Automattic

TechCrunch reports that Tony Snyder and Sue Decker resigned from the board and Dunwoody was removed.

When checked on September 18th, Automattic's public board page still listed those three people alongside Mullenweg.

That page tells us what the website displayed.

right it doesn't by itself settle who legally holds a board seat which is an important distinction and a remarkable sentence to need in a story about a company so closely associated with publishing things on the internet i'm imagining the person assigned the update right hey can you fix the board page absolutely who should be on it Use the approved list.

And it's board pushing out CEO Matt Mullenweg and then him returning to that post 33 hours later, you know, from a sort of enforced paid leave.

And there's a lot to unpack here because that's only the beginning of what happened with them this week.

And it follows a whole bunch of other drama that Automattica has been involved in over the last couple of years, which includes a whole bunch of layoffs, some legal disputes.

Some of that may even be related to this.

What do you make of this, Kirsten?

He's been in a big argument with WP Engines about...

The argument is WP Engine is a hosting company that is hosting WordPress sites, and I think Automattic wants some of that revenue, so they've been pushing WP Engines.

But the way in which he's behaved has been unhelpful to the open source project, because it's kinda like, "I will use the leverage of my company to try and, frankly, uh, uh, prevent other people from benefiting from the open source ecosystem," which seems to be antithetical to the idea of it.

So I think it's been a troubled situation for a while.

It's kind of a sad little thing, 'cause the world is passing that product by, and Jason will be able to tell you that, you know, you can build most of what you have in WordPress with Lovable or Replit or any one of 10 things.

And increasingly they are, as I've quoted before, the Henry Kissinger thing about academic arguments, the fights are so vicious because the prize is so small.

The truth is Automattic doesn't matter a damn anymore.

It should try and build something new, but it's, it's kind of on the tail end of, I mean, to Jason's point about Matt, it's on the tail end of the tech trends.

Sam, here are a couple of stories that you wrote.

The headline of this first one is, "Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg put on leave of absence." I'm sorry, did I pronounce everything correctly there, Sam?

Yes.

[laughs]

Yeah, yeah

... literally [laughs] this is gonna sound so, so funny to you.

What is Automattic? [laughs]

Okay, okay.

Uh, and in fact, it's actually just across the street from our earlier venue.

So, uh, we used to hold it at Brainstation, uh, but now it is at Automattic, which is the p- people who own WordPress and among other things.

Uh, and their office is right up the street from there, on, on Crosby.

So it's the exact same street, just across, uh, Houston.

So again, uh, previously, we've been holding these things on Mondays.

There's been, uh, some back and forth about why that is and how that has to be.

But because of the new kind of collaboration that I'm having with Evolve Dig- Digital for this particular event, uh, they've actually locked in with Automattic for, uh, Thursday, October 22nd.

So, uh, for the folks who've been telling me, "Hey, can we have this on a day that's not Monday?" Now is your opportunity.

Uh, and it's been a while since we checked in f- with our friends at WordPress, and Matt Mullenweg specifically.

So for longtime listeners, you might be familiar with the saga of Matt Mullenweg and WP Engine and Automattic and the drama that played out there.

Uh, for those that aren't, I'll give you like a 30-second synopsis of how all this went down.

So Matt Mullenweg about, uh, a, uh, almost two years ago now, which again, it's crazy how-

So that will be juicy to see what happens there.

But, and that was a longer review than I intended, but there's some of the background.

The news for this week is that Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg has been placed on a leave of absence, and this is a leave of absence from Automattic, which is the company that runs wordpress.com. Um, and Matt is, as you might imagine, not happy about this.

He says that, [laughs] he claims that Automattic's CFO conspired with board members to put him on a leave.

I'm Jen Cutter.

Earlier this week, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg was reportedly placed on a leave of absence for reasons undisclosed by the board.

Automattic, parent company of wordpress.com, was the subject of many headlines these past few days due to a combination of speculation about the undisclosed reasons, wondering who would end up taking over, as well as reports on Mullenweg's posting through it, including claiming he was still in control.

On Saturday evening, a spokesperson told TechCrunch, quote, "Matt Mullenweg is the chairman and CEO of Automattic with full support of the board, and if you search online, you can see many top executives and Automatticians supporting him as well." This is a developing story, and the facts may change by the time of publication.

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