Matt Mullenweg: evaluation

Transcript context

…I want to talk about that, but go on. And then had this vision where instead of downloading the software and setting up a database and everything, we made a SaaS version of WordPress. I pitched it at CNET, they didn't want to do it, so I was like, "Okay, I got to do this," so I left and started a company called Automatic. And the idea was to essentially compliment the core WordPress software with some commercial services, things that run in the cloud, like Akismet which is our machine learning AI, I guess you'd call it AI now, but anti-spam system, or Jetpack, which is iCloud for WordPress. It does the backups and the real time sync and everything like that. So that was 19 years ago, so that's now grown to be over 1700 people in actually 90 countries so we've actually been fully distributed and remote and asynchronous from the start, which I think is one of our superpowers. I actually wasn't the CEO in the beginning, but in 2014, so I guess 11 years ago, I became CEO. The original CEO was... Well, I guess I wasn't the very beginning, but then I hired Tony Schneider from BCL, probably four or five months in. And yeah, so that is a very full-time thing and Automatic does a lot of products, WooCommerce, which is open source Shopify, which is now half our revenue. And then we have some really cool apps so like Beeper, DayOne, Simplenote, Rocket Casts or trying to fill up your home screens with open web, open source things that are very privacy and user-centric. So running that company is definitely a full-time job. I still run WordPress.org and the WordPress project, so I'm the lead developer there and so sort of manage all those releases in the community and the directories and all the sort of things we do on WordPress.org and this cool thing called Openverse we took over Creative Commons, which is a way you can find sort open licensed images and audio and video. So basically if you notice a throughput through all these things, it's open source. On the nights and weekends or side, a few hours a week I do some angel investing. So I've done over 100 angel investments through an entity called Audrey Capital, which is sort of, if anything's in the sort of WordPress space, I invest in it through Automatic, but if anything's a little more further afield I do it through Audrey Capital and have done some really exciting investments there, everything from name brands like Stripe and SpaceX, but also it was in the seat of Calm or a lot of home automation stuff like Ring, August, smart things. Yeah, just check out Audrey Capital, it's got some fun stuff in there. Daylight Computer, which is one I'm very excited about right now. And I guess finally I love San Francisco, so I an a co-owner of a cool grungy jazz club in North Beach called Keys with Simon Rowe. So if Wednesday through Saturday night, you want to see some awesome live jazz, check out Keys. Wow, okay. You said too much, I get it now. Jazz club I was not aware of, I got to check this out. It's called Keys?…

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