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Backstage Interview With Toni Schneider

We're live on the Internet and the world wants to hear from you. How did you end? Like so I know Matt. Matt Malone wig in is ah, one of the original coders. He's also good from the Tim Ferriss you were just visiting with. And, uh, can you tell me a little bit about your story getting involved in wordpress and how you're sitting right here on this couch? Sure. Yes. Actually introduced to the world of war Press Bio Malik the this Parker giga home, Um, he did a story on my previous company was called Our Post, and we had sold it to Yahoo. That was a Web mail company. And he did a story about our acquisition and during it as you were talking, he said, You know, you seem like somebody who's really going to go off to another start up, and I just discovered this open source project or press have switched my boss to it and the founder off WordPress. Matt, his 19 year old kid at the time is really interesting. You should meet him. So introduced us. And that happened. Used from Texas. But he was...

out here in treating for job. It seen it, I think, And we met and then just kind of stayed in on that. Loved the product. I loved him the way he was thinking about it. We have a platform, very long term vision. And he wanted this to be around for decades. Really was my introduction into open source. And I knew what open source waas but really learning about it and then just kind of started getting to know each other. And then a couple of years later, he Matt said, You know, I'd like to start a company behind were press and you know, it was like 20 or 21 at the time. And he said, But I don't know, I don't know. 19 He made made the platform 20 Money is a super talented guy. Um, they said, you know, But I don't know how to run a business and that love for you to be see out. So I join them and we built the company together. Really, I'm the CEO is the president and founder of the company, and it's been great. Well, you guys are peas in a pod because what you're building, what you have built to date has been completely spectacular. As I said earlier, I'm a user. So I was this full, full disclosure. We didn't meet before. I I was just converted at the door. No, I've been using this thing for several years and I have a ZA photographer. Um, I've been lucky enough to launch products like the first camera first, actually. H d DSLR camera that allowed you to get a really cinematic movie look was the first camera do that with the D 90. I launched that for Nikon many, many years ago now, But on that day, it was now with a new camera that was announcing camera People are freaks. But it was a completely new technology that allowed a camera that its predecessor was $150, now this was 1000. So it was a worldwide phenomena. My my blawg was on WordPress, and it completely survived the onslaught of traffic, which is on millions of visitors. And, uh, I had been on a different platform before then that I will not mention and it didn't survive, so I o u used debt of gratitude for that. That's why I love hearing those kinds of stories because that's what our mission is to democratized publishing and let anybody become huge like that and really put the tools in the hands of everyone. That's now millions of people using it and have it be possible that you have a huge audience and it just works like you don't have to worry about writing that software, maintaining it or what you know, the servers or any of that. And it's led to some unbelievable sights and boss people have built. And so you just mentioned a little bit about the user base, he said. Millions, I think it's a lot more than just millions. Can you clarify that? Just so that people out there in the Internet world in studio audience, they know just how meaty what it is that you guys have built. Yeah, so there's a few ways to look at it that the main one we look at is just how many such you look at the entire Internet, all the Web sites on the Internet, how many of them use WordPress, and that number's been climbing and climbing over the years, and right now it's about 18%. All the websites in the world. Can we just have a moment of sounds that can we pause for a second? 18%? All of the websites, Yeah, in the whole world on their platform. So that's, uh, that's that's an exciting number and then make me feel so special. Wait a minute, you're behind year. And what's great about it, too, is that but by far the biggest, our next competitors at 4%. So we were doing really well in that. And if you look at just how many sides is that it's, it kind of depends how you come like, what's an active side? What you know, what's a network with the site? But it's somewhere around 50 60 million sites, So that's the people who use WordPress. And then those sides attract their own audiences. And that's virtually kind of everybody on the Internet. At this point. Probably, even if you don't know what were oppressed is just in your daily browsing of the Internet, your using touching, multiple WordPress sites, you do a search on Google. Those 10 results, you know on the home page three or four. Those are powered science powered by WordPress, so It's kind of everywhere but under the hood. Unless you're a writer or publisher photographer yourself using Wow, So let's just open the door for a second. The folks that are interested open source So you like as a CEO of an open source platform? How how is your thinking different than if you're CEO of, Ah, Close? But it's, ah, it's different dentists still evolving, I would say that's actually when Matt first talked about starting a company, his first question was to me, Do you think you could build a company that turns into a great company? But also make sure that the open source project it's great and grows and remain strong? How do you do that? And at the time eight years ago, kind of role models we have to look at weren't very good because you either had pure open source projects. There were huge, like Mozilla an Apache that, you know, they were great. They're very popular ones and people use them. But they're not businesses