It didn’t make a lot of sense when we heard that Automattic, the company that created the Wordpress.com blogging platform and oversees the Wordpress.org open source project, turned down a $200 million buyout offer.
But apparently the investors weren’t ready to cash in their chips yet, and made CEO Toni Schneider and founder Matt Mullenweg a counter offer they couldn’t refuse: take a new round of financing, led by existing investor Polaris, and use most of that new money to cash out the founders.
The size of the round is reported to be as high as $50 million. It’s unclear how much of that goes to the founders, we’re just hearing “most of it.”
The company won’t confirm the deal - Schneider returned my email, saying “Can’t comment on anything at this time.” More as this develops.
Good for Matt. And good for the investors to step in and keep their goals with the founders aligned.
Don’t forget that Toni isn’t just CEO, but he’s also a partner at True Ventures and (one would presume) financially savvy.
yeah, this certainly appears to be a financially savvy move to me.
Wordpress is a fantastic platform, well deserved cash-out! I look forward to seeing what happens now with the platform though, as many volunteers and an entire open source community has helped get this system to where it is now. I wonder if they will stick around… that is the far bigger question yet to be answered.
Jon
I had a couple of BAD experiences where the carrot never turned into a reality (I really wanted to use a different set of words not exactly of the right tone to describe the carrot and where it got stuck); so it brings hope to my when something like this happens. Yes, financially savvy 100% but also, take care of your team. I am glad for the founders. Congrats.
Now that makes more sense. Turning down $200 million just did not add up, especially considering the people involved. Kudos to the founders if this all works out. I remember hearing Matt say once that starting a business is full of excitement and attention. But the hardest part is after the glow subsides. That’s when you have to keep your head down and serve your customers well. Matt always has always been passionate about serving his customers. And it really made his business work.
Firstly, WordPress is incredible!
Secondly, the tide is turning. I’m very happy for the founders of WordPress. There is a VC shake out coming and the next economic expansion cycle for the VC’s will be more of “pay to play”.
Risktaker Surgeon Undertaker (the four types of leadership).
The leadership team at Automattic have crossed the Rubicon to being good stewards of a hot product and company. Wow.
If only this kind of sober leadership would prevail…..do you think this had anything to do with the tractable, sober, innovative, and value rich attributes that is everything Wordpress?
And, are most flips the seed of recognition that what was sowed is rotten at the core - often to late and to subtly for even the most discerning VC;s to estimate?
And we give private equity investors WAY too much credit for being Delphic, if the horrible mistakes currently being made in the funding of incessantly redundant business plans and models are any indication.
oops I mean :
Risk taker, Caretaker, surgeon, Undertaker!!!
am i the only one who still favors textpattern for sake of performance and flexibility?
Yes Thomas, you´re the only one.
Sorry mate.
Congrats to the guys at Wordpress - great products deserve great rewards.
Lately I’m asking what is Wordpress? Since I spend so much time tweaking it.
To me it’s mostly about managing comments, which it doesn’t do well if you get a lot of comments. And it makes your RSS feed for you, big deal.
Other than that, ask yourself what Wordpress does for you? Take a look at this page: header, content, sidebar, next/previous links, which you could have done in Frontpage in the 90s. The only complex element here is the comment system, that’s where the money is, IMHO.
Wordpress and those of it’s ilk are content management and publishing platforms that support a entire ecosystem (ye gads, did I just say that?) of add-ons.
To Get a web publishing tool of any kind to do what WP does used to take a lot of work. It’s a well executed system. The industry has come a long way.
Wordpress, MT, and others are good for more than blogging; in some cases, they can be drop in replacements for Enterprise Document Management systems.
Wordpress is a slap in the face of enterprise CMS. Talk about the quality of what passion can do vs what $$$ can do…
Open source rulez!
> Open source rulez!
Too bad it can’t spell.
Maybe they’ll take some of that new money and put it towards customer service and ethics training.