we're kind of like looking at different social networks analyzing other comments and and we found actually that the negative you know the sort of devil horn fraction on like what was it like LinkedIn Facebook Instagram was like 8%. It's actually pretty small I read it it was like bigger forget that exact number but on Twitter is 52%. They're like whoa let's go 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 I it can promote kind of the most controversial things and I think that's not a novel perception like there's a lot of discussion around how social media might be creating more fragmentation in society.

1:13:08And I think this is just an example of that where when you have networks when people are getting the majority of the information from social networks and those networks are not designed to provide new answer balance or even promote truth necessarily. You know misinformation can get spread far more than you know what's the saying like I like it's around the world seven times for truth has time so you know get out of bed get out of bed. Yeah there's been a lot of that so there's actually been a lot of misinformation and untrue things that like go viral and then the correction you know the untrue thing gets like 700 ,000 views and the correction gets like 20 ,000 views so there's been some of that happening and you know when when mainstream media has covered this it's actually been a lot better so there's been some actually really good articles in a.

1:13:56You know some business publications that other things that that sort of look at a more nuanced and balanced view and I think the podcast have been pretty good but definitely on Twitter like I think you can get a version of all this that is both I think not entirely true and also like pretty more negative you know. I imagine people are going to be like like you didn't ask a missing here's the thing he said that I want to learn more about I'm sure I miss some stuff but from an outsider's perspective this all make sense there's a company like I'm not I don't think P companies are bad innately but their job is by company and make it run more efficiently and then oftentimes sell it for more so it makes sense that the by company make it more efficient cuts some corners don't put a lot of effort into making it awesome even though the truth is awesome people working in there trying to get a lot of information about it.

1:14:45It's really hard to make it great and like basically what I'm feeling is you just they got to a point where this is hurting the ecosystem they're feeling really dishonest with working with you and there's just there's just a stalling technique and so makes that makes sense to me why you just have to stand up and fight back and and it's hard and it's hard to do that. Is there anything else along this thread before we move on to a different topic anything else you want to share before we close out this chapter well people have more questions they can come to work in Asia I do going to open Q &A there we do town halls and the WordPress our community there's a slack people can get on and ask questions so like there is kind of like a lot of open ways to engage and now I'm definitely happy to do that.

1:15:32I'm probably not going to do it on Twitter as much but like oh yeah when there's longer form opportunities to have a discussion here particularly if it's more like real time like this. I'm very happy to and that's why if you look at it there's actually a big difference will be a engine has not done any podcast and no press they don't respond to journalists they don't talk about this and I've done the opposite or I'm really trying to be out there and engaged and everyone's like why don't you just let the lawyers do the talking and it's like well but we have community and also I feel like we're in the right so when you're when you're the wrong probably say only at the lawyers talk when you're the right like you know I think you should be out there and tell the story.

1:16:10I remember at the end of your word cam talk you're like any questions after this big controversial talk and I'm curious how felt like every all the questions initially were nothing to do with this it's what it felt like you're just like they already have these questions they didn't even know what you said maybe and I bet you're just like wait is anyone. Then you're just said to feel like that. Blossom like that's really like a word press community event so it's a lot of the core developers and things so like they have word press questions so that is something really good not hundreds of these town halls and QAs and I really enjoy it because you never know what's going to come up.

1:16:42Yeah. Okay I want to talk about all the companies that you're bought and have are we'll buy in the future it's kind of like you're building a little birch or half away I think you've described it that way it's kind of what it's feeling like and tumblers really interesting I didn't like until I started prepping for this I didn't even know you guys tumblr. I haven't heard the story what's just why did you guys buy tumblr what is going on with tumblr it was like a big deal back in the day what is the current state of tumblr what is the story there. I'll tumblr so interesting I mean you know at the time I think it was one of our best competitors they created this really amazing sort of hybrid of like blogging and social networking and if you kind of zoom back a lot of things that are now standard on other social networks like even the ability to embed an image with a post again was not supported originally on Twitter and other things remember they used to have like it was like tweet image or like you have to like linked out to other things to post an image to Twitter it wasn't a different functionality and and I'm going to do it.

