I’ve followed Matt Mullenweg since I discovered WordPress in 2006. It is almost like I know him. Most people don’t but he was the first one to create a ‘lean startup’, have remote work normalized, stuck to open source even when everyone from 0-1 SV gurus to Steve Jobs preached complete control and dominance.
There was a time, I will admit, that I felt WordPress was losing its edge. I saw my friends move to Joomla, I re-aligned my company to Drupal because that’s where big money was, enterprise applications were.
Then came along Wix and Webflow and all the cool tools.
But whenever I had to build something, my gut moved towards WordPress. I still cannot pin down why.
I installed the first version of the WazirX blog, this one is on WordPress and so is the BuidlersTribe website.
It just works.
Some things I’ve seen about Matt’s thinking (from his writings and product decisions only):
- Never took VC money :p
- Always open-source, no fear of copycats or forks
- Never feared competition. Only moat is his focus. Rest will happen
- Made a generation of people their living + got non-coders like me to buidl. Without WordPress, I wouldn’t be in tech. I can safely say that
- Wanted to work on one mission for decades and is still doing it
- Had grand plans at 21. Wasn’t taken seriously. Still underrated
- Powered the internet silently
The guy is just wise. Wisdom is scarce in tech.
Most people don’t know this. Many in tech have foretold the death of WordPress a few times now.