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Intro: When people are attacking you or responding to you. Sometimes it's not even you. Sometimes there's, there's an archetype of what you might represent, a tech pro or an oligarch, evil billionaires now exploiting, you know, open source. Don't seem very bro y to me. When you're accessible, you become kind of an easy piñata almost for people to engage with.
Because these other CEOs that they're mad at aren't at the conference. They honored Reddit. They honored Hacker News, you know, responding to people. Welcome to Logan Bartlett show. On this episode, what you're gonna hear is a conversation I had with Matt Mullenweg. Now Matt is best known as the founder of WordPress, as well as the founder and CEO of Automatic, a business best known for hosting.
Press. Matt's been in the news recently due to controversy related to wordpress and one of their hosting providers, WP Engine. Matt and I talk about this controversy as well as the lessons that he's learned in managing through crisis and some of the implications for any executive founder or venture investor facing something similar.
We also talk about the future of open [00:01:00] source and what the new improvements in open source models mean for the artificial intelligence community going forward. A really fun conversation that you'll hear with Matt now.
Logan: Matt, thanks for doing this.
Matt: Happy to be here. So it's not in
Logan: Automatic has has been in the news over the course of the last. What has it been with regard to the WP Engine dispute? When did all that stuff sort of come to a head?
Matt: September 20th. Yeah, we've been a little more, more spicy recently, but, uh, yeah.
Logan: Actually, before we even, um, uh, got this scheduled, I sort of paid a cursory, a cursory attention to, to what was going on and probably wasn't in the weeds of it, um, as it didn't necessarily impact me on a day to day basis. And so for people that maybe have just seen some headlines and stuff, can you give just like a quick primer on what transpired that led to, you know, September, uh, of [00:02:00] 2024.
Matt: actually think you put it really well that this doesn't affect 99 percent of WordPress users. Yeah.
Logan: are still, I mean, a big fraction of the world, but it's still, it's not, you know, it's a, it's a percentage of the overall ecosystem. And so I think probably a lot of people are, have been going about their day, not totally paying attention to this.
Matt: So there's a hosting company that kind of resells WordPress. They just take WordPress and then provide infrastructure and stuff around it called WP engine. And, um, we had some, uh, issues with how they were using the trademark. And people were getting very confused with thinking, you know, WP Engine was like an official WordPress thing.
They were also misusing their WooCommerce trademark. And, um, this kind of, you know, this happens, you know, trademark enforcement is very common. And, you know, 21 years of WordPress, we've never had a blowup like this. But, um, with, in this particular case, it [00:03:00] kind of, uh, spiraled a bit. You know, perhaps, you know, WP Energy is owned by a private equity firm called Silverlake, which I think has, uh, sort of played a, uh, more heavier hand in terms of being aggressive with this.
Logan: For a lot of companies, um, trademark enforcement is, uh, very much a black and white legal matter in some way, shape, or form. Hey, you, you go to court and it gets adjudicated, uh, and we could argue whether or not that should have been the simple recourse in this.
Logan: But there's a, there's a, uh, broader implication that, uh, I want to talk a little bit more about open source and, and the implications for AI and all of that.
But you have a very passionate community and there's kind of, there's, there's elements of the. This ethos of, of, uh, open source and the morality around who owns what. And so maybe, uh, for people [00:04:00] that, that aren't in the weeds on this. So can you just give like a little bit of, um, background on like the, the trademarks and who owns what and how there's a business that's built on top of another business and you have partial control of one.
Matt: I should introduce myself as well. Matt Mullenweg. Yeah.
Logan: people probably know you, but hopefully if they clicked in at this point,
Matt: So I'm the co founder of WordPress, um, which is an open source project. Um, I run a site wordpress. org, which is like the hub of the WordPress. Software ecosystem. So that's me personally.
Matt: Um, I'm the CEO of a company called automatic, which I founded in 2005 a few years after WordPress to create kind of commercial add ons to WordPress.
You know, we have Jetpack, WooCommerce, uh, Kismet, which is anti spam. It's, it's an automatic suspended to be like more of a Uh, sort of like tech R& D company. So we have apps like Day [00:05:00] One, Pocket Cast, Beeper. So we do a lot of, uh, sort of, we're, we're not big tech, we're like medium tech. We're like teenage tech.
And, uh, and all of this is, uh, sort of fighting for a more open web. So, you know, my life mission is to democratize publishing, commerce, messaging. And to me, that means, uh, as software sort of dictates more and more of our life, I really want to live in a world where, um, we have rights and freedoms associated with that.
I believe that an open source license is critical for that. So most software, when you use it, it's proprietary. Um, you're at the whims of whatever That company does with the license, they could change it tomorrow, um, as evidenced by like the Facebook platform. rug pulling certain startups or different things.
They can change their mind tomorrow. With open source, you have kind of a bill of rights. You have inalienable rights. So when you get the software, it belongs to you just as much as it [00:06:00] does to me. And no one can ever take that away from you. So it's a, it's a very cool concept, and it's what I've decided to dedicate my life to.
And, uh, so Automatic is a company that attempts to both be successful commercially, and we've built a pretty good company. We're about 1, 750 people. But half a billion in revenue, uh, while also, uh, the majority of our vast majority of our IP and what we produce is released as GPL or, um, MPL software. So completely open source, which means our competitors can use it.
Other people would use it. It's, it's kind of open to the world. Yeah. So
Logan: so you have two different roles essentially that have overlapping competencies in some ways, or at least affiliation in some ways with one another, and so. Uh, automatic. The business provides a host of different services and now applications as you as you articulated, uh, principally originally related to [00:07:00] to WordPress itself and because it's open source.
People, there's been other people that have come and built businesses on top of that project, that community, that foundation, that is the wordpress. org, uh, entity, organization, and, uh, of which one of those is, is WP Engine, uh, which has some competitive functionality with Automatic, the business that you, that you run,
Matt: WP Engine hosts, I think around 700, 000, 750, 000 WordPress sites. So they're, you know, in the top 10 WordPress hosts, they're not the largest, but they are a significant one and they are a hundred percent WordPress. So other hosts like a GoDaddy or Bluehost do other stuff as well. But WP Engine is completely WordPress
Logan: fair to say the largest, uh, Independent singular, uh, host of WordPress. Is
Matt: you know, not at all. The hosting is just bigger. Bluehost is [00:08:00] bigger. Yeah.
Logan: but they host other, they host other things like, sorry, just, just only WordPress.
Matt: um, I would say in hosting WordPresses, they're probably maybe the sixth or seventh largest. Yeah,
Logan: But that's all they do.
