automattic

This week we brought Matt Mullenweg, the CEO of Automattic and co-founder of WordPress onto the show, along with Kishan Bagaria, the founder of Texts.com. Automattic bought all-in-one messaging app Texts.com for $50 million back in October. Well, we had questions, not only about the deal, but also the state of the written word online. 

A few notes before you hit play. First, Automattic is more acquisitive than you thought. A look at its history of purchases is critical context for our conversation. And, second, TechCrunch uses WordPress. We in fact are WordPress VIP customers. Neither fact is news, and of course had no bearing on our choice to bring Mullenweg and Bagaria on the podcast, but felt worth noting all the same.

Alright, sit back, hit play, and have some fun with us! We’re back on Friday with our news roundup!

Connect with Equity on X and Threads @EquityPods, and keep up with all of TechCrunch's podcasts @TechCrunchPods on TikTok.

For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.

Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!

Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.

What's the story behind the microblogging site Tumblr? How did it go from the nexus of Internet culture valued at more than a billion dollars to a property that would change hands multiple times in just a few short years? We take a look at the phenomenon known as Tumblr.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tom Willmot has been a WordPress pioneer and leader in the agency space since co-founding Human Made in 2010. Just in the past year, Human Made has more than doubled its size with a team of 100. Tom is also CEO and co-founder of Altis DXP, Human Made's enterprise WordPress digital experience platform. I caught up with Tom this week to find out what he's thinking about the challenges and opportunities of the enterprise market for WordPress agencies today.

Sparked by Magne Ilsaas's ideas in The WordPress Enterprise Paradox, Tom started a Twitter thread and hosted a live discussion this week about the challenges of not having a well-defined brand and market for enterprise WordPress. In the minds of clients beyond the WordPress and open-source community not to mention unhelpful tech industry analysts, "WordPress" is something you can buy, and it's often confused with any number of related brands: Automattic, WordPress VIP, and managed WordPress hosts that support enterprise clients.

After getting an outline of the problem as it stands today, I asked Tom what might help differentiate "Enterprise WordPress" as a collective or entire ecosystem of agencies operating within it. Can open-source values of sharing and cooperation shape a unique global identity for enterprise WordPress agencies? Is it time for an inter-agency association or "guild" to take on these challenges? (Human Made has an internal "guild" structure of cross-functional teams — what could it look like to extend them across the whole agency space?)

And how might that look within the WordPress ecosystem and others adjacent to it? Are more inter-agency gatherings needed along with greater participation in existing tech and design conferences? Will agencies like Human Made resume hosting conferences like their Day and Week of REST events in the past? Can the larger WordCamps cater to an enterprise track? Does Enterprise WordPress need its own conferences? I like Jeremy Keith and ClearLeft as a model for agency thought leadership. Magne has pointed to the Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA) as a model for organized peer collaboration and North Patrol as a model for a research and advisory firm that connects agencies with clients and reports on regional enterprise webtech markets.

This is an open, ongoing conversation. If it piques your interest, connect with Tom on Twitter: @tomwillmot.

🔗 Mentioned in the show:

• Human Made (GitHub) • Tom Willmot • Joe Hoyle • Noel Tock
  • Altis DXP (GitHub) • A Technical Introduction to Altis • Altis Accelerate (Plugin)
  • How Tom Works
• Forrester Research
  • Now Tech: Agile Content Management Systems, Q2 2022
• Gartner Peer Insights 2022 DXP Reviews and Ratings
  • Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms 2022

🐦 You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:

• Tom Willmot (CEO, Human Made)
• Dan Knauss (Editor, Post Status)
• Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)

The Post Status Draft podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis. 📝

Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS. 🎧

About a year ago, Vikas Singhal launched InstaWP, a serverless platform for spinning up WordPress sites instantly for demos and sandboxes, development and testing, or training and education. Along with WordPress, any combination of plugins and themes can be included. There’s GitHub integration, and InstaWP has the ability to push sites to a large number of hosts or pull them to a local development environment. (InstaWP generates Blueprints — .zip packages for WP Engine’s Local app.)

InstaWP is being embraced by WordPress product developers and agencies. It has significant product testing and marketing applications since customers can spin up any number of demo sites based on a custom template, and this activity is logged. Vikas has picked up seed funding from Automattic and looks forward to announcing many new partnerships with WordPress businesses that have found InstaWP and valuable and complementary tool.

