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The one question that saves product careers | Matt LeMay

August 14, 2025

Featuring: Matt Mullenweg (Co-creator of WordPress, CEO of Automattic)

9 quotes · 6 insights

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Build for 10x transformation, not incremental improvement

Gutenberg is WordPress's modern block-based editor that replaced the traditional text editor, launched as a major platform redesign.

If we had voted for whether we should do Gutenberg or not, everyone would've voted against it. It was really a few core people that said, 'This is the future and it's going to take 10 years to do and it's going to suck for the first three or four years.'
Matt MullenwegCo-creator of WordPress, CEO of Automattic 1:03:56

Open source is freedom in the digital age

Open source was actually the most important idea of our generation. If the founding fathers were around today, I think they would be open source advocates.
Matt MullenwegCo-creator of WordPress, CEO of Automattic 00:19:56
As more and more of our lives are influenced and actually controlled by the software we use, if we don't have fundamental freedoms attached to that software, we're not truly free.
Matt MullenwegCo-creator of WordPress, CEO of Automattic 00:19:56
You don't have freedom unless you're building on open source. Even if I grew devil horns and became evil, WordPress would still belong just as much to you as it would to me.
Matt MullenwegCo-creator of WordPress, CEO of Automattic 00:38:42

Communities die without multiple engaged voices

It's not just the software, it's also like: how are the meetups? How are people getting together? What events are you running? Are there forums? How do people contribute?
Matt MullenwegCo-creator of WordPress, CEO of Automattic 00:36:44

Build and buy beats build or buy

When the open source models say like, 'build me a website,' it actually installs WordPress, and then builds on top of that, and then customizes on top of that. Then you get for free that core engine that's always being audited and updated.
Matt MullenwegCo-creator of WordPress, CEO of Automattic 33:43

Mission clarity unleashes extreme performance

Don't just build a product, build a movement. To the extent that we've been successful, I think it's that we give people something to believe in, a philosophy, a worldview.
Matt MullenwegCo-creator of WordPress, CEO of Automattic 36:44

Transparency requires architectural sacrifice

One of the big challenges that we have as a very open platform is we have this open plugin and theme architecture... However, many of these plugins and themes don't have the same sort of robust security and review process that core has.
Matt MullenwegCo-creator of WordPress, CEO of Automattic 00:31:10
I can't wait for more automated scanning there, and I think that could vastly upgrade the security of open source.
Matt MullenwegCo-creator of WordPress, CEO of Automattic 00:32:03

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