Matt Mullenweg Quotes & Sayings

In my brief sojourn in college, my favorite classes were political science because I loved the idea of systems we can set up that benefit society - rules we can put in place that sometimes you run against, sometimes they're painful, but ultimately they benefit the world. — Matt Mullenweg

Has anyone ever said, 'I wish I could go to more meetings today'? — Matt Mullenweg

Environment plays a huge role in my ability to creatively focus and my mood - for better and worse. — Matt Mullenweg

You shouldn't restrict peoples' freedom on what they can and cannot do with code. — Matt Mullenweg

If you think of the ideas of open source applied to information in an encyclopedia, you get to Wikipedia - lots and lots of small contributions that bubble up to something that's meaningful. — Matt Mullenweg

WordPress, it's a complex tool; it's like the back of a digital SLR ... but that doesn't work on a phone. — Matt Mullenweg

There is no moderator or ombudsman online, and while the transparency of the web usually means that information is self-correcting, we still have to keep in mind the responsibility each of us carries when the power of the press is at our fingertips and in our pockets. — Matt Mullenweg

The power of the web is not in centralization; it's not in closed systems or anything like that. It's in its open nature, and that's what allowed it to flourish for the first 10 or 15 years. — Matt Mullenweg

Immunity to obsolescence is the only obsolescent-immune conceit of the past millennium. — Matt Mullenweg

When I first got into technology I didn't really understand what open source was. Once I started writing software, I realized how important this would be. — Matt Mullenweg

What's best for advertisers on Twitter's platform isn't for there to be 20 different clients. — Matt Mullenweg

The idea of having no responsibilities except general edification seems like such a luxury now. When I had it, all I wanted to do was hack around on the Web. Now the vast majority of my hours are hacking around on the Web. — Matt Mullenweg

I am the unhappiest WordPress user in the world, I think it sucks. — Matt Mullenweg

There are 100 million blogs in the world, and it's part of my job as the co-founder of WordPress to help many more people start blogging. — Matt Mullenweg

There are two main methodologies of open source development. There's the Apache model, which is design by committee - great for things like web servers. Then you have the benevolent dictator model. That's what Ubuntu is doing, with Mark Shuttleworth. — Matt Mullenweg

You can learn practically anything you want in the world online. — Matt Mullenweg

Historically, WordPress has been purely focused on the writing side. However, we're thinking about mobile completely differently, and I think there's a big opportunity to take the community of creators that loves WordPress and deliver an audience to the amazing things they're making. — Matt Mullenweg

If you still use 'admin' as a username on your blog, change it. — Matt Mullenweg

Whenever there's a new form of media, we always think it's going to replace the old thing, and it never does. We still have radio, however long after TV was introduced. — Matt Mullenweg

It's good to be in a role when you can learn something new. — Matt Mullenweg

My job is such that I get to run new things every day, and I get to run new markets and new technologies. I enjoy that quite a bit. — Matt Mullenweg

If you want to be good at something, you really have to work at it every single day. You have to work hard at the things that are hard. Otherwise you are just treading water. — Matt Mullenweg

Jeffrey Zeldman had an astonishing ability to craft a seductive coolness using educated references, dry humor, and retro/organic imagery. — Matt Mullenweg

One of my favorite programs that we didn't make is Rescue Time. It runs in the corner of my computer and tracks how much time I spend on different things. I realized that even though I was doing e-mail only a couple of minutes at a time, it was adding up to a couple of hours a day. So I'm trying to reduce that. — Matt Mullenweg

It's good to work for someone else. Because then you appreciate it more when you are an entrepreneur. — Matt Mullenweg

I believe that software, and in fact entire companies, should be run in a way that assumes that the sum of the talent of people outside your walls is greater than the sum of the few you have inside. None of us are as smart as all of us. — Matt Mullenweg

Simplicity not simplistic. — Matt Mullenweg

Don't think about work in your bedroom or relaxation area. — Matt Mullenweg

Usage is like oxygen for ideas. — Matt Mullenweg

There's no financial aspect to stats. — Matt Mullenweg

Twitter is the ultimate service for the mobile age - its simplification and constraint of the publishing medium to 140 characters is perfectly complementary to a mobile experience. People still need longer stuff, but they see the headline on Twitter or Facebook. — Matt Mullenweg

People might start with LiveJournal or Blogger, but if they get serious, they'll graduate to WordPress. We try to cater to the more powerful users. — Matt Mullenweg

Some folks have suggested that, using WordPress, Prologue, and RSS, you could create a pretty effective distributed version of Twitter. — Matt Mullenweg

