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Lenny's Podcast / episode intelligence

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)

2 Mar 2025 24 published claims 2 attributable people
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Speakers in the public record

Matt MullenwegLenny Rachitsky

Claim mix

belief 11evaluation 6recommendation 3preference 2disagreement 1commitment 1

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Claim ledger

The useful parts, with receipts.

24 published records

01 / evaluation

Unfortunately, Jula and Drupal have fallen behind, and so now it's like Shopify, Wix, Squarespace are the top ones but WordPress is still, because we have this flywheel of open source community, its movements, any open source like Linux or Apache or Wikipedia, it has some positive flywheel effects when it takes off.

“Unfortunately, Jula and Drupal have fallen behind, and so now it's like Shopify, Wix, Squarespace are the top ones but WordPress is still, because we have this flywheel of open source community, its movements, any open source like Linux or Apache or Wikipedia, it has some positive flywheel effects when it takes off.”
Speaker
Matt Mullenweg
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

02 / evaluation

Yeah, so when we started, a lot of websites were built on custom CMSs and there's a lot of fragmentation in the space, but now WordPress has grown to be over 40% of all websites in the world, which is 10x the number two, which right now is Shopify.

“Yeah, so when we started, a lot of websites were built on custom CMSs and there's a lot of fragmentation in the space, but now WordPress has grown to be over 40% of all websites in the world, which is 10x the number two, which right now is Shopify.”
Speaker
Matt Mullenweg
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

03 / belief

You could post a chat, an image. They were, I think, one of the first to support video, so they did a lot of, I think, product innovation under the leadership of David Karp, who's a really amazing entrepreneur and product leader.

“You could post a chat, an image. They were, I think, one of the first to support video, so they did a lot of, I think, product innovation under the leadership of David Karp, who's a really amazing entrepreneur and product leader.”
Speaker
Matt Mullenweg
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

06 / evaluation

How are you going to build something that can change the internet with people all around the world?" And just had this long hour long debate and we walked out of that, I was like, "Wow, that was the worst meeting ever.

“How are you going to build something that can change the internet with people all around the world?" And just had this long hour long debate and we walked out of that, I was like, "Wow, that was the worst meeting ever.”
Speaker
Matt Mullenweg
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

07 / belief

I was very inspired by the three branches of government. So there's sort of power in each of those that I think sort of checks and balances each side of it which is on purpose.

“I was very inspired by the three branches of government. So there's sort of power in each of those that I think sort of checks and balances each side of it which is on purpose.”
Speaker
Matt Mullenweg
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

08 / belief

I think ultimately the incentives of advertising social networks can lead to the kind of dynamics that you see on the more negative side of Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, et cetera. And so really trying to create a subscription model or a sort of first-party user-driven advertising, where you promote your blog posts or something like that, or you promote a WooCommerce product or something, where it's not a third-party ad ecosystem, which I think has a lot of weird code and malware and lots of stuff I don't love.

“I think ultimately the incentives of advertising social networks can lead to the kind of dynamics that you see on the more negative side of Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, et cetera. And so really trying to create a subscription model or a sort of first-party user-driven advertising, where you promote your blog posts or something like that, or you promote a WooCommerce product or something, where it's not a third-party ad ecosystem, which I think has a lot of weird code and malware and lots of stuff I don't love.”
Speaker
Matt Mullenweg
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

09 / belief

I was thinking I was a little naive and kind of didn't realize what was going on for a while. So, it came to a head, and at WordCamp US in September, I was like, "Okay, well, if you're still not going to even agree to negotiate, 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, and how in particular, [inaudible 00:44:46] has done some very bad or evil things.

“I was thinking I was a little naive and kind of didn't realize what was going on for a while. So, it came to a head, and at WordCamp US in September, I was like, "Okay, well, if you're still not going to even agree to negotiate, 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, and how in particular, [inaudible 00:44:46] has done some very bad or evil things.”
Speaker
Matt Mullenweg
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

10 / belief

If I zoom out, what I'm sensing here is there's people that have this ideal of how something like this should run, but they've never actually worked at a place where a nonprofit board runs it, runs a thing, and have seen what that actually looks like. And so I think there's a big disconnect between the ideal in theory and how does great stuff get built.

“If I zoom out, what I'm sensing here is there's people that have this ideal of how something like this should run, but they've never actually worked at a place where a nonprofit board runs it, runs a thing, and have seen what that actually looks like. And so I think there's a big disconnect between the ideal in theory and how does great stuff get built.”
Speaker
Lenny Rachitsky
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

12 / belief

Going back to Automatic, I think people don't get the scale of this thing, so just to mirror back, if you think that even add to what you've said, 1700 people work there, 90 different countries.