Matt: that's all they do. Yeah.
Logan: Exclusive, like that's the biggest business that that's the only thing they do, but not the biggest of the stack ranking versus all the other folks.
Matt: And uh, yeah, this is one of the things.
Matt: So in starting, you know, often when open source projects commercialize, typically what happens is You know, they start to put, uh, they do license. So they say, like, the open source version has these features, but for the good stuff, you need to get a commercial license or, um, they'll hold back things.
And one thing I've tried to do with Automatic is, we take our best work, our best, you know, creativity, and we put it in the core, so it's accessible to everyone. So the WordPress ecosystem is probably 10 billion. A year plus [00:09:00] automatic sales, a percentage of that, like 5%, but like the broader ecosystem has allowed many other businesses to flourish.
Um, WP Engine being one of them, uh, when WP Engine started, they were pretty, uh, good participants in the, uh, WordPress ecosystem. Um, but they got bought by, uh, Private Equity in 2019. And sort of in the subsequent years, you know, private equity usually has like a five to seven year time frame when they try to, you know, exit, uh, investments.
And as they reached the end of this time frame, they started, uh, turning the screws a bit on their customers, modifying how WordPress worked, uh, getting a bit cavalier with the trademark, um, just doing a number of things that started to reflect poorly on WordPress. Particularly when people thought it was official, you know, and you know, Theo's, you know, you talked about Theo's, uh, live stream.
Uh, a lot of people were like, Oh, obviously WP Engine and WordPress are different. But like he did a live poll. It's something like 30, 40 [00:10:00] percent of people thought like WP Engine was actually like an official WordPress thing.
Logan: Yeah, we can link that conversation in the show notes, and that goes into a lot of the specific details around this stuff, which I, I don't, I'm, it sounds like, uh, neither of us have the interest to totally litigate the blow by blow or the text or the communications and all that.
Matt: Yeah. So I gave a presentation sort of calling this out and we tried to like resolve this privately for, you know, years and do a deal with them. And, uh, uh, they just kind of strung me along for a long time and, um, it had some duplicitous behavior. So finally I was like, well, I think we're going to have to like.
You know, uh, have you not sponsor WordCamps anymore? Like, sort of like, you know, say like you're not a good participant in the WordPress community anymore. So I gave a presentation at, uh, this thing called WordCamps, which are these community events that happen. Uh, so there are a couple of thousand people at a WordCamp United States.
Um, [00:11:00] and I gave a presentation and sort of calling out their behavior and you know, that was a Thursday. On Monday, they launched this huge lawsuit with Quinn Emanuel, one of the baddest, nastiest, you know, badass law firms, um, with like
Logan: You don't want to mess with Quint, Quint Emanuel. I, uh, you can Google the lawsuits they're, they're, uh, they're involved in, but they, uh, they, they, yes, a number of lawsuits that people are probably pretty aware of, uh, that are very high profile and controversial, uh, Quint Emanuel is, is at the heart of those.
Matt: they have a reputation that's well learned. So they're very, very, very good at what they do. Part of their strategy is also like. Do a smear campaign. So there's been lots of negative PR about me. Lots of other things. So this is part of why it's been so controversial. Um, the good news is that in the meantime, we've done major releases of WordPress.
Automatic continues to acquire companies and do other [00:12:00] things. And so like, um, this has gotten a lot of press I think because it's like if it bleeds, it leads. It's controversial. But uh, luckily it's a smaller part of my day. And, you know, the legal proceedings, uh, are, it's now working itself out with the courts and everything, so I can't really comment too much on the case, but like, um, you know, we have a amazing law firm, Gibson Dunn, who's also one of the bad boys of legal, uh, representing us and, uh, yeah, we're, we're fighting the claims,
Logan: These are, these are names of firms. You hopefully will never, uh, or anyone listening will, will never need, but, uh, when you do it, they're good ones to, they're good ones to know, I guess the issue as it, as it pertains to WP engine, just so it, so I, it crystallizes in my mind, um, why them specifically versus the other top six, like how did this manifest itself?
Were they doing things that was different? Then what the first six providers were doing, or how did this come to a head with them specifically versus other people?
Matt: you know, for [00:13:00] example, sometimes I'll get people contacting me Because their site is down in WP Engine, you know. I've never had that happen with GoDaddy.
Logan: Yeah,
Matt: So it's just like, it's a branding thing, you know. I think with other hosts that offer WordPress, it's pretty clear to their customers that this is like, you know, WordPress is not me, it's not etc.
So, um, that was one of our, uh, one of the reasons we wanted to do a trademark license with them. Because, you know, it felt like they were really, there was a lot of confusion in the workplace.
Logan: and the point of materiality is, I guess, and this is a legal thing, but it's like 15 percent of customers confused or something. Is the is that a legal threshold?
Matt: Yeah, I think there's a legal threshold for that. And there's a way to do surveys, to test that, and everything. So,
Logan: I guess, um, as it relates anecdotally, way back when I actually as a venture capitalist, I looked at WP Engine and, uh, at first blush it. This is totally anecdotal, but I had to dig in to figure out what the affiliation [00:14:00] was with WordPress and you and automatic and all of that. So I don't know what one one anecdote around it, but I can't say I ultimately got to the answer, but I was probably a little bit more sophisticated at that point in terms of
Matt: what did you think at first? You thought it was an official thing?
Logan: mean, there's other organizations that use, uh, WordPress or WP in some way, shape or form, but, um, I, I didn't know, I guess is the short answer. I, I, I had to, uh, read the fine print if you will around it. And maybe that was my own ignorance or, uh, or maybe it's the point that you're pursuing in all of this is that a bunch of customers are Are confused and I think I probably have a more nuanced view of open source and in IP and licensing and all that stuff than the average consumer that's just trying to host their website and go about their day.
So if I had that reaction, I'm sure other people did as well. So all of that, all of that happened and I guess I'm [00:15:00] curious. I, I sort of try to pursue the Occam's razor in some of these things. Like what is the simplest explanation, uh, for, um, pursuing this? And it sounds like there was this 8 percent licensing deal that, that was, that was on the table.
And if we're, I, I don't know if this,
Matt: much about the WP Engine stuff. The ongoing legal thing. So, I apologize.
Logan: I guess, I guess if I were to, if I were to, um, zoom out. Uh, around this specific controversy and kind of how it played out. I'm curious, um, were there things that you learned, things you did particularly well, uh, around this that you're really proud of, of how you handled or communicated and all that, and things you wish you could go back and do slightly differently for anyone else that's faced with even some similar, small controversy that, that probably isn't at this scale?
