Mullenweg: Defaulting to trust is worth the occasional 'optimism tax'
Matt Mullenweg · Matt Mullenweg: How I Founded WordPress; Storytelling Tips; How to Give Feedback | 20VC #905 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Jul 11, 2022 · at 7:13
Matt Mullenweg is the founder of Automattic and co-creator of WordPress. Speaking on 20VC, he describes his philosophy of placing trust in people by default.
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“I personally am very default trusting. And that also means that sometimes you pay what I call an optimism tax. My friend John Sten came up with that, and basically saying that, you know, if you default to being optimistic and trusting, sometimes people will take care of you. But the rest of the time, the 99% of the time that people are taking advantage of you, it, your life will be much better. So, so occasionally I pay an optimism tax, but I would much rather, like, live my life in a way that is default trusting and optimistic towards yeah, pretty much everyone.”
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“It had been mismanaged, I think under Yahoo and AWOL and Verizon, and we felt like we could turn it around.”
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“We have no email. We communicate via blogging and yeah, it's very global.”
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