Brandon Kelly
Founder & CEO, Pixel & Tonic. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveengineer@brandonkelly ↗LinkedIn ↗brandonkelly.io ↗
Brandon Kelly is the creator of Craft CMS and founder of Pixel & Tonic, a company building developer-focused content management software. He began by developing popular add-ons for ExpressionEngine before building and launching Craft CMS in the early 2010s.
1shows
1appearances
15statements
0resolved
0supported
0contradicted
Everything Brandon Kelly said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Kelly says WordPress is not built for complex bespoke websites
“It's not built for
Bespoke websites.
So inevitably if people do a lot of development with WordPress, they get to a point where they just are tired of fighting with all these built in themes and you know like eventually the site design requirements get to a poi…”
Pixel & Tonic cannot track conference sponsorship ROI directly
“It's honestly, like, there's no way to track the returns. We've tried so we just kind of trust that it's working out for us, and it does.”
Craft CMS shifts to SaaS with $60 renewals and 20% plugin cut
“We're moving away from one off licensing. So for example, if you spend 300 dollars on a license today then a year from now you'd be due for another paying 60 bucks again for more updates. Then beyond that, we also have a commerce product that is kind of the sa…”
Kelly predicts Craft CMS plugin store will support 20 full-time developers
“So it's not, you know, it's no WordPress, but we do expect once the plugin store hits and some of these plugin developers feel more incentivized to actually charge for their work. We'll probably have a good handful, you know, 20 people or so that are making, y…”
Bootstrapping a 10-person CMS company is unheard of outside the enterprise
“Excluding the enterprise CMSs, most CMSs are done by one or two or three people on the side of their day job, you know? And so the fact that we've been able to fund a 10 person company full time working on this thing is unheard of for the most part within our …”
Pixel & Tonic intends to grow Craft CMS independently without outside acquisition
“Right now there's just zero motivation to change any of that. You know, we want to continue growing it. We have a lot of different ideas for how we can grow it. You know, we want to get it as large as we can on our own.”
Craft CMS generated roughly $1.5 million in annual revenue in 2017
“Yeah, well, that was about what we did last year, actually, right there.”
Craft CMS has 6,000 active developers and 6,000 lifetime paid customers
“The community size is about 6000 active developers. We also have about 6000 unique customers over the duration of the product.”
Kelly: Pixel & Tonic reinvests at least a 15% profit margin
“We try and keep at least a 15% margin going back into the company.”
Pixel & Tonic introduced an employee profit-sharing plan in 2017
“And then as of last year, we introduced a new profit sharing plan. So I'm actually giving it right back to the employees.”
Craft CMS licenses average $260 per sale
“So we've got on average, probably selling about 200 and
60 dollars a license.
We have a 200 dollar license and a 300 dollar license.”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Brandon's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 TOP FOUNDERSLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Pixel & Tonic | 1 | 15 | — | full record on Top Founders → |