Vikas sees InstaWP’s future as a marketplace for agencies, developers, and freelancers. Because of its powerful site templating and cloning capabilities, it could ultimately become a way to generate bespoke WordPress-based SaaS platforms at scale.

🙏 Sponsor: StellarWP

StellarWP provides WordPress solutions for all humankind. We’re a collective of leaders interested in growing WordPress companies. We build great plugins, but we don’t stop there; we continually challenge ourselves to keep innovating and improving. Reach out to us if you’re interested in learning more!

🔗 Mentioned in the show:

• InstaWP – Instant WordPress Sites for Everyone

🐦 You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:

• Vikas Singhal (Founder, InstaWP)
• Dan Knauss (Editor, Post Status)
• Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)

The Post Status Draft podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis. 📝

Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS. 🎧

This week Amanda Silberling comes on to talk about the rumor that porn may be coming back to Tumblr (spoiler alert: it’s not) and Devin Coldewey discusses if NASA’s DART spacecraft could really save us from a planet-threatening asteroid. And as always, Darrell will catch you up on the tech news you may have missed this week.

If you recently were laid off, TechCrunch is offering a free expo pass to Disrupt (Oct. 18-20) in San Francisco.  No strings attached. These tickets get you access to the expo floor, breakout sessions, and plenty of networking opportunities like partner roundtables and parties. For more info, check out this page.

Articles from the episode:

• No, Tumblr is not bringing back porn
• Watch the asteroid-smashing DART spacecraft make its 6-million-mile shot today
• NASA’s DART anti-asteroid satellite successfully smashes into space rock

Other news from the week:

• UK police arrest teenager suspected of Uber, GTA 6 hacks
• Interpol issues red notice for Terra founder Do Kwon
• Here are all of the new features and updates coming to Google Maps
• The OG App promised an ad-free Instagram feed then got pulled from App Store

Credits: The TechCrunch Podcast is produced by Maggie Stamets, hosted by Darrell Etherington, and edited by Kell. 

David and Olivia Bisset sat down for a chat with Matt Mullenweg about open source, Tumblr, and how Matt deals with negativity. Matt has three roles today: CEO of Tumblr, CEO of Automattic, and project lead for the next release of WordPress. He shares what went wrong with post formats and what he would love to acquire next if he could. The answer may (or may not) surprise you! 

This interview was recorded shortly before WordCamp Europe 2022.

🙏 Sponsor: A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting offers solutions for WordPress and WooCommerce that are both blazing fast and ultra-reliable. WordPress can be used on ANY Web Hosting plan from A2. You can deploy WordPress easily on Shared, VPS, or Dedicated Hosting plans. A2 also offers Managed WordPress and WooCommerce Hosting. Take a look at a2hosting.com today!

If you work in the WordPress space or would like to, check out the A2 hosting careers page. With data centers around the globe, A2 is a growing, founder-led company that relies on over 200 team members to bring their customers' digital visions to life every day. Check out a2hosting.com/about/careers to learn about current openings or the Post Status Job Board at poststatus.com/jobs

🔗 Mentioned in the show:

• WordPress Openverse
• Matt Mullenweg (Twitter)
• Olivia Bisset (Twitter)
• David Bisset (Twitter)
• Post Status (Twitter)

Every week Post Status Excerpt will bring you important news and insights from guests working in the WordPress space. 🎙️

You can listen to past episodes of The Excerpt, browse all our podcasts, and don’t forget to subscribe on Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, iTunes, Castro, YouTube, Stitcher, Player.fm, Pocket Casts, Simplecast, or by RSS. 🎧

It’s rare we get to speak to someone who has been working at their company for 19 years so this conversation with Matt Mullenweg of Automattic and WordPress feels a little special. His journey to becoming a founder was grounded in a love for blogging and working on open source projects. Now WordPress is pretty much ubiquitous in the digital publishing world. He talks with Darrell and Jordan about how much different fundraising worked for him, how he has remained such an in-touch leader, and of course his thoughts on Web3. 

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Found posts every Tuesday. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts to be alerted when new episodes drop. Check out the other TechCrunch podcasts: Equity and Chain Reaction. Subscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders each

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Catherine Stewart is the former Chief Operating Officer at Shippo and Chief Business Officer at Automattic (WordPress),  joins us in part one of a special two-parter, to talk about the craft of scaling operations at hyper-growth tech companies. Topics include shifting strategic priorities at Automattic to also focus on revenue generation and e-commerce through the acquisition of WooCommerce, the shift from Facebook to Automattic, balancing the entrepreneurial mindset with the need for processes, not sugar-coating it, and why her time at Random House yielded some of the most valuable learnings of her career.