Quantcast combines powerful web analytics with easy-to-read charts and data. — Matt Mullenweg

Now an audience of more than 1 billion people is only a click away from every voice online, and remarkable stories and content can gain flash audiences as people share via social networks, blogs and e-mail. This radically equalizes the power relationship between, say, a blogger and a multibillion dollar corporation. — Matt Mullenweg

I think it's really important for the independent web to have a platform, and to the extent that WordPress can serve that role, I think it's a great privilege and responsibility. — Matt Mullenweg

I spend a lot of time on forums, and they drive me crazy. — Matt Mullenweg

We're not done yet, but two things WordPress has been able to exemplify is that open source can create great user experiences and that it's possible to have a successful commercial entity and a wider free software community living and working in harmony. — Matt Mullenweg

A common quality I see of people who are successful is that they are voracious readers. — Matt Mullenweg

The more money Automattic makes, the more we invest into Free and Open Source software that belongs to everybody and services to make that software sing. — Matt Mullenweg

Basically, if you believe in Moore's Law, and you believe that hosting is going to become more and more commoditized over time, not being a host is a good idea. — Matt Mullenweg

For WordPress to be world class, it needs to have a sustainable model. — Matt Mullenweg

One thing about open source is that even the failures contribute to the next thing that comes up. Unlike a company that could spend a million dollars in two years and fail and there's nothing really to show for it, if you spend a million dollars on open source, you probably have something amazing that other people can build on. — Matt Mullenweg

Technology is closing the gap between what one can imagine and what one can do and as a result the equality of opportunity is unmatched in human history. — Matt Mullenweg

I'm pretty cheap, to be honest. — Matt Mullenweg

Do what you love and don't focus on money - life's too short. — Matt Mullenweg

I learned a ton of things during my time in CNET. — Matt Mullenweg

I don't think BuddyPress will be something you use instead of your existing social networks ... but if you wanted to start something new maybe with more control, friendlier terms of service, or just something customized and tweaked to fit exactly into your existing site, then BuddyPress is a great framework to use. — Matt Mullenweg

The mobile world is very closed and proprietary just by definition. — Matt Mullenweg

With Akismet there was an interesting dilemma. Is it for the good of the world Akismet being secret and being more effective against spammers, versus it being open and less effective? It seemed more people would be helped by blocking spam. — Matt Mullenweg

I really enjoy computer networking. — Matt Mullenweg

Love is great, but not as a password. — Matt Mullenweg

Ubuntu is doing amazing things, and I think it's going to change the face of the desktop. — Matt Mullenweg

From the first time I held an iPhone, the space has evolved quickly, and people have shifted from reading content on their desktops to smartphones and iPads, even long-form stuff. — Matt Mullenweg

Captcha is the bane of the Internet. I can't figure them out myself half the time! — Matt Mullenweg

You don't need to know someone personally to be able to discern whether their work is high quality or not. The idea of a meritocracy is that it's what they do, not who they are. — Matt Mullenweg

Much of the lifeblood of blogs is search engines - more than half the traffic for most blogs. — Matt Mullenweg

When there's no one you can point to, or when something goes wrong, it's your fault - that level of responsibility and accountability is pretty interesting. — Matt Mullenweg

One of the things I've been working on for the past few months is a radical simplification of the interface, — Matt Mullenweg

As an entrepreneur making decisions for your company, always go back to your first principles of what's important to you and why you started in the first place. — Matt Mullenweg

Before the widespread rise of the Internet and easy publishing tools, influence was largely in the hands of those who could reach the widest audience, the people with printing presses or access to a wide audience on television or radio, all one-way mediums that concentrated power in the hands of the few. — Matt Mullenweg

Automattic's mission has always been very aligned with WordPress itself, which is to democratise publishing. — Matt Mullenweg

I was raised Catholic, and I can get incredibly guilty about mistakes. — Matt Mullenweg

Simperium seems like a genuine utility for our own apps, and for other people as a service. And Simplenote, as a product, I love, and it's just darn handy. — Matt Mullenweg

If you're not embarrassed when you ship your first version, you waited too long. — Matt Mullenweg

There's something very real about helping someone one-on-one. — Matt Mullenweg

Technology is best when it brings people together. — Matt Mullenweg

Philip Greenspun had a huge impact on me. He was the first person I knew of that embraced online communities, created a real business around open source, gave back to the community through education, and inspired me to explore photography. — Matt Mullenweg

Usage is like oxygen for ideas. That means every moment you're working on something without it being in the public it's actually dying, deprived of the oxygen of the real world. — Matt Mullenweg