1:17:40tumblr had like these multiple post types you could post like a chat an image you know there were I think one of the first support video so they do a lot of I think product innovation on middle leadership of David carp it's like a really amazing much better product leader funny story both David and I or whatever at scene at the same time they had hired both and alumni group whoa they could have kept both of us probably but the anyway the tumblr then I forget the year but they sold I think the same thing. I think the same time that Instagram date for a similar amount 1 .1 billion dollars to you or just someone else Instagram bought by Facebook I right tumblr and tumblr bought by Yahoo.

1:18:21Oh wow who is at the time again Yahoo we don't think about it now but I feel a little old but like the time Yahoo was like one of the internet giants and had recently Versa Meyer who was a mayor who was one of the big early people at Google I think part of creating the APA program and everything like that was the CEO of Yahoo this was I think one of her first big acquisitions now subsequently obviously we know how Instagram went I think you know people like I can't believe you bought this for a billion dollars and obviously now it's worth hundreds of billions so that's how a really good trajectory.

1:18:59At Yahoo I think things became more challenged so again this is a little bit of history but Yahoo then had like this thing where they owned part of Alibaba which then became like more valuable than rest of the company that activist investors I think they had some CEOs which is I think Versa Meyer like leaves or gets fired at some point you know there's all this like turnover and I think tumblr really language under that their ownership and for what I can understand the team was actually held back a lot from things they want to launch or ways they want to iterate then Yahoo mergers with AOL which is another kind of early internet thing that goes for like a little while so again the tumblr is kind of stuck underneath the stuff something along something along and then that gets bought by Verizon so fast forward to 2019 you know Verizon wants to get rid of tumblr so they're they're kind of put up for sale and had a number of bitters automatic ended up buying it for a minimum amount I think it's been reported we bought it for like $3 million dollars what I think a whole three million so but obviously that represent a lot of value destruction over the years tumblr had some tough times they actually were banned from the app store at one point for not moderating things well enough and having you know kind of maybe a little too much porn obviously Twitter right at porn but like they might have maybe we're a little too out there with it and we're doing a good job filtering it and keeping away from it from app store reviewers or whatever and so Verizon to the 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 acquire that they felt like would be a good steward and from my point of view I had such incredible respect for tumblr as a product and the community you know still despite all of this sort of stuff that had happened I think that point still was like you know get the exact number but like call it 15 20 million monthly active users so really sort of active core and one of the things that so fascinating is over half of that user base was under the age 25 and actually had a huge I think it was like 25 or 30 % LGBT plus and 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 it would be someplace their parents weren't like Facebook or Instagram they're like really still good data special spot so we did buy it now people like all you bought it was really not but we bought it sort of taking on all liabilities including I think they were under investigation by the FTC there were lawsuits there's all this sort of stuff so we was free like a puppy not free like that and I don't like feeling beer yeah and a pretty big team I think 185 people you know we're taking a lot of burners burning a ton of cash and yeah that was 2019 and so it's been I think a humbling experience you know running a social network and it was very very different from all the other products that we've done and I think that's incredible things about tumblr and that I'm still very excited about so we're like WordPress has primarily like a desktop and web user base tumblr is obviously like 85 % app based has the art demographic and so part of the vision that now we're we're excluding on is actually we want to create a path and people using tumblr to actually it being powered by WordPress on the back end so tumblr users could unlock themes customization plugins etc and actually we're the process right now migrating the half a billion tumblr sites to WordPress probably one of the largest data migrations that happened in a while so 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 interfacing everything so it's it's a fun engineering project I kind of posted this like kind of call it to arms got a 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 carry audacious goal and so that's where it's at now I sort of ran it personally for a few years while we're doing turn them out and but it's a great team there and but still it's I still challenge you know still not still not profitable so we're still subsidizing it from the rest of automatic businesses fortunately the rest of our business have done really well