like the very limited in how they commercialize, because it's all about the open source. And then you have companies that were built on open source like a red hat or a my SQL that we're commercially successful. But they weren't really. They were either totally separate from the open source peace or they kind of suffocated the open source. Peace after a while, like the company becomes more more popular and the people contributing to you open source project Go Wait a second. What am I doing like this is No, this is not about contributing anymore. It's just about helping this company. So what we did is we said, Let's build two separate entities that really support each other. So we have wordpress dot org's. Uh, that's actually part of Would you like a war press foundation? And then there's were pressed out, or where the open source lives in the open source community and that's not owned by the company. So I don't have any control over that. That's an open source led community. Any before pest dot com, where the commercial service lives. That's where you can start a block and by our upgrade to me, run the software for you. If you just want to grab the software running yourself, you can do that anytime free. So that's how we solved it and whenever we. Whenever we add a feature to wordpress dot com, we give it away is open source. And then, conversely, we can take the thousands of contributions that are made to the open source project and bring those into work. Best outcomes. It's kind of a give and take and, let's say, over the years, as a company probably contributed, you know, 10 $20 million worth off work to the open source projects were huge contributor to it. He makes great sense because it's the clap from that our companies built on. So we wanted to be successful. And another thing that's so that's different. It's just a different way to think about. So when I make decisions, it's much more about okay, Which bucket does it fit into? Is a commercial company engaged on it? Or it doesn't fit in the other bucket. We sort of give it away, and then also you think, I think a lot more about the entire sort of or press ecosystem we're or press star. Com were sort of the biggest company in that space, but there's now tens of thousands of war press businesses anywhere from other pretty substantial startups to one or two person shops who just build websites for people, make a living on war press. And so I think about that whole ecosystem to think about what we're doing as a company, how is gonna affect everybody else? And are there things that we should stay away from? That a typical company would just gobble up everything that makes money, right? Like in our case, for example, we do. We do not build websites for people. Somebody comes to me and says, Hey, I wanna be on WordPress. But can you build aside from you? Say no years. You're 1000 companies and consultants and designers who will do that for you. And we sent that business to them and we don't take a cut. We just refer business. And we we leave that on the table, if you will. And I think as a typical commercial company would go, well, wait a second. That's that sort of money where you know, you just go after the money or another. One is the work camps, which are war press user conferences that we started the 1st 1 and then kind of open sourced anybody in the world press community canoe of our camp sort of follow certain rules. You get your local WordPress community together, we promoted and it's it's open to everyone, and it's not supposed to be commercially have enough sponsors. But it's another about making money. And same thing. We could have turned that into a an event business and half the big 3000 5000 person big conference every year in San Francisco and charge people instead. We have five or 10,000 people going to work camps, but all over the world, small events, you know. So most of my free something like 20 bucks to get in. Um so se said, like just not optimized for commercial impact, but optimized for the community to really grow and bring in bring in people now is that eat? I'm fascinated by this Is that and eat Those said to be able to say like we're not charging for this. We're not trying that. Is that an ethos that that Matt brought to the company originally that you're made, you guys have now sort of, um, jelled around. You want to maintain that because you believe in the ability for that to sustain and grow and help the world. Oh yeah, absolutely. And it's really the taking open source concept, which is it's totally non commercial. Everybody's here because they want to share him. Contribute. Which, by the way, is a much better motivator than the paycheck turns on, um, and bringing those ideas into commercial company and finding out okay, what are the things where we feel OK about charging? And it's actually good idea people coming to us tonight. We're asking I cannot pay you to run my site. Like, you know, like CNN used for Press New York Times. You this WordPress Major league baseball used for press the big ones they need a company to work with right to. That's what we do. Like the open source community isn't gonna do that. So that's totally fine. And so there's kind of what I learned as a business person. It's just how do you sort of bounce? How do you fit into that ethos like and what are things sort of like? Okay, is this is gonna annoy the community, right? It's sort of your I guess, uh, like your conscience and just try and and of course, when we started the company. A bunch of people are like suspicious go. Here they go. They're going to make a bunch of money. It's gonna get all commercial like I'm leaving. And it took Probably took, like, three or four years off, just acting like being a good act after. And every time you would launch something people get, See, they're gonna you know, here it comes. And then it was okay and we earned the trust. Now we're For the last few years, I haven't heard anybody sort of be nervous that we're gonna over commercialized or overstepped those bounds. But it's a balance that you kind of have to learn over the years. And it's been super interesting