Author | Sanjay Priyadarshi
Translated by | Nuclear Coke
Curated | Liu Yan
Matt Mullenweg is the founder of WordPress.com and its parent company, Automattic.
Automattic raised $846 million in six funding rounds, according to the data. The last $288 million round of funding closed in February 2021. Last August, Automattic bought back $250 million worth of stock from current and former employees. Share buybacks put the company at a valuation of $7.5 billion.
This article will take you back to Matt Mullenweg's amazing entrepreneurial journey, a fantastic adventure to create WordPress from scratch.
Statistics show that four out of ten websites on the Internet are built with WordPress.
WordPress.org was originally positioned as a non-profit blogging platform.
As a blogger and open-source software enthusiast, Matt's dream is to build a technology platform that makes it easy for anyone to start a blog.
Matt has received olive branches from tech giants, but he has almost always refused. He knew that once he joined any tech giant, his intellectual property would be taken away in an instant.
As the parent company of WordPress.com, Automattic currently employs approximately 2,000 people worldwide.
Start with Matt's childhood
Matt and his sister grew up with each other in Houston. His mother ran the family and his father was a computer programmer who worked for the oil industry.
As a young man, Matt's dream was to pursue art and create music. He was particularly fascinated by saxophone because his father liked to come in when he was fine. So Matt entered an art performance high school, the atmosphere of the school was great, and he often made some extra money by performing saxophone. He also plays on a variety of stages, such as in different Italian restaurants.
Why did you give up the career as a musician?
"In school, a lot of kids are real prodigies. I'm also a bit talented, but I have to work very hard to keep up with them... And I'm not the top kind of person, the more I study it, the more I feel it. ”
Matt's father owned an office computer at work, and later bought a home computer, which became Matt's computer enlightenment.
In the beginning, he was exposed to several games. But over time, he became fascinated by various Internet communities.
Matt recalls that these communities were formed around a common focus. The community is the platform to meet people, we use a chat system called IRC... It's just casual gossip with words.
Matt's starting point for website development
In the early 2000s, the process of building a website was much more complex than it is today.
Matt learned web development in high school, but the process was not easy, and he read many books and practiced it many times. At that time, there were actually a lot of website publishing software, such as GeoCities, Dreamweaver, and FrontPage.
Most of the time, he will directly click through all the buttons in the software to see what it does. It was this "dumb" approach that he used to understand how the software works.
Matt started a photography website called Footman. He has posted many photos on the website using the open-source software Gallery. To sum up, this software is a PHP script responsible for posting photos online. As for Flickr and Facebook as we know them today, they didn't exist in that era.
Co-founded WordPress.org with strangers
After that, Matt decided to learn programming hard.
He participates in an open source blogging platform called B2 Cafelog. He thought the platform was good and proposed a little change to the code.
The code written by Matt was well received by the lead developer of B2. So Matt created the ticket as required and submitted the code. The contributions were quickly accepted as part of later official releases. That is, every user who updates the software then runs the code written by Matt.
"I'm so happy, oh my God, there are hundreds of websites running code that I wrote myself... It's really exciting. ”
Matt frequently contributes code to the B2 platform. In addition to him, the B2 platform has many other contributors around the world.
But a fatal hidden danger always exists - Mitchell, the lead developer of b2, controls the life and death of the entire platform. In 2002, Mitchell left b2. Without this "benevolent dictator", the B2 platform could no longer make any subsequent code updates. As a result, people around the world had to stop contributing.
The highlight of Matt Mullenweg
Matt had a good habit of blogging about what was happening at B2 at the time.
In an article titled "The Dilemma of Blogging Software," Matt mentions that he wanted to build a blogging platform like no other. He hopes that the platform will be more aesthetically pleasing and allow Blog posts to have high-quality typography features. He mentioned that the platform should be as simple as the blog itself, and as easy to adapt as B2.
The code also has to be elegant and flexible.
Because b2 cafelog is an open source project and licensed under the GPL, the work done by lead developer Mitchell has not been lost.
Matt wanted to use this article to tell the rest of the community that even if a person suddenly disappears from the face of the earth, the code he wrote will last forever.
People can use this code directly to build on top of the functionality they need.
After the post went public, a user named Mike Little commented that Matt would be willing to participate in such a project if he wanted to lead it.
Mike and Matt's joint venture began here.
They forked the code of B2 Cafelog and built more new content on top of it. Matt and Mike had chatted on IRC, but had never met for at least the previous three years. They have previously sent code snippets to each other and exchanged code comments. But that's about it.