Matt: Well, I'll say, perhaps WP Engine is the exception that proves the rule. So if you look at every other company in [00:16:00] the WordPress ecosystem, um, we have very good relations and part of the reason WordPress has been so successful versus other open source projects is this idea that, uh, we call it five for the future.
So this is sort of saying like, and it's open to interpretation, but like, um, if you derive your living from WordPress or you, you really build on top of the software, you get a lot of value out of it. Try to find a way to take 5% Maybe that's, you know, um, what's that? Two hours after a 40 hour work week? Or maybe that's revenue, or maybe that's investment, or maybe it's sponsorship, or whatever it is.
Try to put it back into the core, um, so that the open source software, the thing that we're all building on, can thrive. Uh, because sometimes what happens, as we've seen many examples of, is people use open source software, but they don't contribute anything back to it. And sometimes it can, you know, the volunteers get overworked, or whoever's [00:17:00] Building it's, there could be security problems, et cetera.
So, uh, WordPress has always had a very, very healthy ecosystem of contributors. Automatic has obviously done a ton of this. And by the way, how we interpret this is 5 percent of our people. So we've had a hundred people full time working on the core software. So I'm not working on things that make automatic money, just working on things that are available to the entire WordPress ecosystem in terms of the core open source software.
Um, it's a lot of people. It's bigger than many startups. Uh, so that's, that's how we interpret it. And so we try to lead by example. There's a lot of other companies, um, including, you know, Yoast, pretty much everyone else, uh, is very good at saying like, you know, interpreting how, how can they sort of Uh, get back so that the commons, this thing that we all are building on can thrive and sustain as WordPress has now for 21 years.
And so when I think of something that's gone well, I think [00:18:00] that the way we've navigated this with, by the way, I compete with all these other companies too, like my hosting business competes with, you know, Bluehost all these other ones too. Uh, Dreamhost, but we, but we have a sort of good bilateral relationships and, um, and find the common ground where we can work together to this kind of mission of democratizing publishing.
Logan: so, so I guess the lesson in that is doing, uh, things right for an extended period of time, I guess, I guess at a, uh, at like a very specific tactical level, not as it relates to the specific controversy, but just just like the lessons learned from a controversy, um. Do you feel like it's better to get out earlier and try to do these types of things and just sort of say your story all the way through and be super visible?
Or is it better to let, let it, you might be [00:19:00] getting oxygen to a situation that otherwise might not need it and, uh, And better to sort of measure twice and cut once on it and sort of take your time and give it a week or two to sort of, uh, let the embers burn and then come out in some meaningful way. And I'm sure it's very situation specific, but we're living in a, um, every day.
It feels like the media and social media landscape is a little different than it was, uh, three months, six months a year before. And so I guess I'm just curious, uh, the lessons that maybe people had. From three years ago might not even apply to today's X and TikTok and world that we're living in today.
Matt: And it's different on different networks. So, um, we actually did some research recently where we're doing sentiment analysis around the different timeframes where the controversy was happening and what people were saying about WordPress and about me on the different networks. And, um, the most fascinating thing to me was on, [00:20:00] uh, sort of, you know, Facebook, tick tock, you know, the other networks, threads, blue sky, there was an 8 percent negativity rate.
Uh, so 92 percent sort of positive. I think it was like, uh, 8 percent neutral, so basically 8 percent negativity. On X Twitter, it was 48%. So, you know, there, there is something where. You know, algorithms that sort of go for engagements and the sort of medium of Twitter, which is, you know, these small bites and also probably like, yeah, I've, I Twitter is, is my, my biggest vice.
Yeah. I'd say particularly, uh, I've been pretty good about not being too much on Twitter in previous years, but with all the AI stuff. There's so much cool AI stuff that happens there. So I kind of go there for that. But then sometimes I get sucked into like replying to [00:21:00] someone, you know, and I try to be, you know, as many CEOs, I was with, uh, an amazing founder, uh, a few weeks ago of a hundred billion plus company.
Um, And he was telling me that he's been also had some controversy and there was like a documentary coming out and a book coming out that was like said bad things about his company. And, uh, so I was talking about it. He's like, yeah, I haven't read the book. I was like, wait, you haven't read the book. It's like, oh, someone will read it.
And they'll tell me if there's anything I need to worry about. And he's like, I don't read the news. Like, you don't read the news. It's like, yeah, I have a team that looks at it. They raised something for me. And I really was a little bit jealous of that chill. So I think.
Matt: What happens and how some executives sort of protect themselves from the vitriol of the internet, which can be very, I will admit, like it can be [00:22:00] very, uh, demoralizing sometimes to get sort of the full blast of the internet.
You know, being the main character of the internet hating you, um, is they just unplug and don't look at it. Um, I think partly because we're open source, which means anyone can contribute. I try to be very accessible. You know, I'm on slack for wordpress. org. Anyone can DM me. My DMs are open. My email is open.
I try to be like a very, very accessible leader and I try to engage with. The comments, I read the comments, I post through it. I try to reply to people. I try to engage in good faith. And, um, sometimes, uh, you know, I think that is a far more challenging way to do it. And, um, also I think something I've realized is that when people are.
Attacking you or responding to you, sometimes it's not even you. Sometimes there's an archetype of what you might represent. So people see me as [00:23:00] a tech pro or, you know, an oligarch, which I'm not. People literally call me these things and they say like,
Logan: seem very bro y to me for what it's worth.
Matt: evil billionaire who's now exploiting, you know, open source. Gosh, all my creative work, all my IP is open sourced. Most other CEOs don't do that. Like it's sort of the, so people like start to project things. They might be mad up in the world or mad at more broadly in society, um, on you. And particularly when you're accessible, you become kind of an easy, um, pinata almost for people to engage with.
Because these other CEOs that they're mad at, um, aren't in the comments, they aren't on Reddit, they aren't on Hacker News, you know, responding to people.
Logan: I, I mean, it's,
Matt: takeaways, I, I don't know, like, I kind of don't want to change that. I do love being connected to the community. I feel it's like where I get a lot of my insights for, like, what to build in the next version of WordPress.
I think even in, like, really [00:24:00] harsh Critical feedback. I try to always plug out the nuggets of gold. See what I can learn from it. Um, but uh, Something I have gotten like I've started blocking people more on twitter and stuff because I feel like there's certain Characters that just like they view everything you do in the most uncharitable lights.
There's no Sort of like not worth it to engage. Yeah
Logan: a lot of interesting stuff in there. Um, and it is, there's this, there's this, uh, dichotomy or this tension that exists between wanting to be Plugged in but also not getting lost and tied up in the morass and I I've said like If you had a 90% approval rating, but you're exposed to a hundred thousand people, that means there's 10,000 people that don't like you.