and helpful, and everything makes for a better company. If you're just joining up Chase drivers Cofina Creative live in the city with Tony Snyder, the CEO of Automatic, which is the the mother ship, if you will for wordpress dot com. We're pressed that orig separate but equal or and if, um, if I could say anything to you and I only had I was passing in the hallway B thank you because you've made so many family 60 50 60 million websites possible. Um, you know, when you're just describing this sort of that you have this New York Times and all those things that are paying for that that's where the money comes from, right? And so do you think of yourselves. This Freemium like, is a free service in the Pacers. You know, that's what we're trying to do here. Creativelive is anyone in the world can watch for free, and you only need to purchase the course if you want to own a copy of it and be able to time, shift it and save it and watch it over and over and over again. And you know, when we thought about Creativelive years ago, we started this. The business model was the idea of my co founder, Craig Swanson. And it just resonated with me because what I'd always done is giving away information. And then we started thinking about that In terms of making company that can truly change education. We look in the marketplace and their companies that are the ones that often win. It was like you get Spotify. You got linked in Pandora Dropbox. All those the friction to participate is lower zero and and there's an opportunity to make money, and it just so happens we're not trying toe print money in this place. We're trying to make a sustainable business that can create an ecosystem, that the world gradient. And it sounds very similar. What you guys were doing after we borrowed a lot of it from you, but well, no, I When I first learned about your model, I thought, That's this upon of those great malls that just kind of strike the right balance like I feel like sometimes we go to a website and it's kind of all free or it's usually at supported, so it's not really free. But you kind of feel like now it almost like, want to pay for this, not to have this stupid ads or whatever, Um, or a lot of times, especially traditional softer competence. The other extreme were like they're just milk. They're just trying to get you to pay, like like the worst ones. Are these like enterprise offer companies were They won't even tell you what it costs that you have to call somebody, and then as soon as they have you like it's like this endless, like, Whoa! You know, to get a trial, you have to do this and you have to just this process that's all designed to maximize how much money doing it out of you and open source is a great model where you can say it's free. Take it, try it. Don't even call me until you're ready to. Actually, if you want it like we're not hiding anything, um, you want us to run it great pass money. You want to run it yourself? Great. You take it, you want it started with us and then take it in house. That's totally fine. It just It feels like the right balance saying with you guys, it's like I heard about that model like that seems fair. And that's what I like. Models. And I think Freemium models air like this were customers. Go now that feels right. You know, I'm getting I'm not getting sort of held, you know, up to the extract the maximum of money out of me. But I get it. This is a business. This seems right. I'm getting something for free and getting sort of enough to try it or to do like like in the case of blocks can publish for free. But if you wanted instead of being Tony that wordpress dot com If you wanna be Tony's block dot com, you have your own, you're out. That's something you pay for or you want, like a custom designed for your block that looks totally unique to you and that you that you pay for that, the Freemans or sort of ones that everybody can use. So things like that I just feel feel good to me. And there's a lot of interesting Freemium companies out there now, actually, isn't a big one. There isn't like when you think like ads, you think Google was like the biggest companies were using e commerce. It's Amazon, we think Freemium. There isn't like a massive premium company yet, but you have companies like us. You have companies like Surveymonkey or ever know to our no, these air Now cos we're doing 50 100 million plus in revenue year 1,000,000,000 off of this Freemium model and the other thing I love about premium is it's kind of an evolution of the model where you get like, something for free for 30 days, and then you have to buy it, but instead here it's free forever, like you're never gonna. It's never taken away from you to the free will always stay free, and then you can upgrade if you want. So, um, it's what I love about that as a business is instead of cutting off your customer at 30 days and think you have, you know, by now or you're out, you said No, stick around forever. Eventually, you might buy something. If people have used wordpress dot com for four years, and then they finally by something and great, you know, you just and so every month you're sort of based grows of potential customers, and it doesn't go away like you're not forcing them out. So I think that's I think it's really a Marley will see a lot more in the future. Well, I'm a huge fan. I have a huge debt of gratitude for what you guys built. Um, I recommend it. I can't even tell you how many times recommend I have a decent size social following, and people are always asking what it's like to work on it. And ah, it's so universal. Like all the dashboard, all that stuff is great. I don't mean to just, like blow smoking. It served me well for years and years and years and years. Um, if there's any questions in the audience were super short on time. Um, I think if that's the case, I need to wrap us up, moves on. But I am so, so grateful. They stopped by here in the backstage. Your main stage presentation was amazing. And, um, I know it's in my queue because I couldn't I couldn't be standing there with you on stage, so I'm gonna go watch it. Thanks so much. Appreciate it. And again, I'm