Matt Mullenweg is the founder and CEO of Automattic, the company behind WordPress and Tumblr. He discusses the friction of acquiring Tumblr's office-based team into Automattic's fully remote culture.
“It was actually a big challenge when we bought Tumblr because they did have, you know, pretty large office presence. About two thirds of the company was in an office in New York.”
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More from Matt Mullenweg
Opinion
Mullenweg: Tumblr was mismanaged by Yahoo, AOL, and Verizon
“It had been mismanaged, I think under Yahoo and AWOL and Verizon, and we felt like we could turn it around.”
Matt MullenwegJul 11, 2022▶ 15:59Matt Mullenweg: How I Founded WordPress; Storytelling Tips; How to Give Feedback | 20VC #905 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
AssertionSupported
Automattic uses zero internal email, relying entirely on internal blogging
“We have no email. We communicate via blogging and yeah, it's very global.”
Matt MullenwegJul 11, 2022▶ 9:18Matt Mullenweg: How I Founded WordPress; Storytelling Tips; How to Give Feedback | 20VC #905 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Mullenweg: All Automattic business units besides Tumblr are very profitable
“Now, fortunately at our business, all the other businesses are doing very well and very profitable.”
Matt MullenwegJul 11, 2022▶ 16:50Matt Mullenweg: How I Founded WordPress; Storytelling Tips; How to Give Feedback | 20VC #905 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
PredictionNot checkable as stated
Mullenweg: WooCommerce will likely equal all other Automattic businesses combined
“WooCommerce is our e-commerce platform, which, you know, today can be Probably will be as large of all, as all of our other businesses combined.”
Matt MullenwegJul 11, 2022▶ 20:04Matt Mullenweg: How I Founded WordPress; Storytelling Tips; How to Give Feedback | 20VC #905 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
PredictionNot checkable as stated
Mullenweg: Open source is the future of humanity
“Open source is the future of humanity and it's important that we create more of it.”
Matt MullenwegJul 11, 2022▶ 26:02Matt Mullenweg: How I Founded WordPress; Storytelling Tips; How to Give Feedback | 20VC #905 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Mullenweg: Teams should assign someone to explicitly challenge and attack ideas
“I love the idea as well as, you know, having someone on the team whose job it is even to like attack the ideas and to really force them to defend themselves.”
Matt MullenwegJul 11, 2022▶ 41:14Matt Mullenweg: How I Founded WordPress; Storytelling Tips; How to Give Feedback | 20VC #905 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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