CEOInterviews.AI
Start App
Try: AI strategy tariffs earnings guidance layoffs interest rates growth

Matt Mullenweg

CEO & Founder, Automatic

Search every verified Matt Mullenweg interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress and CEO of Automattic, appeared on a December 2023 podcast episode where he discussed topics including sabbaticals, hacking defense, and the competitive dynamics of the web. During the conversation, he noted that Automattic had grown to over 900 employees across 97 countries and had been fully remote and distributed since 2005. He also commented on major tech platforms, citing examples such as X (formerly Twitter) inserting delays in link redirects and Google's AMP format, framing these as instances of friction or proprietary measures affecting open systems. In July 2025, Mullenweg participated in a KQED panel following a screening of "Code for the People," a documentary about the open web. He emphasized the importance of open source software, describing it as a system of "trust, but verify" where legal rights cannot be taken away. He contrasted WordPress's community-driven growth with competitors like Wix and Squarespace, which he said spend heavily on advertising yet achieve less market share. Mullenweg also encouraged audiences to "vote with your wallet" by choosing open source options and to "fight" for open systems, while acknowledging that large tech companies have resources that could "squash" smaller entities if they chose to.

Recent appearances

Notable quotes

“I decided to not have kids. And made that a very explicit communication and everything like that because WordPress and this other work I'm doing, I want to be the thing that I leave. And I don't feel like there's anything particularly good about my genetics that needs to be passed on or that I would be a world unique parent, but I do think I'm one of the people in the world that does have a chance to shape the future”

“I think doing the right thing for the wrong reason is still the right thing, which I guess takes us more to actions than intention.”

“I think it's actually really good for them to show that they're open right now. So again, I don't want to fight these folks. They've got more money than most countries. They could squash us like a bug if they really, really wanted to. But we're always doing things open source, user centric. It'd be a bad look for them to try to squash. If you have the people on your side, I feel like that's what truly matters in the ”

“Open source doesn't have billboards, but we do have stickers. If you study all the other CMSs, the competitors, the Wix, the Squarespaces, et cetera, they still spend hundreds of millions of dollars per year in advertising to achieve a fraction of the market share of WordPress. And they're great software actually. Some parts of it are better than WordPress, but they don't have the community. They don't have the word ”

“I think the most important thing now is there's still 84 percent of the web not on WordPress and it's going to get on WordPress. One of my personal life goals is to have a majority of websites in the world running open source software. The best way I found to reach that so far is building open source software that people can run on it. And between us, Drupal, Drupal, we're around like 20% now. But I think we can easi”

“I think you can build a huge business on open source because really all open source is is a bill of rights. It says here are certain freedoms and rights you have with regards to the software. I can't take it away from you. I can't control how you use it. I can't control what you say. You have complete freedom with regards to how you use the software. And I think as more and more of our lives start to go through that ”

The summary and quote tags on this profile are produced with AI assistance from verified, first-person interview transcripts, then checked by our team to confirm the speaker's identity and the accuracy of every quote. See how we verify →