And, and 10,000 people online saying mean shit to you, uh, can be overwhelming. And it's hard to [00:25:00] discern the difference between 10 and 50 and 102 hundred. And it can feel just overwhelming in that regard. And so I'm curious that the techniques that you actually use blocking is an interesting, uh, one, if people sort of feel like they're in bad faith around it, I guess.
Maybe the flip side of it is the techniques you use to stay grounded and optimistic about what you're doing on a day to day basis and not letting the, the, um, the masses, uh, get to you just as a human, as a founder, as a CEO, Keep going. Do you, do you have limiting Twitter use maybe is one way of doing it.
But, but do you have techniques around just like staying grounded and optimistic?
Matt: Yeah, this has been in the past year. I've also had like, you know, because I've been running Tumblr, we sort of have tried to save Tumblr, turn it around. And, [00:26:00] um, Tumblr has a portion of its user base, which can be very, very mean, like high school mean girl. And, um, and including a portion of the user base, like people were saying things like, um, Uh, when that CEO was shot, you know, Luigi, like, and then people, you know, something would come up or I'd post something about, I could even post something like a picture of flowers and people would respond, like, I feel like you should go for a walk in New York.
In front of this hotel and like, you know, people essentially saying, like, you should I'm like, oh, gosh, and that's one thing that's is challenging because like, you know, end of the day, this is just business. It's just, it's just software. It's everything. No one should ever in their life or be in physical danger because of any of this stuff.
And so being exposed to that from a safety point of view from a security point of view. Um, yeah, very, very challenging. So, uh, [00:27:00] uh, what do I do? Yeah.
Logan: or things that you found like, um, helpful, uh, in terms of, uh, I don't know if it's meditation or, or,
Matt: It's good lifestyle. So I meditate every day. Um, I try to get out in nature, you know, uh, I find that's really helpful exercise. You know, I find being one of like the best sort of ways to improve mood, nutrition, you know, sleep, uh, all the things that make like a good, healthy life, I think can give you some resilience.
So.
Logan: and apple pie of like, it's, it's all this stuff is, is obvious in some ways, but doing it, committing to it and staying consistent with it is another thing, right?
Matt: Yeah. So cherry pick your, your Schubert men, Tim Ferriss, Peter T, uh, Brian Johnson, you know, you know, cherry pick whatever works for you from all those. And, um, I go for it. And so, uh, that's sort of like self care and also just focusing on health, um, I think has been. [00:28:00] It's really, really important and it's, it's, I know this is like a simple, obvious thing, but, uh, there's certainly points, uh, where I've neglected it and find myself, you know, yeah, cause I, I work a lot anyway, you know, work typically 68 hours a week.
Um, and typically that work is very like rewarding and generative. You know, collaborating with colleagues, I'm designing products. I'm like working on open source, I'm in code, I'm working on algorithms, you know, things that I really enjoy hiring, recruiting great talents, acquiring companies like these things I get a lot of energy from.
Um, but when some of that becomes too much, you know, this, uh, uh, engaging with, I would say the more negative part of the internet, um, or with people for whom they don't contribute a lot besides criticism. Um, Yeah. When that becomes a bigger part of your day, it's not healthy.
Logan: I obviously heavy is the head that wears the crown in some ways. And [00:29:00] so, Hey, you're the CEO of the business, you, you have, um, ownership and stock commiserate with. being a founder, CEO of the business. Um, and so, uh, you're still a human and so you have to deal with all this stuff. And I think that's, that's interesting and important, I guess, for the executives or the rank and file employees as a leader.
Uh, I'm sure these people were exposed to different elements or get exposed to different elements of this stuff as well as this controversy boils up and all that. What have you learned about leadership through, uh, through this with Employees or executives, anything that stands out to you?
Matt: Yeah. It also, you know, part of what gets me through it is the support of people who I really trust and respect. So, you know, the dozens of core committers on WordPress and all that, you know, some people left, you know, some people got angry about this whole thing and stormed out, but hundreds of other, you know, thousands of other volunteers have stayed and in [00:30:00] my company, uh, we did an alignment offer.
So we did a buyout offer and, you know, 8. 3 percent took it. within the other 92%, you know, state. And, um, so it's been kind of great to have that core support. Um, it's been helpful, you know, other people, what's tough though is that some of these folks who actually write the code, actually do the work, actually create the things that we all, like, love about WordPress, um, part of the reason why they're good is they're not on social media.
They're not in the comments, they're not on Reddit. So, it's, uh, and, uh, when they go there, You know, you just get attacked so much that I, I totally understand why they don't engage. So um, in some ways I'm like, okay, let me take the arrows for everyone else so they can actually do the work. And in some ways we're also thinking like, how can we also get more people out there telling the story?
And have it not just be all about me, but [00:31:00] actually sort of, you know, highlight the dozens of other people who are leading WordPress and leading our community, um, that are very much aligned with what we're doing in the future, you know, building software, you know?
Logan: Well, I, uh, I guess tabling that, uh, and, and all the interesting elements of, of, of around that.
Logan: I'm curious as you sit here today, so the last real long form non controversy podcast I listened to you do was Tim Ferriss, who I know is a a friend of yours. And, um, I think you guys have done a bunch together over the, over the years and some reflections and a bunch of interesting stuff.
But at that point in time, I think it was maybe December 23. Is that right?
Matt: Yeah, I think so.
Logan: Yeah. So 13 ish months ago. Um, I. You, you sounded, uh, very optimistic about where the world was headed and, and some of the stuff related to, to [00:32:00] AI. And, uh, I think you were saying you, you were rethinking even having a family or something at that point, I guess, as we sit here today, uh, would you say up, down the same versus where you, where you were then at a, at a world level, even if the last six months has been, um, particularly trying or, uh, maybe a little more pessimistic, where, where are you on that
Matt: I would say up. Yeah, actually,
Logan: And why is that?
Matt: um, and a thing that has surprised me the most over the past, you know, since December is how fast open source has caught up with the state of the arch and the proprietary models and things. And, you know, deep seeks been in the news a lot.
Matt: There's also the Quinn model and, uh, or Core Quin
Logan: Yeah,
Matt: Mistral out of France. Like there's so much cool stuff happened with the open weights, open source stuff that, uh, it's kind of amazing. And then seeing what people do when they can run these things locally, they've run it on the data centers [00:33:00] and also just more of the inference and things happening at the edge with the incredible chips that like your Mac book and your, uh, Your iPhone and everything like, uh, I think we're going to get some very, very cool capabilities.