Part two, coming next month, focuses on scaling the go-to-market and creating $B's in value.

Shippo is a shipping software company backed by Bessemer and D1, where she led Marketing, Sales, Business Development, Customer Success, Customer Support, People Ops, and Strategic Planning. During her time at the company, Shippo's revenue grew 3x faster than the US eCommerce shipping market, and the company's valuation grew from $220M to over $1B in just 18 months.

Prior to joining Shippo, Catherine was the Chief Business Officer at Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, during the company’s growth from a valuation of $1B to $3B. While at the company, she led the acquisition and integration of WooCommerce. Previously at Facebook, she helped launch the Facebook Audience Network and led the three-year planning process, and at Random House, worked on the transition from physical to digital books. Catherine began her career as a strategy consultant at McKinsey.

Stay up to date with Catherine at:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherine-stewart-800b841/
• Website: https://catherinetaylorstewart.com
• Episode Webpage: https://www.betweentwocoos.com/catherine-stewart-part-one-people

Stay up to date with Michael at:  https://linkedin.com/in/mkoenig514

True Ventures Chief Operating Officer, Jim Stewart, on what it's like to take four companies public, what goes into the operations to run a venture capital firm, how to take calculated risks, and what to do when you realize that you've just violated US government export controls when you're doing an IPO roadshow (don't panic).

True Ventures is a venture capital firm with an astonishing track record of investing in the best companies like Peleton, Fitbit, Ring, Duo Security, Automattic, and Sweetgreen, which just went public on the New York Stock Exchange.

Jim initially joined True Ventures as CFO in 2012 and now leads all operations as the firm's COO. He brings substantial operational and financial experience to venture-backed tech and biotech companies. Jim has held numerous operating and CFO positions, leading four companies through their IPO processes. When he is not focused on operations, he's doing all sorts of high-octane activities like racing his Yamaha R6 motorcycle.

Ben Horowitz's Book, The Hard Thing About Hard Things - https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-About-Things-Building/dp/0062273205

True Ventures - https://trueventures.com

Jim Stewart - https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-stewart-b1b10320/

Episode Webpage - https://betweentwocoos.com/jim-stewart-true-ventures-coo 

Episode Transcript - https://betweentwocoos.com/jim-stewart-true-ventures-coo /#transcript

Michael Koenig - https://linkedin.com/in/mkoenig514

New hires to Post Status and an acqui-hire for Automattic.

In this episode, David and Cory talk about recent news from all corners of the WordPress community. First, they share how they will miss Andrea Middleton — who is taking a great new opportunity at Reddit after 10 years of full-time work on the WordPress open source project. Next, they talk about why keeping the Classic Editor plugin officially supported makes sense, and how the Frontity acquisition by Automattic can be viewed as an acquihire to advance Gutenberg's development.

Also covered in this episode: Cory and David welcome Jonathan Wold to the Post Status team.

Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS. 🎧

🔗 Mentioned in the show:

• Thanks for a great 10 years, WordPress!
• Jonathan Wold (Twitter)
• An Update on the Classic Editor Plugin
• Frontity to Join Automattic
• Frontity is joining Automattic
• David Bisset (Twitter)
• Cory Miller (Twitter)
• Post Status (Twitter)

🙏 Sponsor: Gravity Forms

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$635.5 billion by the end of 2021?

In this episode of Post Status Excerpt, Cory Miller and David Bisset briefly touch on two more acquisitions this week — one involving Extendify and another by Automattic. Cory and David review some highlights from WP Engine's recent report on the WordPress economy. WP Engine estimates the WordPress market generated more than half a trillion dollars (USD) in 2020. They expect the market to grow to $635.5 billion by the end of 2021.

Also covered in this episode: A discussion of people who gave up on Gutenberg in its early phases release and how they might be convinced to give it another shot now. This topic came up thanks to an article written by Chris Lema and the conversation it provoked in Post Status Slack.

Every week Post Status Excerpt will brief you on important WordPress news — in about 15 minutes or less! Learn what's new in WordPress in a flash. ⚡

Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS. 🎧

🔗 Mentioned in the show:

• David Bisset (Twitter)
• Cory Miller (Twitter)
• Post Status (Twitter)
• WP Engine: WordPress Economy Drives More Than Half a Trillion in Revenue, New Global Study Shows
• Chris Lema: Embracing Gutenberg Completely
• Eric Karovack comments in Post Status Slack.