WordPress.org Why did it get its name?
Mike and Matt's b2 fork is just one of many.
There were five or six b2 forks at the time, and a lot of people were trying to develop something meaningful with b2 code.
At the time, Matt was an active member of the community. Previously, community members often met at a café or bar to discuss blog development techniques.
Once Matt was talking about building a blogging platform with Mike, a blogger named Christin stumbled upon the name WordPress.
Matt loved WorddPress and continued to use it. Many members of the B2 community liked Matt and Mike's efforts, so most of them turned to this new project.
When we carefully review the development history of WordPress.org, we will find that it has never taken business as a development idea. They always focus on one thing: making blog building easier and more fun, so that everyone can contribute to it.
It is this pursuit of purity that unites the participants in the project.
A great idea that revolutionized blogging
In May 2003, Mike and Matt officially released WordPress.org to the world.
Most bloggers who have used all kinds of blogging software are excited about the advent of WordPress.
In addition, developers from various online communities are passionate about WordPress.
Prior to WordPress' debut, Matt had reached out to B2 contributors to bring the disparate forces back to WordPress. He invited everyone to discuss big things and join in WordPress contributions. At the beginning, the WordPress project had only five or six stable developers, and the remaining few hundred people were only responsible for making microwave changes or adjustments to the project.
As soon as WordPress.org debuted, it was used by hundreds of users to write daily blogs.
WordPress.org is growing in popularity, and the total cost of operations is growing rapidly
As WordPress.org grows in size, the required servers are under pressure to upgrade. At that time, Amazon Web Services (AWS) had not yet been born.
So, they rented a server for users to interact with it online. The total operating and leasing cost of this equipment is $425 per month. At the time, this server was the main cost source for the project team.
To pay for the money, Matt had to help others build websites, computers, and sometimes pick up his old job of playing saxophone.
Yahoo and CNet have opened their arms
But great opportunities also came, and Matt Mullenweg received a bunch of offers from tech giants.
These companies wanted to hire Matt and help them with major projects. These include Yahoo and CNet. CNet was one of the first Internet media companies, having previously built a content management system.
At the time, CNet offered Matt an annual salary of about $90,000. Matt would only make about $1,000 a month. For 20-year-old Matt, the $90,000 offer was like winning the lottery. Matt accepted CNet's solicitation for the following reasons: "They allowed me to keep the intellectual property of the code I was creating... Generally speaking, once you join a company like Google, everything developed during that period will be owned by the company... For me, it's important to grasp intellectual property. ”
Why is a young man in his 20s so sensitive to intellectual property?
"I've read a lot of blogs online and have a background in music performance. I'm very familiar with intellectual property... I remain a strong supporter of the copyright system. ”
At CNet, Matt's role is Project Manager. Here, he is only responsible for managing certain projects. Matt has a wealth of experience helping people at WordPress.org, and with this experience, he helps his colleagues at CNet quickly complete the setup process. During this time, he also never stopped contributing to the non-profit organization WordPress.org.
Why did Matt launch a for-profit WordPress.com?
Here's how Matt reported to the CNet CEO:
WordPress.org Cool, but the setup process is still too complicated... We allow users to easily build their own blog with the click of a few buttons. I think it's going to be a hit... Let's get our hands dirty right now.
But after brainstorming, the CNet team decided it was not suitable to get involved in the blog hosting business. But Matt was so excited about his idea that he started Automattic while working at CNet. He also hired the first few initial employees for the company.
His idea was to build a business entity that would provide WordPress with add-ons and simple hosting. They wanted to further lower the barrier to entry for using WordPress in subsequent development plans, so that people could build their own blogs without having to master development knowledge.
After completing this step, the popularity of blogs can really land.
Matt ran Automattic without any financing
Matt Mullenweg initially supported the new company on his own. He feeds the project with his own salary, with credit cards for the shortfall.
Matt recalls: I was really too confident in myself.
As he progressed, he realized that his salary and credit cards alone were no longer enough to move WordPress into commercial operations.
Matt remembers being contacted to run an ad on WordPress.org. That would be advertised for a month in WordPress.org for $2,000. But advertisers remind him that WordPress.org better improve their value ranking on Google's engine. At that time, many other websites would directly copy WordPress.org's content, so this owner did not rank high in the search results.