Uh, yeah, so I'm just very, very excited about it.
Matt: And it's um, we're still in such early days of the interfaces and the user interactions around these things. So chat2BT obviously like shocked the world with sort of chat interface with how you work with it. Just as like a product creator and someone who's passionate about the design of software.
I really love seeing the experimentation that's happening with sort of the purpose built UIs around things like Repl. it or Cursor for coding or GitHub Copilot, or how AI is being applied to sort of these specific verticals. And I think we're in kind of like the early days of the App Store. You know, when the iPhone first came out, and then, [00:34:00] you know, originally it had no apps, right?
It was only web apps, and then they sort of had the App Store. And we're kind of in those first days where like the apps are all kind of doing different things and it's low clunky and I can't wait to see the next couple of years and then also that the productivity is enhanced by the AI itself. So it's not uniform, but I have, you know, a percent of my company now, which is, I would say two to three times more productive than they were six months ago because they're really learning and adopting the AI tools.
And one of the things I'm repeating most as a CEO right now is like, Hey, spend time with this stuff, learn how to use it because the tools are weird right now. Like you have to prompt it a certain way. Sometimes it doesn't, you know, it's not just a one shot thing like searching. You can't just ask it once and it works.
You have to kind of cajole it. Sometimes you have to ask it to try again. Sometimes you have to correct mistakes. Like it's, it's, it's like a It's a new way of learning a tool, which is very weird [00:35:00] and odd, but when you get good at it you can create amazing things. And I can do stuff that used to take me like 8 hours of coding, now it's like 20 or 30 minutes, which is very, very exciting.
Logan: you made a comment that like, uh, you're now able to do things in a much shorter amount of time or that people wouldn't, uh, be able to, uh, uh, afford, um, without artificial intelligence. I guess. Are there particular, um, use cases or, uh, applicabilities that you think get you most excited, most optimistic about the potential of things with artificial intelligence?
Matt: Yeah, I can just describe what I've experienced personally is The LLMs today are really good at writing and editing and being a creative, generative partner for that. So, um,
Logan: I think about Hamilton, one of my friends with the Hamilton last night, and I think about Hamilton and like all the rhymes and the rap throughout and how amazed I [00:36:00] was at that 10 years ago or eight years ago, whenever it came out, it was just like mind blowing. And now we we have a I that could presumably do elements of what it.
It just seemed impossible to me to rhyme all these different things together about, uh, you know, uh, the period of time we were going through and now we have systems that can actually do that.
Matt: yeah, and I think, you know, I like how Seth Godin talks about this, like, it's like, I never just publish what the AI gives me, but I'll put my writing into it, ask for feedback or ask for ideas or ask for an edit or, you know, just even just like grammar checking and things like that. It can be very, very, very, very powerful.
Um, in code, I would say. It's a little rockier. You really have to like, uh, sometimes prompted a lot or, or sort of design things. I think also with context windows, just code is a little more complicated. But, um, you know, 1 fun thing is, um, you know. So [00:37:00] all of the LLMs have been trained on all of WordPress's code and all of the plugins and themes, 60, 000 plugins and themes.
So it's read all of our GPL code because open source is probably one of the safest things you can train on, right? The copyright, everything is like pretty clear cut. That, uh, there's no problems there. Um, and so, you know, you can ask, uh, ChatGPD or any of these to like write your WordPress plugin or plugin or modify things.
And it just knows it. And so. I think the sort of benefit, uh, AI is going to benefit open source ecosystems and code bases and building on them a lot more. And of course, you can build something completely custom and bespoke, and I guess I build me a blog and react or something, but it's far more powerful if you sort of tell it to use an open source tool, which then gets like maintenance, security, updates, security, everything like that.
Um, and then it builds on top of it. So, uh, I would say as [00:38:00] a writing partner and a coding partner has been where I've experienced it most personally myself, and I'm very, very excited.
Logan: One of the things you touched on in there, which is, uh, it sounds like you're surprised even with how the open source models have have caught up and having lived some market evolution within content management systems, web development platforms, uh, with with WordPress. I guess, why do you think that's the case?
Why do you think it caught you by even surprise as an open source optimist? And then I'm going to ask you to maybe look forward a little bit on it, but maybe we can look back for a second.
Matt: Open source, um, I think always wins in the long term, but in many markets it's at a slow burn. You know, WordPress itself was very, very small for many, many years. It's now 21 years in that we're like, you know, 40 percent of websites and 10 times the number two and everything. But for a long time, we were very, very [00:39:00] small and the growth was very slow, but you kind of get this like.
Uh, compounding flywheel of like a really healthy open source community. Um, I think you can also have, um, and there's examples of this with, say, the chromium engine or android, where, um, a company can choose to invest quite a bit of money and they can move just as fast with open source as they can with proprietary, but they're choosing the open source as sort of a business strategy to commoditize the compliments of what someone else might be making money from.
So, sort of the strategic reasons why, and Facebook's models are not open source, I want to be clear, they call them open source, but they have a term in there, it's not truly open source, but part of the reason why they're making them widely accessible and freely available in a very open ish way, um, is because I think they're thinking competitively against Microsoft, OpenAI, like, you know, they're making a lot of money from these things, how could we like give it away for free and then make money someplace else?[00:40:00]
Matt: So, so I think Joel Spolsky introduced the idea of commoditizing your compliments. So taking something that your competitor makes money on, giving it away for free, and then making money in a different way, um, is, can be very powerful. Actually, to take it back to the early days of WordPress, so the, when we started, our big competitor was this, uh, software called MobileType.
And it was really good. MobileType, uh, You know, the investors were, uh, Reed Hoffman, Joy Ito. They launched on stage at TED. You know, they had like most of the market, et cetera. Um, and part of the way they made a lot of money was, um, you could pay them to install the software. And, uh, because it was kind of hard to set up.
It was in Perl, so you had to set up like a CGI bin. You know, it generated static files and everything. And, um, One of our early innovations of WordPress was something we called the famous five minute install, which is basically kind of a self serve install. And we use a different technology stack, PHP, which worked better on shared hosting.
Um, [00:41:00] and so instead of making it a business model where we'd make money, where you'd have to pay to install it, we've made that super easy so you can install it yourself. So we tried to take this thing that was, we tried to commoditize a compliment, take this thing that was like a revenue stream for someone else and actually make that sort of free and self serve to be a very, very good business strategy.
