Wordpress gets funding

On his personal blog, Matt Mullenweg has just announced that Automattic (the company behind WordPress and Akismet) is going to take some funding:

Automattic isn’t going to get fancy SoMA offices, throw huge parties at SxSW, or “get big fast.” We took a small amount of capital to put things that were already growing fast in a stable position, so from month to month you’re not robbing Peter to pay Paul. We’re going to use the money to pre-emptively address scaling issues before they happen, and continue to share everything we can back to the community, like all of the code behind WP.com in WordPress MU, the spellchecking feature we sponsored, free Akismet for 99.9% of users, and a few other goodies we still have up our sleeve.

Now here's an approach I respect a lot. I get really bothered this idea that start-ups need to go out and raise squillions of dollars. Unless, of course, you need squillions of dollars to build your business. And not many businesses really need squillions. But it's hard, in a climate like this, to keep your head when people around you are raising massive sums of money and becoming the new (paper) rich. When you see "competitors" (I don't really believe in having competitors...) with a fraction of your reach rasiing squillions of dollars, there is a massive temptation to say "frak it, let's just take the money and run". And if your primary motivation it to get rich and retire, then I guess that's what you'll do. But if your primary motivation is to build something of long-term value, to change the way things are done, to create the best job in the world for yourself... then your motivations are different and what you are prepared to accept is different.

A couple of years ago I was driving through Glenrowan, the place of the last stand of Ned Kelly, Australia's most famous political revolutionary, and I picked up this statue which adorns my desk (along with three statues of Napoleon and the "lord of death" from Guatemala which I picked up from New Orleans years ago). I often think of Ned Kelly and the idea of taking a stand against forces which outnumber you, of standing up for what you think is right, and of using what you have to fashion the tools you need.

Anyway, back to Matt. We've been running TPN on WordPress for over a year and we're about to move to WordPres Multi-User (on the recommendation of James Farmer). And we've just started installing Akismet for dealing with comment spam. These are all tools that Matt's team has developed and made available for free to most users. Without his efforts, it'd be a hell of a lot harder to run TPN. His continued success is important for my success. He's providing the platform for an entirely new generation of businesses and pricing them in a way that start-ups can afford to get up and running with low overhead. Witness what James has done in the last six months with his education blog network (over 10,000 and counting!). Thanks Matt. If you're ever in Australia, the beers are on me.   

Comments

[Rob Irwin]

But let's not get too sycophantic abou this, either. It's a two-way street. If Matt didn't have us as users, his future -- which currently appears to be filled with filthy lucre (and if it's not, then he's doing something wrong) -- wouldn't be as assured, either. So, yeah, he helps us. But, as users, we help him. A lot.

[Bren]

Hey, seriously consider SpamKarma for your anti-spam solution. It integrates tightly with Akismet and is the best thing I've found. Slacker Manager gets a fair bit of spam each day, and SpamKarma keeps it clean. Good stuff.