so we were able to do that by definitely want to get to a place where it's sustainable and one of the things were also experimenting with is can tumblr have not just an advertising driven model I think ultimately incentives of advertising social networks can lead to the kind of dynamics that you see on the more negative side of like Twitter Instagram Facebook etc and so really trying to create a subscription model or a sort of like first party user driven advertising where like you promote your blog post or something like that or you promote a book on this project or something where it's like not a third party ad ecosystem which I think has a lot of like weird code of malware lots of stuff I don't love wow sounds like a lot a lot you took on with this acquisition and I love the choose you say the ram it initially so this is a good segue to maybe my last question I'm curious where this goes just how do you well I'm using that there's a lot of people these days that are excited about roll up businesses I'm going to buy a bunch of companies make them better make them awesome save money and just keep building this holding companies or the thing guys you're doing that and words working well what do you look for how do you decide a company's right for automatic what are the kind of the factors that are like we should buy this we can turn this around and turn it into big success I don't know if I would do another turnaround like tumblr again or at least not for many many years you know it's definitely a different thing the vast majority of things we acquire it's simply something it's done well and we want to accelerate it or sometimes you know aqua hires where like we're plugging it into whatever existing projects or we're taking the team and putting it on something we're already doing so it's a really talented team tumblr I think we ended up ultimately replacing like 85 90 % of the team as well so that that's just very different and yeah so I do think there are no different ways of doing it but if you look at our other acquisitions like day one and set our like founders still here many years later we're accelerating like you know the stuff like that we brought it to Android we're bringing it brought it to web like that it's more of like taking something good making better and probably our best example there is is a small company I think 35 40 people based on South Africa and has obviously grown to you know as I can I said you know automatic makes about half a billion dollars a year now and will commerce is majority of that speaking that actually you haven't sure the revenue number I know it's public just like give people a sense of automatics revenue can you share those numbers because I think it all might build people's minds I think we say publicly it's about a half a billion dollars and serve a or revenue right now incredible okay I'm gonna I have a question for you it's kind of a hot sea question as you talked I wonder I feel like people are thinking this so we've been talking about PE companies being often bad you're buying tumblr you talked about laying off a bunch of people throwing it all around how's that different from a peep company met yeah and I agree with you that like 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 an automatic and we do now they own usually a small percentage like sometimes every one percent and they don't have control the company so I think there's a distinguish is that a minority investment or a control investment and with wp engine silver league controls the company now when they control the company I think there's a spectrum of actions you know obviously be more efficient is great and we should all strive for that and I think every business does whether it's private equity or you know our business or things that are found or controlled you always want to be more efficient now there's some spectrum there where you over optimize or you could have dark patterns you know right now and wp engine it's very difficult to cancel your account because they're actually I think as of today 45 ,000 sites have left so they're I think down the like I'll accept it yeah well because their customers have realized like hey this isn't WordPress this isn't it or they're suing the guy who started WordPress so like maybe we should not support this commercially so we have the site WordPress engine tracker .com that sort of shows in real time the sites that are leaving it's kind of an exciting thing to see that number tick up actually maybe a good example as well like even though there's a lot of negativity they actually look at like how people are voting with the wallets they're leaving so I think you have to judge as well like just look at the track record so one of the things are very proud of without automatic is we are an acquire a first resort and we have founders that have sold to us Paul main at day one is a great example that didn't need to sell you know you could easily the wildly profitable could have run it themselves for a long time but people choose to join because they feel like we'll be good stewards of it in the future I know if we'll just have to look at the track record so I think you know don't judge it by what it's called judge it by the actions over time and I hope to continue building that reputation for a place that's a good example and I think it's a good story of communities and software and everything else for me to come.