And I think good for entrepreneurs listening to this to think about for their competitors, what are things that they might be doing that they could offer? As Jeff Bezos famously said, the most scary line of business, your margin of my opportunity, you know, like what are the things you can do? That might, uh, uh, allow you to serve.
Commoditize something.
Matt: Um, we're doing this right now on our battle with Shopify. So we have a product called WooCommerce, which is open source Shopify. And, um, it typically costs, you know, one tenth of what you might spend on Shopify to run a similar sized store or something like that. So that obviously means we make a lot less money for how many stores [00:42:00] we have than Shopify does.
Um, but that's a challenging thing to compete with, you know, when there's an order and magnitude difference in cost.
Logan: So does that mean that you think in the fullness of time, uh, that we'll ultimately all be using open source models and that will kind of be the default way that people use AI?
Matt: I wouldn't make that prediction. Um, however, I think it's now pretty undeniable that open source will be a big part of the mix.
Matt: And one cool thing about open source is even when it's not the dominant thing, it's, uh, puts some market pressure on the proprietary alternatives to be more open themselves. So, Apple, Android is a great example of this.
Apple sort of famously still has this underdog mentality, even though they're like a trillion dollar company. Uh, and so they really like to lock things down. Right. You can't install this, or you can't, [00:43:00] you know, proprietary lightning connector or whatever like that. And the open side of the ecosystem, um, I think has forced them to, you know, open up defaults and, and, you know, be a lot more open than they would maybe naturally.
Logan: We finally got
Matt: I like those market features better than regulation. Like regulation can do this as well. But, you know, government moves so slow and by the time they do something, you know, often they're years behind the technology. So it's kind of better when like just market forces of consumers having choice, uh, forces, uh, a more open world.
And that's part of why I've dedicated my life to open source because I really want, um, you know, the fruits of my labor and creative work and for the people I work with, um, to go into increasing the amount of freedom in the world. And that sort of idea of freedom and liberty, like as a software, we're creating, giving to people, making people's lives more free or less free.
And so I always want to be on the more free side.
Logan: I know you're, you're excited as I am about Apple transitioning off of their [00:44:00] proprietary, uh, lightning cable to, to the standard USB C. It's, uh, hopefully this is the final shift that we get taken down, uh, just a different path. I, I finally went through, I switched out my phone, switched out all my cords as well, but I'm excited to be able to use across.
Uh, different products, different systems, Apple, not Apple, uh, be able to have one standard kind of charging cable, which is a nice example.
Matt: This is the year I finally went like 100 percent USB C. Um, besides like maybe my Uber or something, I have like almost no proprietary chargers left. And it's, it's a, ah, it's a nirvana. I used to have to carry around so many different types of cables.
Logan: Maybe,
Matt: I would encourage your listeners. I do this fun post every year.
I just posted it called what's in my bag. Where I sort of take, uh, you know, the 30 pounds of things I carry around in my backpack and sort of, I'm always testing different gadgets and different cables and sort of like a, you know, order 20 different things and then like figure out the best one. So, I try to reveal that every year.
So, uh, it's up on my blog, ma. tv.
Logan: yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll, [00:45:00] we'll link to it. What was the best one or the best recent purchase you've made, uh, that you would recommend for, uh, most people to do themselves?
Matt: You know, one of the things in the past year I've been really excited about is, there's actually a company called Basius, B A S I U S, I think, and they have a retractable USB cable, which is really, really good. I think I have one here. Um, retractable cables are like, So you can kind of pull it out. This goes to three, they have a six foot version.
Um, they typically have worked, but they break down really quickly. This is actually quite, quite resilient and quite good. Has just a great feel and everything. And they have a little power adapter too. I, uh, I talk about, let me see if I have that here. Oh yeah. So this is like an extension cord. So it's a six foot extension cord.
So it's great in hotels. It's got a little power brick and this thing comes out. So this can be an extra power thing. And then this is a hundred Watts. So it's got three USB C's [00:46:00] and then a USB A. So, you know, I'm on the road, uh, between this and the six foot retractable cable, I can get 12 feet for my outlet.
So, you know, if you're in your hotel or the outlets like in a weird place or something, so just stuff like this, um, really, really useful and,
Logan: I mean this, I mean this in a, uh, endearing complimentary way. I've never met someone who's, who is nerdier about cables, uh, than I am. And so it's a, it's a pleasure. Uh, it's a pleasure. One of the gifts I'll give to friends is just like a. A simple organizing, uh, bag, like a $10 thing you can get from Amazon.
And then I'll pre-fill it with a bunch of the different, yeah, Hey, hey, here's a old USB, uh, just in case you have that. And here's a USB, old USB to USBC, uh, kind of male to female thing. Here's a bunch of, here's a six foot USB uh C, here's a three foot USBC. Just giving you a little, and it probably costs.
If you put all the component parts together, it's probably 150 bucks or something, but then you just throw it in [00:47:00] your bag and you never have to, you always have something there with you. And, uh, and so that's one of my, probably if you ask my wife, many, uh, neuroses sees, uh, but this is definitely one is, is, is cords and cables and just having everything organized.
And so I, it's nice to meet someone who's even takes it to another level than I do.
Matt: I love that your love language is also charging and cables. So check out my place and leave a comment. If you've, if you've found something better or something I should check out, I'd love to hear like what you find because I don't know. Yes, it's not my day gig, so I kind of like once or twice a year, I'll go through, uh, uh, and order a bunch of stuff on Amazon and, you know, I get Amazon affiliate links for some of this stuff.
So I use that sort of, uh, to fund my gadget habit to check out new stuff and sort of post again next year.
Logan: that's fun. That's fun. Uh, yeah, everyone should go, go and check that out. Uh, uh, uh, uh, I'm curious.
Logan: You, you took a sabbatical last year.
Matt: I did. Yeah.
Logan: How, how long do you end up taking off?
Matt: Uh, 3 months. So [00:48:00] automatic as a benefit where every 5 years of employment, you're eligible for a 2 to 3 month. Uh, fully paid time off and, um, the way it works is the clock doesn't reset until you take it. So if you wait seven years to take it, you don't get your next one is to 12 years and, uh, sabbaticals are, we were kind of inspired by, you know, it goes back in history, actually, in academics and the other places have done things like this, but, um, it's great for organization because it eliminates single points of failure.
I was leaders to step up. So it's great for the person and they can take sort of a, there's sort of a different reset that you get when you're out for like two weeks or even four weeks, then three months. So, um, although I created this benefit and there's been thousands of them taking an automatic, I was the biggest hypocrite cause I'd never taken one myself until last year.