The advertiser's proposal was that Matt should open up links to users' websites on WordPress.org so that he could rank higher on Google. And be sure to keep an eye out for high-value keywords, such as various diseases, which can be great for improving rankings.
To that end, Matt invented a new way to send advertising emails to users. Here's how Matt used CSS code: if you visit WordPress.org website within a browser as a user, external links will not be visible; External links are visible if the WordPress.org website is accessed as a bot such as Google.
Because Google relies on bots to index websites, Matt's strategy can indeed help advertisers attract millions of new users through valuable keywords.
In short, Matt Mullenweg took money from ad mailers and sent promotional emails to valuable WordPress.org users.
"When a person supports himself by not understanding something, it is difficult to really understand it."
Google later discovered this deceptive batch of CSS code. Google employees were so angry with this misleading search engine that they decided to remove WordPress directly from the search results. This move led to WordPress almost completely disappearing from the Internet.
Matt Mullenweg's behavior has also betrayed the trust of thousands of people.
Matt has since fixed the code and posted a blog post apologizing. Eventually, Google forgave Matt and put WordPress back in search results.
Leave CNet to focus on developing anti-spam software
Matt then left CNet to focus on running his own Automattic.
The company's first commercial product was called AKismet, named after his sister. This is an anti-spam software. It has a machine learning system that analyzes spam patterns in millions of blogs, after which Akismet returns the conclusion of letting or blocking it.
If release is returned, the message content is legitimate; If the block is returned, it means that it is spam and directly ignored.
This way, people can automatically clean up spam from your website without human intervention. Akismet is free for individual users, but charges are required for commercial use.
Matt decided early on that WordPress.com would be free, and the business model he envisioned was to sell WordPress plugins.
Why did Matt decide to raise money?
Automattic has its own employees in different cities and all over the world. At the time, Automattic's company-wide revenue was about $20,000 a month.
Matt realized that if something went wrong, their income would likely be cut off and the company would not be able to pay the next month's salary.
At this time, he felt the support and trust of the employees, and also deeply felt the responsibility on his shoulders.
There's still money left to run the business, but Matt wanted to have more cash so he could develop it patiently or, in the worst case, help employees through the gap before they jumped jobs.
When Matt first met with investors, he was always asked to hire CEOs, CTOs and other senior executives for the company first. But Matt didn't think it was necessary.
Matt then met Tony Schneider, a peer who had successfully sold his company to Yahoo. The two talked happily.
So Matt hired him as CEO of Automattic, a move that finally dispelled the doubts of private investors.
At this time, Matt was the president of Automattic in the company.
WordPress.com How to attract customers to the platform and service?
According to Matt's recollection: It's basically word of mouth... Our only means of publicity at the time was to write "powered by WordPress" in all site templates that ran WordPress by default.
When visiting any site running WordPress, everyone will see a link indicating that the site is powered by WordPress. Click the link to go to the official WordPress website.
After the trial, if you like it, users can easily get started. Matt also loves reading other people's blogs. If you find someone complaining "Uh... My website is getting slower", Matt would recommend WordPress.com service to them.
The $200 million tender offer and Automattic's current valuation
The Automattic team already had about 20 members.
In 2007, Matt owned more than half of the company, and there were already buyers looking to buy WordPress.com for $200 million. This is an attractive condition for a young company that has only been established for 2 years.
That said, 23-year-old Matt has already made about $100 million. So he began to seriously consider this option. Is it necessary to retire at such a young age? What eventually made him give up the acquisition was that he thought it would be too boring to retire.
He also posed this serious question to his sister, mom and dad, asking what they were going to do if they had $100 million in their account. All they can think of is buying a cool car and a vacation house. But all the dreams add up to just $5 million.
So what is the rest of the money going to be used for?
He wants to write code every day, travel the world and meet new people. He wants to work with people he likes, and that's it. Thinking of this layer, he firmed his mind - never sell the company at such a young age.
In 2009, WordPress officially exceeded 10 million downloads
Prior to 2009, a new feature was added to the WordPress team – WordPress could not only run a blog, but also manage an entire website.
As it turns out, this is also one of the most core features of WordPress.com. From this moment on, WordPress is no longer the specific publishing or blogging software of the past, but truly becomes a complete content management system.
After that, more large enterprises were attracted to WordPress and decided to use it to manage all the pages on their websites.
https://levelup.gitconnected.com/meet-a-programmer-who-turned-an-open-source-platform-into-a-7-500-000-000-company-645e14c53c8