The themes in WordPress drive a lot of design trends. It democratizes design ... You make a theme, and suddenly it's on hundreds and thousands of sites. — Matt Mullenweg

If you're building a startup or any sort of organization, take a few moments to reflect on the qualities that the people you most enjoy working with embody and the user experience of new people joining your organization, from the offer letter to their first day. — Matt Mullenweg

Usage is like oxygen for ideas. You can never fully anticipate how an audience is going to react to something you've created until it's out there. — Matt Mullenweg

Just because someone uses Twitter doesn't mean they shouldn't use WordPress, and vice versa. — Matt Mullenweg

Ultimately, Captchas are useless for spam because they're designed to tell you if someone is 'human' or not, but not whether something is spam or not. — Matt Mullenweg

If you have a fantastic idea you're really passionate about and are making $100,000 in your job, if you can set aside some of that to invest in servers or contractors or other folks, that's actually the best way to start a business in my opinion. — Matt Mullenweg

The world cannot live on 140 characters alone. — Matt Mullenweg

My own personal dream is that the majority of the web runs on open source software. — Matt Mullenweg

130 of Automattic's 150 employees work outside of our San Francisco headquarters. Why are so many companies stuck in this factory model of working? — Matt Mullenweg

Longreads embodies a lot of what we really value with Automattic and WordPress. — Matt Mullenweg

I do my best stuff midmorning and superlate at night, from 1 to 5 in the morning. Some people don't need sleep. I actually do need sleep. I just sleep all the time. I'll catch naps in the afternoon, or I'll take a 20-minute snooze in the office - just all the time. Our business is 24 hours. Our guys in Europe come online at midnight. — Matt Mullenweg

The biggest challenge for open source is that as it enters the consumer market, as projects like WordPress and Firefox have done, you have to create a user experience that is on par or better than the proprietary alternatives. — Matt Mullenweg

When you look at things like Flickr and Youtube, they are specialised blogging systems, so why hasn't blogging encompassed that ease of functionality? — Matt Mullenweg

In every aspect of life, I consider myself incredibly fortunate. — Matt Mullenweg

I think that all services will have downtime. No matter how much you prepare, have redundant systems, or audit, there will periodically be a black swan event that is completely unlike whatever you've experienced before. It even happens to Google! — Matt Mullenweg

Everybody jokes about that old story about the world only needing five computers, but when you think about it, that's where we're heading. — Matt Mullenweg

Red notification bubbles on any icon, including mail, drive me crazy. — Matt Mullenweg

I don't care what hours you work. I don't care if you sleep late or if you pick a child up from school in the afternoon. It's all about your output. — Matt Mullenweg

I'm an investor in MakerBot, which is a good example of the 'thingiverse'. The idea of applying collaboration and rapid iteration to things that we interact with and hold in our hands every day is super revolutionary. — Matt Mullenweg

I like to read first thing in the morning. I'm addicted to the Kindle. I read a lot of business books, because I feel like I should figure out how to be a real businessman before someone figures out that I'm not one. I really enjoy reading classics as well, which I try to work in once every two months. — Matt Mullenweg

The center of gravity for an organization should be as close to what they make as possible. If you make cars, you need people in the factory. If you breed horses, be in the stable. If you make the Internet, live on the Internet, and use all the freedom and power it gives you. — Matt Mullenweg

Thanks to our friends at the dot-ME Registry, WordPress is able to offer one of the shortest and most effective URLs available today. — Matt Mullenweg

I'm pretty rough on my laptops. I go through about two a year. — Matt Mullenweg

Sometimes you might feel blogs are like TV: You have a thousand channels, but nothing good is on. — Matt Mullenweg

As the web becomes more and more of a part of our every day lives, it would be a horrible tragedy if it was locked up inside of companies and proprietary software. — Matt Mullenweg

The biggest motivation is not the money but the impact. — Matt Mullenweg

Sometimes, you have to be frustrated and do something unscalable and a waste of your time to be inspired. — Matt Mullenweg

If you were building a real-time game like one of Zynga's games, the WordPress model wouldn't work well for that. — Matt Mullenweg

It turns out that social networks drive a heck of a lot of traffic to blogs. — Matt Mullenweg

The rise of broadband and growing ubiquity of Internet access excites me the most. The world changes a lot when, no matter where you are - in the middle of a deserted highway or in a bustling city - you can get high speed broadband access. — Matt Mullenweg

If I'm on the titanic I want to be steering. — Matt Mullenweg