About Matt Mullenweg

Myself in my best dress
Howdy. My name is Matthew Mullenweg. I was born and raised in Houston, Texas.
I write code, prose, and music. I love taking photos.

WordPress

I am a founding developer of WordPress, the Open Source software used by over 18% of the web, including this site. The website says WordPress is “a state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform” but more importantly WordPress is a part of who I am. Like eating, breathing, music, I can’t not work on WordPress. The project touches a lot of people, something I’ve recently begun to appreciate. I consider myself very lucky to be able to work on something I love so much.

Professional

I used to do consulting and go to school in Houston, then I moved to San Francisco where I worked at CNET Networks.

I left in late 2005 to found a company called Automattic, which is the secret force behind WordPress.com, Akismet, Gravatar, VaultPress, IntenseDebate, Polldaddy, and more. Automattic’s sites reach over a billion people every month, making it one of the largest sites with the smallest team in the world.

Though Automattic is my main focus I also advise and invest in startups through my company Audrey Capital. You can peruse the portfolio of companies on the Audrey site.

See also: Wikipedia article (needs updating), CrunchBase profile.

These are the charities or organizations that I support in a way that is significant to me. Some are working on basic survival issues, and some are addressing problems that we’re lucky to have in this modern technological age, but all are important to me:
Archive.org, Alaska Wilderness League, Apache Foundation, Bay Lights, charity: water, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Grist (board), Innocence Project, Long Now Foundation, Rothko Chapel, Samasource, US-Ireland Alliance.

Some Press

I’ve been named one of PC World’s Top 50 People on the Web, Inc.com’s 30 under 30, and Business Week’s 25 Most Influential People on the Web. It’s probably all downhill from here.

If you need a press/conference headshot, try this, this or this. (In the bottom-right info box there is a link to the print-quality full size version of the image.)

Selected Affiliations

Videos

There are over 50 videos of talks and interviews I’ve given on WordPress.tv.

 

Speaking

I enjoy sharing what I know at conferences, here are some I have or will participate in as a speaker. If you’re looking for one thing to check out, listen to the BayCHI “first 100k users are alway the hardest” recording, it’s one of my best. In 2008 I spoke in over 35 cities across 6 continents.

I obviously haven’t updated this list since 2008 — since then I’ve spoken at over 130 conferences and WordCamps, and this year (2011) I’m turning down most speaking engagements to focus on some new products we’re launching.