Automattic

Automattic, Inc. is a web development corporation founded in August 2005. It is most notable for WordPress.com (a free blogging service), as well as its contributions to WordPress (open source blogging software). The company’s name plays on its founder’s first name, Matt.

The company has 430 employees.[1] Its culture was the topic of a participative journalism project by Scott Berkun, entitled The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work.[2]

Automattic raised 317.3 Million USD in 5 rounds. In the last round, on May 2014, the company valued at 1.16 Billion USD.

Matt MullenwegMatthew Charles “Matt” Mullenweg (born January 11, 1984) is an American online social media entrepreneur and web developer living in San Francisco. He is best known for developing the free and open source web software WordPress, now managed by The WordPress Foundation.

After dropping out of college and working at CNET Networks from 2004 to 2005, Mullenweg quit that job and founded Automattic, the business behind WordPress.com (which provides free WordPress blogs and other services), Akismet, Gravatar, VaultPress, IntenseDebate, Polldaddy, and more.

Since 2005 Mullenweg has been a frequent keynote/speaker at conferences/events, including global WordCamp events,[4] SxSW,[5] Web 2.0 Summit, YCombinator’s Startup School,[6] Le Web,[7] Lean Startup Conference,[8] and the International World Wide Web Conference[9] etc.

Early life and education

Mullenweg was born in Houston, Texas, and attended the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts where he studied jazz saxophone.[10]

He studied at the University of Houston, majoring in Political Science, before he dropped out in 2004 to pursue a job at CNET Networks.