And so last year I finally kind of got things in a place with our executive team and our fundraising and our. Growth of the [00:49:00] business and everything where I felt very comfortable going away for a few months. Also had the incredible gift where the former CEO of Automatic, Tony Schneider, agreed to come in and sort of run things while I was out.
So couldn't be a more perfect, you know, in the CEO role, it's kind of hard to do this, I would say. Um, well, I'll just admit that. But having, you know, someone who's run Automatic before come in and run it for a few months, uh, allowed me to, to take this. So.
Logan: Take me through the, the journey of that. Like, what did you do during the time? I'm sure there's some, the first couple of days, it's almost like you got an itch, uh, that you're, you're, you know, going with your hand and trying to check work emails, but you probably restrained yourself from doing so. Like, how did you actually?
Use that time.
Matt: And, um, I would say this first sabbatical, um, I wouldn't call it rocky, but like I did get pulled back into the business. [00:50:00] Um, so, you know, Tony would reach out or sometimes things would come up, there was an acquisition that was supposed to close before. And it ended up closing like, you know, a few weeks after.
So like there's different stuff that happened that, uh, into the day I'm still the CEO. So I, you know, had to, had to come back in. Um, but it was try to minimize it and try to do things mostly through Tony versus engaging with the whole company. Um, but what I do, gosh, um, I spent a lot of time playing chess, played a lot of saxophone, which was kind of how I start, got started was playing the saxophone.
Um, through a really cool 40th birthday party around the eclipse where, you know, took my friends and we, we flew to watch the eclipse and did a fun party and everything like that. Um, the, the ticket to the party was, we have this thing at automatic called flash talks, where we do these meetups and, um, you have to give a five minute talk.
But it can be on any topic, you can talk about anything. You can show pictures of your dog. You can talk about [00:51:00] Krav Dvorak typing, which is what I've given a presentation on in the past. And so, um, yeah, I got like 150 of my friends to all give flash talks on different things, and that was pretty fun. And we recorded them all.
And, uh, so yeah, it was pretty fun. And also, I took like a month also, and like, um, just sort of like chilling, like health retreat style. And I went to Mallorca and just went to like one of these health retreat places where they like cook for you and you get trainers and exercise and stuff like that. And it was really nice.
Logan: Do you feel recharged and did you come back, uh, ready to, to run or did it force some like, Hey, this isn't such a bad life. I've, I've run this business for a long time. I'm curious as you, as you really take a step back, like what did that lead to from a, um, I don't know, motivation standpoint consideration.
Matt: I came back super recharged and like very raring to go. So that was really [00:52:00] good. Um, and that's actually what happens in 97 percent of the cases. Now, it does happen sometimes. And we have had people that take their sabbatical and they decide they don't want to work anymore. Um, people think that would be a lot.
It was actually one of the, when we introduced this, everyone was like, oh, people are going to do this and like half the people are going to resign afterwards. And it turns out it's a non zero number, but it's like. It's maybe happened five or 10 times in the history of automatic. It's not, it's pretty rare.
Logan: Um, yeah, it's, it's a fascinating concept. And, uh, I, I think. Setting the expectations around the amount of time and I've also heard my one of my friends did it recently. And what he did was he, uh, he set some things that he wanted to accomplish during the time. And, uh, and so he took like a photography class and learn to surf and so that he could look back on that period of time.
And not and feel like there was there was something that he still got done, even though he wasn't working, he had some incremental skill or learning to bring with [00:53:00] him in his life going forward, which I thought was an interesting way of approaching it.
Matt: That was kind of how I approach it too. I've also had colleagues that deliberately don't do that because when you think about it, that's just kind of like also keeping yourself on this treadmill. I always have to set a goal or be productive to be valued in the world. And so I also think there's a cool mode to do it where you just kind of like, uh, and I seem to love would say become a flunner, you know, just kind of like, you know, live life in a, in a very, uh, uh, Improvisational way.
So I tried to do a little bit of that as well
Logan: As we sit here today, it's January 2025, you've gone through this whole, um, uh, uh, my word shit storm controversy, uh, and you've had a sabbatical now you're, you're 21 years into the WordPress journey, is that right?
Matt: at 21 years.
Logan: 19 ish into the automatic journey, I guess what keeps you going today? Like what keeps you [00:54:00] motivated and excited and energized coming back from the sabbatical
Matt: Oh, uh, yeah. So in WordPress, it's definitely just the inspiration of how people changes their lives with the software. And, you know, I go to a lot of work camps and connect with the community and meet a lot of regular WordPress users. And, you know, the stories when people share like, Hey, I just started this blog and then I got a book deal and then that turned into a TV series or something like that, like, uh, Hugh Howie, uh, who wrote the wool series, which is now silo on Apple TV, or, um, it is just so many examples of how people use WordPress to do something incredible.
And, um, you know, being a tool maker, that's one of the most rewarding things, you know, it's not unlike, you know, being someone who makes. Canvas for painters or, you know, instruments for musicians. Like you make the tool, but it's what people do with it. That's very, very inspiring. So [00:55:00] that gives me a lot of energy.
And then an automatic, what's really fun is like, it's not just WordPress. So we have lots of other products. They won pocket cast Tumblr, uh, beeper, which there's a new messaging thing. It's all the one messaging app that takes like your, uh. Uh, you know, telegram signal, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Twitter DMS, everything like that puts in the one app.
So this is like a very, very exciting area. So we do a lot of sort of R and D and things that are going to zeros one as well. So automatic has in a given week I might move between businesses that are very mature and I've been around for a while like WordPress. Um, so that has sort of a certain set of constraints and growth and everything like that.
Then I might be spending time with a team where the entire project is, you know, Five people or eight people. And so it's like a lot more work with startups. Um, I also do some investing on the side. I have a thing called Audra Capital Vehicle, which I use for investments. And then also we make investments with Automatic as well.
You know, we've written [00:56:00] checks up to 30 million in companies. So, uh, that also being connected to that sort of brought our entrepreneurial ecosystem and, and other entrepreneurs, um, just find really, really rewarding.
Logan: organizationally? You touched on like some of the component parts of of. Automatic and all the different products, uh, how, how do you think about those, uh, operating as a standalone businesses going forward versus like what's integrated between them and the shared services? And do you see that? I know you've taken a lot of inspiration from Berkshire Hathaway and Charlie Munger and Warren, uh, Warren Buffett as well.
Do you, uh, what are the parallels and the differences that you sort of view with, with Automatic and, and the Berkshire analogy I've heard you use in the past?
