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Tumblr the Day After

It is not surprising that the news about Automattic buying Tumblr has picked up a lot of coverage. I especially appreciated the notes of support from Tumblr founder David Karp, former CTO Marco Arment, and investor Bijan Sabet. I am beyond excited to see what the Tumblr team creates next, and I will definitely be connecting with alumni to hear their perspective.

There has also been a lot of speculation on the purchase price, which I think is missing the real story. I would like to take this opportunity to express my respect for Verizon and how they approached this entire process. They inherited Tumblr through an acquisition of a merger, a few steps removed from its initial sale; it’s probably not a company they would have bought on its own, but they nonetheless recognized that there is a very special community and team behind the product. It’s also worth noting at this point that Verizon is a company that will do over $130B in revenue this year and has over 139,000 employees.

First, they chose to find a new home for Tumblr instead of shutting it down. Second, they considered not just how much cash they would get on day one, but also — and especially — what would happen to the team afterward, and how the product and the team would be invested in going forward. Third, they thought about the sort of steward of the community the new owner would be. They didn’t have to do any of that, and I commend them for making all three points a priority.

Automattic is still a startup — I’m sure there are deep-pocketed private equity firms that could have outbid us, but the most likely outcome then would have been an “asset” getting chopped up and sold for parts. (This is a caricature and there are PE firms I like, but it’s not a terrible stretch of the imagination.) Instead, Tumblr has a new chance to redefine itself in 2019 and beyond. Its community is joining with WordPress’ 16-year commitment to open source and the open web.

16 replies on “Tumblr the Day After”

Thank you Matt, couldn’t be a more perfect fit. I’ve been waiting to see what happens over there, now I can’t wait to see it take off and build community. With your interest in photography, I suspect you’ll give Tumblr some juice to be more like Flickr, Ipernity, and Instagram.

I can’t wait to see what’s next for Tumblr. I was a big fan of the platform for quite some time. Unlike other social networks it could adapt to the user rather than the user having to adapt to it.

Congrats on the purchase and on keeping the gang together at Tumblr. I’ve always been a fan but honestly I forgot about them until their acquisition.

But my primary question was how / why you would label Automattic as a startup? Per Wikipedia you have around 900 employees and have been in business for almost 15 years. Seems like its thats beyond the startup business

Again I was just curious. And i’m a long time WordPress user (circa 2005 )

Good question, and I’m sure people wouldn’t define us as a startup. But we are still independent, and tiny compared to the internet giants which typically have tens of thousands of people.

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A 1000-person company isn’t really a startup by the standard definition, but it’s easy to see that Automattic is a company that sticks to the founding principles of a startup: employees wear many hats, knowledge sharing and collaboration across departments is high, bootstrap and then formalize your processes, etc.

I think what makes Automattic still a “startup” is that the company’s vision (and Matt’s) is still one geared towards “doing good.” It’s a throwback to the culture that created the foundation and technologies that power the Internet. That culture is alive and well within Automattic.

Have you given any thought to eventually restoring the Geocities Batchtorrent as a part of collecting and preserving passion sites of internet past/present/future?

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