Evidence receipt / belief
Published · transcript-backedMatt Mullenweg: belief
2 Mar 2025 Lenny's Podcast 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)
“When you're in the right, I think you should be out there and telling the story.”
Source trail
Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- Matt Mullenweg
- Attribution
- Verified speaker
- Claim type
- belief
- Recorded
- 2 Mar 2025
- Publisher
- Lenny's Podcast
Transcript context
…Yeah. I imagine people are going to be like, "Lenny, you didn't ask him this thing. Here's the thing he said that I want to learn more about." I'm sure I missed some stuff, but from an outsider's perspective, this all make sense. There's a company, I don't think PE companies are bad innately, but their job is buy a company and make it run more efficiently, and then oftentimes sell it for more. So it makes sense that they buy a company, make it more efficient, cut some corners, don't put a lot of effort into making it awesome, even though I'm sure there's awesome people working in there, trying really hard to make it great. And basically what I'm feeling is they got to a point where this is hurting the ecosystem. They're feeling really dishonest with working with you, and there's a stalling technique. And so, makes sense to me why you just have to stand up and fight back. And it's hard, 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, if people have more questions, they can come to WordCamp Asia. We're going to do an open Q&A there. We do town halls in the WordPress.org Community. There's a Slack people can get on and ask questions. So there is kind of a lot of open ways to engage, and I'm definitely happy to do that. I'm probably not going to do it on Twitter as much, but 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. WP Engine has not done any podcasts and no press. They don't respond to journalists, they don't talk about this. And I've done the opposite, where I'm really trying to be out there and 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 in the wrong, you probably say only have the lawyers talk. When you're in the right, I think you should be out there and telling the story. I remember at the end of your WordCamp talk, you were like, "Any questions?" after this big controversial talk, and I'm curious how it felt. All the questions initially were nothing to do with this. It's what it felt like. You're just like, oh, they already had these questions. They didn't even know what you said maybe, and I bet you're just like, wait, did anyone hear what I just said? Did it feel like that?…
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