“Going back to Automatic, I think people don't get the scale of this thing, so just to mirror back, if you think that even add to what you've said, 1700 people work there, 90 different countries.”
Speaker
Lenny Rachitsky
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

14 / belief

Who was at the time, again, Yahoo, we don't think about it now, but I feel a little old. But at the time, Yahoo was one of the internet giants and had recently Marissa Mayer, who was one of the big early people at Google, I think part of creating the API program and everything like that, was the CEO of Yahoo.

“Who was at the time, again, Yahoo, we don't think about it now, but I feel a little old. But at the time, Yahoo was one of the internet giants and had recently Marissa Mayer, who was one of the big early people at Google, I think part of creating the API program and everything like that, was the CEO of Yahoo.”
Speaker
Matt Mullenweg
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

15 / recommendation

love to offer you some warrants where we own a bunch of your company or we're going to shut it off," or those sorts of things.

“love to offer you some warrants where we own a bunch of your company or we're going to shut it off," or those sorts of things.”
Speaker
Matt Mullenweg
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

16 / recommendation

I 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 Automattic to have an impact on these things.

“I 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 Automattic to have an impact on these things.”
Speaker
Matt Mullenweg
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

17 / preference

I've now done hundreds and hundreds of these town halls and QAs, and I really enjoy it because you never know what's going to come up.

“I've now done hundreds and hundreds of these town halls and QAs, and I really enjoy it because you never know what's going to come up.”
Speaker
Matt Mullenweg
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

18 / disagreement

you moved the trademark to be owned by the foundation and Automattic is exclusive rights to use the trademark. And I think people are like, "Oh, 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 with WP Engine.

“you moved the trademark to be owned by the foundation and Automattic is exclusive rights to use the trademark. And I think people are like, "Oh, 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 with WP Engine.”
Speaker
Lenny Rachitsky
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

19 / commitment

We have a really large surface area that we cover with relatively few people, and so there's some parts we haven't looked at in a little while that we need to get around to. And it's a big focus for us this year, is actually kind of going back to basics, back to core, and improving all of those kind of nooks and crannies of the user experience, and also ruthlessly editing and cutting as much as possible, because we 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.

“We have a really large surface area that we cover with relatively few people, and so there's some parts we haven't looked at in a little while that we need to get around to. And it's a big focus for us this year, is actually kind of going back to basics, back to core, and improving all of those kind of nooks and crannies of the user experience, and also ruthlessly editing and cutting as much as possible, because we 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.”
Speaker
Matt Mullenweg
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

20 / evaluation

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.

“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.”
Speaker
Matt Mullenweg
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

21 / recommendation

We have great institutions know the SF, MoMA, the Opera, etc, that have huge budgets like 100 million a year and Illuminate literally one 10th of that has created something that millions of people can enjoy. And I like to think that anyone along the Embarcadero, you might be going through a tough time, obviously we have people who are struggling with mental health and homelessness and everything like that, but maybe seeing a little bit of art can help raise your soul a little bit.

“We have great institutions know the SF, MoMA, the Opera, etc, that have huge budgets like 100 million a year and Illuminate literally one 10th of that has created something that millions of people can enjoy. And I like to think that anyone along the Embarcadero, you might be going through a tough time, obviously we have people who are struggling with mental health and homelessness and everything like that, but maybe seeing a little bit of art can help raise your soul a little bit.”
Speaker
Matt Mullenweg
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

22 / preference

If you think about it as more and more of our lives are influenced and actually controlled by the software we use, if we don't have fundamental freedoms attached to that software, we're not truly free. So WordPress is under license called the GPL, which has four freedoms, the freedom to use the software for any purpose, so we can use it for anything, whether I agree with you or not, the terms of service is you could do whatever you want with it.

“If you think about it as more and more of our lives are influenced and actually controlled by the software we use, if we don't have fundamental freedoms attached to that software, we're not truly free. So WordPress is under license called the GPL, which has four freedoms, the freedom to use the software for any purpose, so we can use it for anything, whether I agree with you or not, the terms of service is you could do whatever you want with it.”
Speaker
Matt Mullenweg
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

23 / evaluation

When we started there was dynamic web apps or DHTML or JavaScript wasn't really a thing, and then the social web and then iPhones and then all this sort of stuff that's changed over time, and we've surfed a lot of these technological changes which is very, very hard to do.

“When we started there was dynamic web apps or DHTML or JavaScript wasn't really a thing, and then the social web and then iPhones and then all this sort of stuff that's changed over time, and we've surfed a lot of these technological changes which is very, very hard to do.”
Speaker
Matt Mullenweg
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

24 / evaluation

Something else that I think is really interesting when it comes to AI and open source, you wrote about this and it blew my mind, such a good point, that the code that these models were trained on was open source code because that's all they have access to.

“Something else that I think is really interesting when it comes to AI and open source, you wrote about this and it blew my mind, such a good point, that the code that these models were trained on was open source code because that's all they have access to.”
Speaker
Lenny Rachitsky
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast
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