🙏 Sponsor: Yoast SEO

Yoast is SEO for everyone. Yoast SEO Premium gives you 24/7 support and extra features like internal linking, social previews, a redirect manager, tutorial videos, and integration with Google Webmaster Tools. Get on board today with the premiere SEO plugin for WordPress — Yoast.

Chris Hardie has been a web developer since the late 1990s. In this episode of the Post Status Draft podcast, Chris talks with Brian Krogsgard about his career as a deep generalist. Chris has worked as a writer, journalist, political candidate, and consultant, as well as a technologist and web developer.

This conversation touches on the challenges of winding down an agency and handling clients. Chris also talks about his experiences with the Special Projects team at Automattic, running for local office, being a journalist, and now launching WP Lookout to help site owners and developers safely update WordPress websites.

☝️ Safe WordPress Updates

Automatic updates are great, but what if you could get critical information about potentially breaking changes to WordPress core? What if you could get notified about changes to the plugins and themes you and your clients rely on?

WP Lookout is a new service that monitors WordPress core, plugin, and theme updates so you can apply them safely. You can subscribe to get notices about potentially breaking changes to the software you and your business depend on. 

🔗 Topics mentioned in the show

• Chris Hardie (@chrishardie)
• WP Lookout (@LookoutWP)
• Automattic Special Projects

👍 Sponsor: Bluehost

Everything your website needs — from start-up to success story — is at Bluehost. Whether you're looking to create a website, blog, or online store, Bluehost will get you started with an all-in-one website platform tailored to your specific needs. Get a free domain name in your first year, free 24/7 lifetime support, and total design freedom with WordPress at Bluehost.

Links:

• More about Leif
• How Automattic Hires Developers
• The Automattic Creed
• Open Positions at Automattic

Detailed Show Notes:

