Matt Mullenweg10:22
Biggest competitive advantage is freedom. If you care about freedom, if you want more liberty, autonomy, you want sovereign software, Woo is the best e-commerce platform in the world to provide that. And the second I would say is Woo's open and infinitely extensible nature. So, we're in an interesting period right now where because you can kind of one-shot generate software, you get kind of this like it's incredible rush. Like if you've done this with the AI and you tell it to make something, or even like on Telex, you tell it to make like a Doom blog or something. You're like, 'What just happened? I just created Doom from some words I typed in a box.' And that is very very exciting. However, I think while there'll be like applications of that, I do feel like where we'll see the plurality of usage and commerce and interaction is going to be with malleable software. And I apologize, this isn't a term I came up with. I saw some designer say it. I'm forgetting their name, but this idea like malleable versus generated software. So, where you take something that is already there, it's you know, been built by humans and has the craft and security and you know, all the things that come from the decades of investments, the you know, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands maybe at this point of person hours that have been built into the engineering, the craft, the security and the platform of Woo. And then you create malleable software on top of that. So, you can customize it. This is of course what makes WordPress great and WooCommerce as well. Is that with the you know, hooks and filters and actions and everything, you can modify pretty much everything. For better or worse, of course, we know how this creates complexity and everything like that. But ultimately, I feel like that freedom and that creativity which is enabled, just allows for faster evolution. You know? If you know, for Shopify to get better, Tobi has to have a good idea. I'm saying Tobi as it's standing for like everyone at Shopify, right? Like I can't ship a new feature to Shopify. They have a platform as well, but it's like more limited, right? Now, for WooCommerce to get better, now I could be the biggest idiot in the world. In fact, I am. So, the beauty is that like, you know, not just the WooCommerce developers, but everyone in the community can make it better or just make it better for them. It doesn't even need to be better for everyone. And that sort of personalization I think is Again, the question was the advantages? So, you know, again, there's reasons to own an there's to rent an apartment versus own a house. Sometimes it's convenient and it's nice to use something kind of off-the-rack and if you fit into it, but you know, more power to you. Actually, one of my great blessings in life is I am very much a men's medium. So, like I can walk into a store and pick up a suit. I had to the other day because I was going to a funeral. So, I didn't have a black suit. So, they were going to get something off the rack and it fit quite well. I have other friends who have different proportions. You know, if they don't get something tailored, it looks ridiculous on them. So, if you can get the off-the-rack, that's pretty cool. And if you're happy with that, great. So, off-the-rack software can be fun. But, at the moment that you need any personalization or you want it to be more better fit to you and tailored, that's when I think open source really starts to shine and a platform like WooCommerce gets there. Now, what do we need to get better at? And maybe this is the existential threats is education. Yeah, I think one of the biggest opportunities for WordPress and WooCommerce is education. And that's why I'm so excited about like the WordPress education credits program. You know, what we're I'm calling 26th year of the meetup, actually. Going to be doing a ton to enable meetups, to make meetups better, to get meetup organizers better material and support and everything like that. And then of course meetups ladder into WordCamps, which as we know are part of the magic of whole WordPress community. But really what that fundamentally is is like there's this I'm sorry, this is a long answer. But, we're probably hitting a few other questions as well that I read. When you think about it fundamentally like how ideas spread or how innovation spreads, it's usually like a see, do, teach. Right? That's kind of the three things that are exciting. You see something that's exciting to you. It's a store or someone making something or someone doing something you're like, 'Oh, I could do that.' This is how I got started blogging. Right? There are all these blogs out there. I was like, oh, this is just a normal dude like me. Like I could blog. I thought to have a website or to publish you had to be like a journalist or like, you know, have certifications or an editor. It turns out no. Now, I'm dating myself, but in like early 2000s, like this was an innovative idea that anyone could start a blog. And so, having people see what they can do with WooCommerce is really, really important. That's why things like the showcase and demos are great. Then you do it yourself, right? That's the next level, which is very exciting. So, you kind of learn from that what you saw and you do it yourself. And then the final where you reach like ultimate status is when you teach someone else to do it, right? When you pass it on. And when you think about it, like WordPress and WooCommerce even hasn't grown because like our competitors who spent billions of dollars on marketing, you know? It's grown because of that see, do, teach, which is also kind of like word of mouth, you know? I'm sure many people listening here can imagine what their introduction to WordPress or WooCommerce was. And it might have been you just came across the website and figured it all out yourself. But for a lot of people, you probably had a friend or maybe an influencer online who said, hey, look at this. Check this out. And that was your entree into the community.