Matt: Yeah. Or LVMH or constellation software, other things. So, um, you know, we have sort of our, what we call our ecosystem businesses and our cosmos businesses. So ecosystem is all this stuff [00:57:00] built on WordPress. So one advantage of there is you do have a lot of shared platform and technology. Um, And I would say that I always like to say every org chart or every organizational design is just a series of trade offs.
There's not one that's better or worse, like a functional organization versus like a more GM first organization. So we're actually in the process right now of, I would say we had kind of like five years. Uh, being a little more siloed, so where some of these businesses would operate very independently and they had their own CEOs and, uh, roadmaps everything like that.
And, um, and we saw a lot of growth and benefits from that right now. We're doing a bit of a shift where we're centralizing some things. Uh, around engineering and design and moving to a bit more of a functional organization, some product stuff, um, that we're centralizing. Uh, [00:58:00] again, I don't think this is better or worse.
It just that we've had one set of trade offs for like five years. Now we're going to swing over to another set of trade offs and I think we'll fix a lot of the problems that we had with, uh, you know, the more solid approach. Uh, some of our stuff doesn't integrate as well as I would like. There's a lot of variability in the quality of our design product experience between different of our products.
Some I'm quite proud of and some I'm a little embarrassed of, you know, and so just kind of bringing that up to a more uniform sort of a quality gates I think is, is a big focus of ours in the next few years. And so we're, we're doing a bit, a little bit of that shift. I've had some, uh, you know, great executive hires, um, that have joined, uh, that are helping with this.
So, yeah, it's, it's, it's just, I think, uh, an interesting phase in the company. And you know, five years from now, we do this call again in like 2030, uh, I'll probably, maybe we'll swing it back. And like you said, uh, Automatic is structured a little bit like a holding company. So it [00:59:00] is plausible that one of these businesses could spin off, be sold, or IPO on its own, separate from, uh, from Automatic itself. We have a lot of optionality in terms of how we're structured.
Logan: I have one nerdy one before we, before we hop, uh, I know you've had some interesting, um, structures around share repurchase for employees. Is that, is that right? I, I guess this is a very tactical thing that I, that I, I heard come up, but I don't know if you posted about it anywhere. Is there any, uh, any way that for people to get educated on that?
And then maybe we can talk about the philosophy. I don't know if you've disclosed any of the. Details around it, but it's a, it's something that as companies stay private longer, I mean, you guys have been at it for, for 19 years. And I think for the foreseeable future, it sounds like we'll, we'll most likely be private as well.
And so finding employee liquidity is an interesting consideration. A lot of our different organizations are seeing,
Matt: yeah, we've been blessed with really great investors as well, some that have held for the [01:00:00] very long term, or, you know, we bring in new folks to buy out the older folks. So create sort of some internal liquidity. Um, yeah, I think you're referring to what we call the A12 stock program, which A12 is short for, uh, Automatic.
Um, and gosh, it's actually on our to do list to like open source this and like make the docs public, kind of like the safe things or whatever, or legal teams a little busy right now. So, uh, we, I don't know if we'll get around to that in the short term, but to describe it very simply, um, you know, I love the ownership mentality of employees having as much ownership and equity as possible.
Um, what we found with options is there was sort of an arbitrariness to them, you know, your foreign AI price can swing very wildly based on most recent foreign, you know, fundraise or things like that. And so people who joined literally two weeks apart might have like vastly different strike prices. And of course, then the options could go underwater.
There's sort of. A lot of [01:01:00] things, a lot of it's designed around the U S tax system. I have colleagues in 90 countries to which the long term short term capital gains might not apply options that spire, you know, so there's like sort of things around that. So basically long story short to describe it, we tried to create this internal stock market, uh, where there's a class of stock called eight 12, which the company, um, issues has some restrictions.
It can only be bought and sold by the company, but we also are able to provide, um, essentially downside protection. So when you buy a share of the stock, um, we can sort of backstop it, provide essentially like a one X liquidation preference. The same thing our investors might get with preferred stock. So I can provide that to employees.
And, um, so we provide, and then we can also have like set, uh, You know, windows when you can sell it. So what we moved to is instead of, uh, you know, doing a ton of stock and [01:02:00] compensation, we pay people sort of everything in their base comp and cash. So it's fungible and they can choose based on the life situation.
They could, you know, put that in the public markets or if they want to put it into automatic stock, you know, we have sort of a, it had, that has a growth profile, a liquidity profile, uh, which, uh, Yeah, the most sophisticated investors in the world are very interested in. So it allows us to provide a, I think of it a lot more of like a benefit.
So, um, and, uh, yeah, we obviously had to put limits on it.
Logan: I was going to say at some point, I mean, I don't know the, the number of shareholders, I think it's 2000 and maybe five. A hundred non accredited investors or something that theoretically, uh, the SEC, um, you must register to go public or something. I'm curious just like how, how you guys have been able to, uh, avoid that situation.
Matt: um, [01:03:00] yes, I think we have fewer employees than that limit.
Logan: Yeah. Interesting.
Matt: um, uh, there's something else there with this class of. Stock where I think there might be a wider submission or something like that. So, um, because it's not investors, I think when you're an employee, there might be a different,
Logan: Even though, even though it's actually shares with preferred theoretically around it, but I guess, I guess a lot of those people are probably still employees or something. So, uh, I'm sure it's something the legal team has thought through. Another reason, uh, people should be excited for the resolution of any.
Uh, legal controversies you've been involved in is so that your team can get to open sourcing this, because I think a lot of people would benefit from at least understanding the, uh, the different puts and takes that you guys have thought through and the structure around, around the 12 program.
Matt: it's been a very cool program and it's also, you know, you keep the shares forever. So even if you're not an employee anymore, you still get access to liquidity. And again, this was learned from like [01:04:00] when we do tender offers or other things for holders of options or common stock that might happen. At unknown timeframes, and then you might often those tender offers are only available to current employees, not former employees, other things like that.
So, um, you know, these shares you truly, oh, they belong to you. Um, it's, uh, now that the risk of it is that if the company in theory, if he goes out of business, you lose this. But, um, you know, we're, we're pretty, pretty stable at this point. So that's, uh, that's less of a, an issue.
Logan: Well, Matt, thanks for doing this. This was a lot of fun. Appreciate you making the time.
Matt: Enjoyed it.
Logan: Thank you for joining this episode of The Logan Bartlett Show with Matt Mullenweg. If you enjoyed this conversation, I'd really appreciate it if you subscribed on whatever podcast platform you're listening to us on, as well as share it with anyone else that you think might find this interesting. We look forward to seeing you back here with another great guest on The Logan Bartlett Show.
Have a good weekend, [01:05:00] everyone.