Episode 161 – A Chat With Matt Mullenweg

Show Notes

This episode of Hallway Chats kicks off a new era with a new co-host Nyasha Green! And this week we talk with Matt Mullenweg.

Matt Mullenweg is co-founder of the open-source publishing platform WordPress, which now powers over 40% of all sites on the web. He is the founder and CEO of Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Tumblr, WPVIP, Day One, and Pocket Casts. Additionally, Matt runs Audrey Capital, an investment and research company. He has been recognized for his leadership by Forbes, Bloomberg Businessweek, Inc. Magazine, TechCrunch, Fortune, Fast Company, Wired, University Philosophical Society, and Vanity Fair.

Matt is originally from Houston, Texas, where he attended the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and studied jazz saxophone. In his spare time, Matt is an avid photographer. He currently splits his time between Houston and San Francisco.

Matt’s Site: https://ma.tt

Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/photomatt

Twitter | @photomatt

Mike Flanagan’s post about No Sleep.

Episode Transcript

Topher: Hey, everyone. My name is Topher. 

Nyasha: Hey, my name is Nyasha. 

Topher: And this is Hallway Chats. For those of you paying attention, you’ll notice that my co-host is not Cate this week. Cate is stepping aside as co-host, and Ny will be joining me as our regular co-host in the future. Ny is the Editorial Director of MasterWP, and a WordPress developer. 

Before we get started, I want to say something about our sponsor Nexcess. They have a ton of cool features that I really appreciate. And they’re all over the marketing material. But there are some things they do especially well that I want to call out. Things like really good caching, a super great admin panel that lets me do things myself without needing to wait for support, and being able to SSH between staging servers. It’s those finely polished edges that I love so much. And right now, they’ll buy out your contract with another host, up to $200. So if you’re looking for a great host, check them out.

Our guest this week is Matt Mullenweg. Welcome, sir. 

Matt: Good to see y’all. 

Topher: Good to see you too. When I set this up, I got the time zone wrong because I didn’t realize you’d be on the West Coast. Are you just hanging out or you got a place over there now?

Matt: I’m actually right now in the mountains. I’m in Montana. 

Topher: Oh, that’s awesome. 

Matt: Yeah. I really love mountains. Because there’s something about the idea of something being so rock solid, building, foundations, the air, you know. I really like mountains.

Topher: Something you really can’t affect yourself very much. It’s just there. All right. So on the off chance that no one knows who you are, who are you?

Matt: My name is Matt Mullenweg. I was born and raised in Houston, Texas, and co-founder of WordPress with a guy named Mike Little. And later I started a company called Automattic, which has now grown to be, gosh, I think about 2,000 people that are around.