About Matt Mullenweg

I am Matt Mullenweg. I identify as Ma.tt, but legally you can’t have dots in your name in the United States. My goals in life are to democratize publishing, commerce, and messaging.

I travel a lot. In 2023 I visted 63 cities, 18 countries, and my average velocity was 41.9 miles per hour.

I was born and raised in Houston, Texas. I write code, poetry, prose, and music, often in support of those three goals, but sometimes just to make the world a more beautiful place. I love taking photos and have posted over 30,000 to this site, hence my common username photomatt.

WordPress

I am a founding developer of WordPress, the Open Source software used by over 43% 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. We celebrated 20 years of WordPress in 2023. (I was 19 when I started. I’m 40 now.) 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. Every year I give a “State of the Word” address.

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 now the force behind WordPress.com, Jetpack, WooCommerce, Simplenote, Longreads, The Atavist, and many other products. Our mission is to make the web a better place.

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 (needs updating), CrunchBase.

Distributed Work

Much like WordPress sought to change the way we publish on the web, Automattic has set out to change the way we work. We are an entirely distributed company — with more than 1,900 employees working from more than 90 countries, and no physical headquarters. We are a company that works on, and for, the web. I run a podcast and website about this at Distributed.blog.

Charity

These are the charities or organizations that I support in a way that is significant to me and on a regular basis. 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, Black & Brown Founders, charity: water, Code2040, Docfest, EcoAmerica (board), Electronic Frontier Foundation, Grist, Illuminate the Arts (board), Innocence Project, Johns Hopkins, MAPS, New Museum (board), Long Now Foundation, Project Include, Rothko Chapel.

Press, Podcasts, and Speaking

I will spend an hour on any WordPress community podcast once a year, for free. I will go on prominent podcasts to promote the mission of democratizing publishing, commerce, and messaging, for no cost, or to share my personal story. Commercial speaking is a very high bar for me: If you would like me to speak at your commercial event, a 150k honorarium will be needed to either me or a non-profit I designate, but I will handle all travel and logistics myself.

A few notable links:

For more, here’s an archived collection of articles about my work over the years, as well as podcast interviews and past speaking engagements. I’ve also spoken at hundreds of WordPress events and WordCamps.

If you need a press/conference headshot, try this or this.

Early Teachers

Growing up in Houston’s public school system I had the good fortune of being exposed to a number of incredible teachers who really cared and had a big impact on my development. I’d love to thank them by name: Anthony Maxie, Craig Green, John Schutza, Conrad Johnson, Bubbha Thomas, Ron Thornton, David Caceres, Kelly Dean, Al Campbell, Bash Whittaker, Doc Morgan, Rickey Campbell, Scott Roman, Woody Witt, Warren Sneed, Dennis Dotson, Noe Marmolejo, and Ross Lence.

Links to Amazon have an affiliate tag auto-added to them, which funds my gadget-testing.