I don’t see too many interviews with the CEO of Automattic Toni Schneider, conducted by people within the WordPress community so when I come across one, my interest is immediately grabbed. Dre Armeda who is one of the authors behind WPVibe.com had the unique opportunity to have Toni answer some of his questions about WordPress, Akismet, things they are working on, and one thing he’s learned as CEO of Automattic. One interesting bit of information I picked up out of the interview relates to PollDaddy:
PollDaddy has been growing really impressively as well. It reaches over 117 million people a month!
I imagine Toni is a pretty busy man but it’s nice to see him stop and chat with fellow members of the WordPress.org community.
Not related to the interview but if you are interested in reading about how Automattic came to exist and how Toni Schneider became CEO of Automattic, I suggest you read this piece by Xconomy.com published in 2008 called Automattic Connection: How an East Coast VC Got Behind WordPress, the West Coast’s Hottest Blog Platform. One of the most intriguing bits of information within that four page article is the significance the download counter played in terms of getting the first round of VC funding. I also suggest paying close attention to page three which explains how close Matt was to selling Automattic.
Interesting … thanks for sharing! I don’t believe I’ve read an interview with Toni Schneider; Matt is definately still the face of WordPress. So its interesting to hear another prespective about Automattic and WordPress.
aren’t you glad they didn’t sell it?! I look at blogger, and how its “bit the dust” over the years, and just how incredible the growth and reach of wordpress has become … seems like that would not have been possible if it was sold / taken over.
thanks for sharing this interview, even now 2 years later its still interesting!