WordCamp Asheville Keynote: How did we get here? WordPress in 11 years

Comfort Zone

Decision to Take Action!Where Extraordinary

Happens

And You may Find Yourself. . .

Two Stories

Matt Mullenweg Born in 1984

Parents: Chuck and Kathe !

started on computers age 3 first website at 12 plays saxophone

does photography

Matt at 18

b2 cafelog

!By November 2002, Matt had 20,000 unique visitors and over 10,000 hits a month on Photmatt.net blog.

Last Entry by michel v

Nov. 2002

Last Entry by michel v

Nov. 2002

Last Entry by michel v

Nov. 2002

Last Entry by michel v

Nov. 2002

Last Entry by michel v

Nov. 2002

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Forking the Code

Open SourceGPLCopy Left

General Public License

January 24, 2003

Matt, !“Someday Right?”

January 25, 2003

Mike Little, “I’m In”

Christine Selleck “How about WordPress”

May of 2003

WordPress 1.0 Four months later May 26, 2003

!!

Last Entry by michel v

Nov. 2002

Last Entry by michel v

Nov. 2002

Last Entry by michel v

Nov. 2002

Michel V Resurfaced

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Supported WordPress Fork

“WordPress community is easy to work with”

Culture of Transparency

Six Months Later October 2004 15,000 WP usersMatt Leaves School moves to San Francisco

A Year Later October 2005 Matt Leaves CNET!!Over 50,000 WordPress Users!!!Starts Automattic!

Big Decision

Started in Nov. 2005 over 100,000 blogs in 3 weeks.

First product made over 1 M first year

• Provides Hosting for Sites • Easy to set up • Uses WordPress.org code • Less access to themes and plugins • Charges for upgrades to service

Company with Employees

Volunteers Contribute -Code -Codex -Meetups -WordCamps • Access to all themes • Access to all plugins • Self-hosting & domains • Backup & Maintain • Lot of people provide people with design, development, themes, plugins and services.

Owned by

Toni Schneider and Matt Mullenweg

Story Two

Seemed like a really good idea.

PhD Clinical Community Psychology

1980 Hospital Part-time Psychologist

Product Manager for Mental Health Programs

Private Practice and Kids

Just Make it a Commercial Product

Funded with SBIR Research Grants

You’ll eventually want to find a real CEO!

10 Employees Find New Office Space

18 Employees, Needed to Find That Real CEO!

20 Employees Where is that real CEO???

18 Employees, Needed to Find That Real CEO!

Sold my shares in Company in 2000

So I Continued Building

I saw signs of trouble in housing market 2006.

I Googled My Business Name

Hated my old website had to have a CMS.

Marketing and Publishing had Changed.

My First Website Client

My First Paying Website Client

Started New Tricks 2009

Started New Tricks 2009

WordCamp NOLA April 2009

2009 50 Members

Jack Kinnard

Volunteered to Help with MeetUp

2014 1498 Members

Russell Fair and Judi Knight Jen Mylo from Automattic

WordPress has given me a Career and a Community

WordPress has included my Family

My 26 year old son is a WordPress developer and speaker

who works with me at New Tricks.

!My 28 year old daughter is a brand manager with her own website.

!My husbands side job is a triathlon coach and personal trainer.

I  will  never  stop  learning.   I  won’t  just  work  on  things  that  are  assigned  to  me.   I  know  there’s  no  such  thing  as  a  status  quo.  I  will  build  our  business  sustainably  through  passionate  and  loyal  customers.   I  will  never  pass  up  an  opportunity  to  help  out  a  colleague,  and  I’ll  remember  the  days  before  I  knew  everything.  I  am  more  motivated  by  impact  than  money,  and  I  know  that  Open  Source  is  one    of  the  most  powerful  ideas  of  our  generation.   I  will  communicate  as  much  as  possible,  because  it’s  the  oxygen  of  a  distributed   company.    I  am  in  a  marathon,  not  a  sprint,  and  no  matter  how  far  away  the  goal  is,  the  only    way  to  get  there  is  by  putting  one  foot  in  front  of  another  every  day.    Given  time,  there  is  no  problem  that’s  insurmountable.  

Automattic’s Employment Manifesto

You may ask yourself, “Where does that highway go?” And you may ask yourself “Am I right? Am I wrong?” And you may tell yourself, “MY GOD! What have I done?”

You said yes when it could have been no.