After Automattic released their experiment with selling $5,000 websites, I published a video, I spell it wordpress now.

A video which has been viewed over 1,400 times and caught the attention of today’s guest, Matt Mullenweg co-creator of WordPress & Founder of Automattic. I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing Mullenweg back in 2015, and have consumed nearly every other podcast he’s been featured on since.

I thought about doing a more in-depth analysis on Matt’s responses to my questions, but I’d rather let the content speak for itself, allowing you to digest our discussion then arrive at your own conclusions.

Though there is one word that sticks with me, and that’s: vulnerable.

There are some vulnerable moments when discussing topics relating to blue collar digital workers — or builders/implementors — that could spark a change in Matt’s long-term regard to a group of WordPress users that I feel control the under current of the CMS’s adoption.

Matt is also responsible for nearly 378,000* products under Autoamattic’s umbrella, to which he informed there’s a new internal initiative rolling out to help disperse some of the responsibilities not only from him, but the 1,400 other Automattician’s.

As for me, I do get very passionate about WordPress and my response to moments like these might do better if I sit on them a little longer or reach out to Matt directly. Who knows, maybe we’ll get more podcast episodes out of it.

I hope you enjoy today’s episode, please share it with the world, and leave a comment on the post.

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Matt Medeiros and Matt Mullenweg
[00:03:42] Medeiros: [00:03:42] I’d say 99.999% of the folks listening today know who you are and what you do is there one thing people don’t know. That you do.
[00:03:51] Do you practice like jujitsu or are you a culinary master behind the scenes? Anything else that’s new that people just might not know is like a hobby or something that you do really [00:04:00] well on the aside from work
[00:04:01]Mullenweg: [00:04:01] Some people might know, but it’s been so long now, but I know I want a jazz musician and that was how I got into building websites. And it’s why releases a WordPress are named after jazz musicians.  Don’t know if I can still call myself that, but I definitely was for a long time. And it’s what I thought I was going to do professionally before.
[00:04:18]I got into this web stuff.
[00:04:20]Medeiros: [00:04:20] Look, I think a lot of folks think about this conversation and I don’t know why, but they’re there. I see comments. Like I can’t wait for Matt to talk to Matt about this stuff and like really roll up their sleeves and get at it. I don’t feel that way at all. In fact, I highly regard your position.
[00:04:39] I think I’ve told you before. I wouldn’t want your position. I know I wouldn’t want to have to thwart the the comments that come at you every day and run a thousand ish person company. A lot of work. So I applaud you and really respect that position. I’m really interested to chat today and maybe see both sides of [00:05:00] our views and opinions and have a better understanding at the end of the day.
[00:05:05]Mullenweg: [00:05:05] I think the mat squared report is a great recurring feature. So I’m sorry that we had some scheduling trouble, but glad that we could make it back on. Probably they thought that because I did leave that a pretty lengthy comment on your, I spell it WordPress video. Cause I disagreed with some points there, but it didn’t feel thank you for responding.
[00:05:23] I felt like you, you listened and you read it and maple loop to some of that as well.
[00:05:28]Medeiros: [00:05:28] Before I get there, I want to tell you, I love simple note. Simple note is the app I use every single day of my life. I’m dying for more simple notes stuff. And this is a bigger question. Look, you’re responsible for, by say you’re responsible and maybe you can enlighten me. Maybe you’re not responsible, but I feel like man, there’s so much product.
[00:05:54] Under Matt Mullenweg, WordPress, Automattic, .com all the offerings, [00:06:00] jetpack simple note, Tumblr, the list goes on happy tools, Jetpack CRM. there’s so much where do you find yourself focusing that attention for like crazy simple note users like myself to say give us more.
[00:06:15]Mullenweg: [00:06:15] The good news for something like simple note is it happens without me having to think about it. Cause I to a minute, 20 times a day, at least, and on all of the different devices. So I’m a very passionate user. Simpler does not where I. I consciously focus my time, but I was just talking to the team the other day about like changing where the search is on desktop, because we moved it to be more like a Mac iOS standard, but it’s a little more confusing.
[00:06:38] It’s, that’s like a fun thing for me. Maybe after hours. Some of the other products you mentioned tumbler, Woo, wordpress.com are more of an official part of my day. And the way I cover so much is just by having really fantastic teams and and folks I work with on every side of it whether that’s Josepha on the .org side of things Paul Miorana on WooCommerce, the list [00:07:00] goes on and on.
[00:07:00] Try to think of automatic as a fractal organization. We’re about 1400 people. Now let’s say a VIP’s run running around 200 this week. That looks a lot like Automattic did when we were 200 people and Nick who runs that has a similar executive structure underneath him that I did when we were doing to people for the whole company or that rather Tony Schneider did.
[00:07:20] So there’s a lots of ways to approach it. And we found that form of scaling is a very effective and I really don’t see a ceiling on it. We’ll hire. And onboard probably 400 people this year. And it’s that if you had told me that 10 years ago, that would seem completely crazy. And I wouldn’t even know, I couldn’t name 400 people in my life, let’s just hire them.
[00:07:44]And now it actually seems like a very natural progression of what we’ve been doing the past few years in terms of scaling the business.
[00:07:51]Medeiros: [00:07:51] Do you look at these endeavors? And I think when I, of course now I’m forgetting the gentleman that I interviewed about simple note [00:08:00] I think you call them is it, are they called long bets? Is that like the code name internally?
[00:08:04] Mullenweg: [00:08:04] internally we other bets.  The long bets would also be a great name and I’m part of the long now foundation. So that would be a good one. They are often long-term but there are thing...