1:28:52Matt we covered so much everything I asked you all the hard questions and more before we wrap up is there anything else that you want to leave listeners with any last thoughts comments insights stories. Yeah follow me I'm at photo that PhD to you M. A. T. T. on double or Twitter and Instagram everything like that I post a lot about other stuff I post a lot about AI and open source and other things some work for things and there as well. You know I these life missions that I'm out Chris publishing in commerce we added a new one last year which is messaging so it's in beta mode right now but relaunching a few months as product of beeper takes all your telegram Instagram DM signal everything Brazil.

1:29:32It's all a little one act and you can just really cool stuff like that. Especially when you start to imagine search for AI local AI around that so very excited about that relaunch I encourage people to you check out the beta now go to be with our comp such beta to get like that new version. And we're going to relaunch that later in the year so yeah very excited about that it's it's kind of fun to be working on something that's at the stage where WordPress was in like 2003 2004. So it worked quite mature at this point who commerce is kind of where WordPress was in like 2010 and then the beeper stuff domestic stuff is where we were in like 2003 so it's one thing that keeps me inside is working at like different stages of this.

1:30:11Yeah this feels like a reason to be doing the approach to Berkshire out the way is just like stay active in early stage stuff and not just optimize established things so it's beeper that comp by the way awesome domain name. Photo Matt is that what's the story photo Matt are you you're into photography I imagine is the story. Yeah it's a little bit of a pun so you know there's a photo is a photo Matt is also like pf OTO and a T is a place that you would go to like develop your photos back when you have film and develop things. So originally my my username was sacs Matt because I played the saxophone.

1:30:49And sometimes people miss here that and also like as you know I started I stopped travel I started traveling so much because I was been years I do like 400 ,000 miles of air travel because I go around the world to like go to WordPress fence and meet the community and you know as a distributed company we do lots of meetups. And so it was became hard to carry my saxophone around so my method of artistic expression became photography and it's actually kind of how WordPress started was actually originally a site where I could share my photos you know before flicker before Facebook and everything like that.

1:31:18So I used 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. And yeah that's it's still one of the things I really love so it's also username that was available everywhere and I still do it so I'm actually going to the my how come mella the big you know 3 million person gathering at the congee's river a few weeks and one of just decided to go to the experience that happens like every 12 years but to just really said to like take some time to do photography and yeah I really enjoy it.

1:31:56You forgot to mention your website and where your blog either your WordPress site itself where you blog M .A .TT is the domain which is amazing. I will point people to one of my favorite ritual you have on your blog which is you share what's in your bag you talk about how you travel this. And I think every year you're like here's the gadgets I use most and bring with me everywhere right. It's my most popular post of the year by far not surprised just you know Amazon just buy everything but yeah because basically you're just trying to optimize for the least weight and most utility right out of all these gadgets you're bringing with your own trips.

1:32:33Yeah actually way it is something I just started doing this year so because my bag actually got really heavy got like 35 pounds or something and so yeah so friends were like hey well we weigh everything and just go through and now I'm posting the weights. Yeah okay anyway we'll point people to that man thank you so much for doing this is awesome. Lenny thank you so much and I really appreciate you know the ability to discuss these things in a long form and also just your audience. And so 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.

1:33:01I recommend your podcast and newsletter 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 to have an impact on these things. What roles are you hiring for most and where do people find these roles automatic dot com a uto to T. M T T I see there's a work with us page you can kind of see how we work we're fully distributed and manage that forever you know we sort of started that. Another interesting thing is we actually pay the same salaries globally so whether you're in California or Italy or Nigeria or wherever we pay the global salaries.

1:33:37So yeah a lot of opportunities and we're hiring for kind of everything so I would say but particularly like people with great designer or product skills is probably one of the areas that you can have the biggest impact at automatic right now. Alright if you made it this far into the podcast you should definitely applaud. Matt thank you thank you for being here. Hi everyone. Thank you so much for listening if you found this valuable you can subscribe to the show on Apple podcasts Spotify or your favorite podcast app. Also please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast.

1:34:16You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny's podcast dot com. See you in the next episode.