Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

The creator of WordPress opens up about becoming an internet villain, why he’s taking a stand, and the future of open source | Matt Mullenweg (founder and CEO, Automattic)

March 2, 2025

AI Summary

5 min read

Matt Mullenweg, co-creator of WordPress (now powering over 40% of websites) and CEO of Automattic (1700 people across 90 countries, ~$500M ARR), explains his lifelong dedication to open source, recent conflicts defending it, and Automattic's distributed, acquisition-driven model.

Open Source Principles

Mullenweg views open source as essential for software freedoms—use for any purpose, inspect code, modify, and share changes under GPL's viral license—contrasting it with proprietary control. WordPress started as a fork of abandoned B2/cafelog; he leads development while running Automattic's cloud services like Akismet (anti-spam) and Jetpack (backups/sync). He critiques "fake open source" like Meta's Llama, which requires permission above 750M users, violating unrestricted use; praises AI training on open source code as a safe, licensed success that embeds it in future tech like Linux kernels.

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What you'll learn

1 *(00:05) **WordPress/WP Engine Drama Overview**
2 *(05:44) **Automattic Origins and Scale**
3 *(17:26) **Open Source Philosophy and WordPress Beginnings**
4 *(23:15) **AI, Fake Open Source, and Future of Code**
5 *(35:21) **Building WordPress Community and Platform Moat**
6 *(39:13) **WP Engine Conflict Deep Dive and Defense**
7 *(52:17) **Addressing Criticisms: Governance, Stability, Forks**

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

Matt Mullenweg is the co-founder of WordPress, the open source platform powering a staggering 43% of the internet. He also serves as CEO of Automattic—the parent company of brands like WordPress.com, WooCommerce, and Tumblr—which is worth over $7 billion, with over 1,700 employees across 90 countries. In this episode, he discusses some of the most controversial topics surrounding WordPress, Automattic, and the broader open source community.

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What you’ll learn:

• Matt’s response to public criticism

• Why products like Meta’s Llama are “fake open source”

• How his team is turning around Tumblr after acquiring it for just $3 million (after Yahoo bought it for $1.1 billion)

• Why he mortgaged his home to fund San Francisco’s iconic Bay Lights project

• Matt’s philosophy: “Don’t just build a product; build a movement”

• Why open source matters: “If the Founding Fathers were around today, they’d be open source advocates”

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