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WordPress co - creator and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg talked about hisfight with WP Engine , Automattic ’s staffing issuing , and the society ’s financials at TechCrunch Disrupt on Wednesday .
Mullenweg repeated a fate of stuff from the past month about the trademark fight , WP Engine not lend to the community , and lead astray client to believe it was consociate with WordPress.com . If you postulate a refresher on the WordPress community drama , we havean article that will help you catch up .
He suppose the company wasshort - staffed after the hegira of 159 employees , who tooka six - month severanceoffer earlier that month . Since then , Automattic has been aggressively hiring and had already recruited 26 people this calendar month .
Mullenweg articulate that the second offer — which had nine month of severance and lose access to WordPress.org as part of the computer software — was designed to watch a leaker within the company giving out confidential information . He add together that the company had to ask others who took the fling to stay until the next year as they were short - staffed .
Trademark issue
Talking about earmark issues , Mullenweg said in the initial days of Automattic , he give the WordPress Foundation the WordPress trademark as investors were in control of Automattic . While the groundwork still owns the earmark , Automattic has the exclusive license to use it commercially . Plus , Mullenweg sound out he has 84 % of vote ascendance at the company .
When asked about what the other WordPress Foundation board members suppose about this struggle , he said they are implausibly supportive and touch on to the minute of the merging published on the foundation land site — the post does n’t name anything about the trademark .
Automattic CEO also utter about the legal conflict with WP Engine and said that it might take a few years to adjudicate it .
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“ estimation I have heard from Neil [ Katyal , the lawyer represent Automattic ] in the case and others is that worst causa scenario , if we lose everything , it would be kind of happening in 2026 or 2027 , ” he said .
Automattic financials
Earlier this year , Blackrock , one of the investors in Automattic , marked down their investment to almost half the note value from the clip they bought the shares in 2021 . While Mullenweg did n’t straightaway speak that markdown , he said the company yield around half a billion one dollar bill in one-year revenue , running at “ go against even or better , ” and hire aggressively .
“ We have n’t raised any principal working capital and have no plans to , ” Mullenweg articulate .
WordPress Forks
peach about the possibility of a WordPress fork because of ongoing tension in the residential area , Mullenweg said that would be fantastic .
“ There might be a fork . I mean , we ’ve had WordPress forks before — probably about three or four times in the story [ of WordPress ] . That ’s one of the beautiful things about undefended informant is that there can be a fork , ” he state .
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TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 has begin , with hundreds of loudspeaker , hundreds of inauguration and exhibitors , plus thousands of attendees meeting in …