How WordPress Powers 43% of the Internet | Matt Mullenweg, Co-founder and CEO, Automattic
The Peel with Turner Novak
Turner Novak
4.6 • 11 Ratings
🗓️ 11 July 2025
⏱️ 89 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today’s guest is Matt Mullenweg, Co-founder of WordPress, which powers over 43% of all websites on the internet, and founder of Automattic.
Our conversation explores the 2000’s internet, the early days of Automattic, and the decisions and philosophies that set them up for success 20 years later.
We talk open source software, why Matt’s such a big proponent of it, how Automattic built its business model as one of the first SaaS companies (that now owns companies like Tumblr and WooCommerce), and how AI is changing engineering.
Matt also shares how to build a community around your product, “Conscious Capitalism”, what he learned running one of the first distributed teams, and lessons on optimism from Walt Disney.
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Timestamps:
(3:48) WordPress: Powering 43% of the internet
(8:30) Outcompeting Reid Hoffman’s startup in the early days
(14:03) Why open source wins over the long-term
(16:21) Business models in open source
(21:12) Starting Automattic in 2005, one of the first SaaS companies
(28:45) Spending most of Automattic’s Seed round on servers
(33:36) How to use Community + Word of Mouth for early growth
(38:38) Matt’s current situation with WP Engine
(43:30) How to give back in open source
(53:55) Best practices from 20 years of running a remote company
(59:59) Lessons on optimism from Walt Disney
(1:12:33) How AI is changing coding
(1:16:09) Automattic's internal employee secondary market
(1:23:51) How open source increases longevity
(1:26:08) Matt’s favorite classical thinkers
Referenced:
Matt’s Blog
Bay Lights in SF
Matt's favorite quote from Rudy Francisco
Maintenance by Stuart Brand
We are as Gods by Stuart Brand
Marginal Revolution by Tyler Cohen
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It started just blogging software, so just like journaling, that sort of thing, that expanded |
| 0:04.8 | to run entire websites and then became like application platform. |
| 0:09.1 | So people build all sorts of stuff on it. |
| 0:10.8 | It's over 60,000 plugins and themes. |
| 0:13.0 | I think the average WordPress install has like 30 plugins installed. |
| 0:17.0 | Oh, wow. |
| 0:18.0 | So every WordPress is totally unique. |
| 0:19.0 | There's no two that are like, so you can really make it your own. And we have this fun, like, wow. So every WordPress is totally unique. There's no two that are like, so you can really make it your own. |
| 0:22.6 | And we have this fun, like, action and hook system. |
| 0:25.6 | So you can, plug-ins can literally change everything about it. |
| 0:30.6 | So I think that's the advantage. |
| 0:32.6 | You can kind of get the best of SaaS and running it yourself. |
| 0:35.6 | Welcome to the Peel. |
| 0:36.6 | I'm your host, Turner Novak, founder of Banana Capital. Today's guest is Matt |
| 0:40.9 | Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress, which powers over 43% of all websites on the internet, and founder |
| 0:46.3 | of Automatic. A conversation gets in the early days of the company and the decisions and philosophies |
| 0:51.3 | that set them up for success 20 years later. We made the back on Moore's Law, PHP, that everything would be dynamic, and we'd kind of render it at runtime, which was very controversial at the time. We talked about open source software, why Matt's such a big proponent of it, and how Automatic build its business model. In open source, anyone in the world can take existing software, take all the code, and start a new project. |
| 1:12.6 | Automatic was one of the first SaaS companies, and Matt shares what it was like in the mid-2000s. |
| 1:17.6 | They didn't have what was called like a one-click install. That was actually an innovation that we helped introduce to the industry. |
| 1:23.6 | When we raised a little bit of money, I ended up spending most of it just buying servers, like physical servers from Dell. |
| 1:29.3 | He shares how to build a community around your product. |
| 1:31.3 | If you organized one and got like 100 people to sign up, I would fly anywhere in the world. |
... |
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