• Leif switched from an academic career to industry (0:50)
• He explains his reasons for the switch, and we discuss that it is difficult to choose where you want to live when you want to become a professor (2:47)
• Leif got his new remote job in the industry at a startup called IDoneThis (3:20)
• The startup was sold, and the team discontinued, so Leif found himself again looking for a new job (3:50)
• Well, as luck would have it, Life got in contact with Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com (4:09)
• Leif applied and interviewed for Automatic although he wasn't familiar with the company's tech stack (4:40)
• Leif explains the interview process at Automattic (7:03)
  • First, you send an email to jobs@automattic.com  (including a resume and a cover letter)
  • If you are invited for an interview, you get invited for a slack chat (a screener) where you talk about your background and your skills
  • Then, you get invited to do a small project which takes 4-5 hours over a week. It's a small project with concrete instructions that you must follow. For example, improve some parts of a feature.
  • If that works out well, then, you are invited to do a trial, where you work alongside an Automatic team for a period of 1-3 months for ~10 hours per week. This trial is paid with 25 Dollars per hour.
• Leif fills me in that you aren't working alongside your actual team. The team you are then hired into can be a different one, but you work with an actual team at Automattic and on an actual project. So, if all works out well, your code will be used in production. (9:40)
• Leif describes the tech stack of Automattic, and which skills and technologies you must possess to be able to apply for a position. (10:40)
  • Leif says that the projects at WordPress are very diverse. The tech stacks and the tool chains are therefore very diverse as well. One of the critical skills for any engineer at Automattic is, therefore, the willingness and ability to learn.
• Leif moved within the company and worked on very different projects. Each project you can learn something new, he says. Not only because of the diverse tech stack but also, because each project might serve a different customer base and have a different purpose. (12:20)
• If you want to move to a new project or team, you send a private message to Matt, the founder, and he helps you find a new place within the company (13:01)
• Leif rationalizes that at Automattic, you usually aren't communicating per email. No, they use either chat systems like Slack or internal WordPress sites to communicate and keep track of everything (14:00)
• We talk about how communication processes and channels might differ from a non-remote and a remote company. I wonder, is Matt actually replacing some of the water-cooler conversations you would have at a non-remote company? (14:32)
• Another topic I want to discuss with Leif is how engineers at Automattic keep in contact with other employees if they aren’t in the same building? How do they "hang-out" together? Is there a place in cyberspace that they usually meet at? (15:00)
  • People connect and stay informed through weekly calls, one-on-ones calls, and company-wide town halls that are held once a month
  • Each team and each larger project have its own blog, where you can find all information about everything you have to know
  • Two times per year, each team meets, and once per year all Automattic engineers meet and make a connection with each other.
• Leif walks me through the engineering processes and tools look like at Automattic (17:18)
  • Again, as the tech stack is so diverse, also the processes and tools diver from project to project
  • Some are using Git; some are still using Subversion. Obviously, something like this hugely impacts how the whole engineering process looks like.
• Is Automattic planning to consolidate its technologies and tools? (19:37)
  • Leif clarifies that because they are an open-source company, it's not that easy. Consolidation isn't something you can just put on the agenda. First and foremost, the goals of the company have to align with the goals of the open source project. So only if the open-source project would move from Subversion to Git, Automattic could move as well.
• We discuss how having open source as the foundation of your company creates some tension between the goals of the company and the open-source community. But, embracing open-source also changes the whole company values. Leif describes how transparency is the basis for everything at Automattic. Transparency is reflected in communication and the decision, and although it might not directly influence how people develop software, it hugely impacts the company culture. (20:43)
• Automattic grew quite substantially, so I ask Leif if the culture of the company evolve and change as well?
  • Yes, of course, says Leif. But on the other hand, they still hold on to their main values. The Automattic Creed, a sort of gospel that describes the main values and mindset of the employees of Automattic, helps steer the employees in the right direction.
• Leif reads the Automattic creed to me (25:04)
• I wonder if Automattic has something similar to the Automattic creed when it comes to their engineering processes and practices such as testing or code review? (26:28)
• Leif explains how testing works at Automattic. 26:38
• But what about test coverage? Does Automaticians care about that? Leif says no, because it feels like one metric isn't a healthy indicator. (27:36)
• How does Automattic use code reviews and what does Leif think about code reviews?  (30:08)
  • Leif explains that every code change is looked at by at least one other colleague.
  • Code reviews are very fitting to the learning culture of Automattic. It's highly appreciated engineering practice there.
• I wonder how they ensure – especially at a remote company with many different timezones – that code reviews are looked at in a timely manner. At Automattic, Leif says, they use Trello to track the progress of code reviews, but in addition, they also use a slack app called "the stick" that reminds people if they haven't looked at their code reviews. This normally ensures that you do not have to wait too long for code review feedback. (32:18)
• How does the production process look like, I wonder? And how long does it take to deploy to production? (34:12)
  • Leif says, after review, it's just a merge and a deploy. All is all automated. It's one press of a button. For a few projects, you first might have a staging area for some manual tests and deploy it afterward.
• How do Automatticians handle technical debt? (36:12)
  • Leif explains that they try to move fast, and therefore might create more technical debt than desired. But, once a quarter, they have one week, in which every engineer works on reducing technical debt. Because this is scheduled and expected, they can reduce technical debt and improve the code quite substantially during those times and keep technical debt at bay.
• Another topic I’m interested in is how people at Automattic get assessed and how they get promoted? (39:50)
  • Leif describes that at Automattic, they actually have no titles and that switching from an engineering role to a manager role isn't considered a promotion. Somehow promotions and pay raise work quite different here. I like it.
• How diverse is the technical workforce at Automattic? (44:56)
  • Leif says also Automattic isn't as diverse as they want to be. They struggle with similar problems other tech companies struggle with. But they do actively work towards getting more diverse. How? Well, they are present at events with diverse set of participants, they hire without requiring you to show your face, and by having a very hiring committee that consists of at least 50% women.

This time I was talking with Matt Wondra.

Matt is a Product Lead at Happy Tools, company of Automattic. Matt started his career in tech as a developer and after while switched to the role of Product Lead.
This episode Matt shares a lot of interesting things regarding remote work and how they are planning to help other companies operate in distributed way with new set of remote tools.

In this episode we talk about:

• How Happy Tools started
• How to discuss new work
• Learning on how to operate remotely
• What can onsite teams learn from remote teams
• Optimizing remote work
• How to approach hiring

Notes and links:

• Happy Tools
• Automattic
• Happy Schedule
• Communication is key
• Champaign, Illionois
• Campfire
• Zoom
• Drafts
• Trello

Matt Wondra

• Website
• Twitter

Credits:

• Jan Jenko for header photo
• Gramatik for intro music