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Automattic raises $300M at $3B valuation from Salesforce Ventures

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Re: Automattic raises $300M at $3B valuation from Salesforce Ventures

#41

Post by nacs »

buboard wrote: post #27
rblion wrote: post #24

DHH isn't too thrilled about this. > “We want every website, whether it’s e-commerce or anything to be powered by WordPress” is a nasty, monopolistic goal. Listening to Matt muse about 85% marketshare dreams is a real downer. But $300m is a down payment on monopoly dreams. full thread: https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1174695189090308096

does he know WP is open source?

He does:

https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1174702952411303936

> "Yes. Monoculture in open source is scarcely better than monoculture in closed source. Monopolies of all stripes are bad for the web."

Re: Automattic raises $300M at $3B valuation from Salesforce Ventures

#42

Post by buboard »

nacs wrote: post #41
buboard wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

does he know WP is open source?

He does: https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1174702952411303936 > "Yes. Monoculture in open source is scarcely better than monoculture in closed source. Monopolies of all stripes are bad for the web."

Monopoly and open source dont mix. I can't think of an open source project that became monopoly by itself, without the continuous backing and pushing of its parent company. And there were/are plenty of monocultures in open source (apache / mysql / nodejs / Linux) that was rather a good thing than bad.

Re: Automattic raises $300M at $3B valuation from Salesforce Ventures

#43

Post by en-us »

notzuck wrote: post #19

"To that end, as we reviewed our hiring process, we realized that the demographics of people we attract to apply are not inline with the demographics of the people we hope to hire." If that's there attitude then fuck them. You can guess which demographic they are talking about.

Actually I can't guess, go ahead and tell me which demographic do you think that is?

Re: Automattic raises $300M at $3B valuation from Salesforce Ventures

#44

Post by 013a »

AznHisoka wrote: post #5

Does anyone else see a misalignment between the $3B valuation and the huge impact Wordpress has had on the internet? 1/3 of all websites are powered by Wordpress, yet they seem to be valued low compared to other tech companies.

Linux powers most of the web servers on the internet. The Linux Foundation is not worth billions of dollars.

All of those servers run on Intel chips. Maybe some AMD. Even combined, companies like Google and Amazon, who would be nothing without those chips, are worth more than the companies that make their chips.

And electricity! Our electric companies aren't worth a penny compared to these huge tech companies. That's strange. They wouldn't even be able to see, let alone run their computers, without the electric company.

Re: Automattic raises $300M at $3B valuation from Salesforce Ventures

#45

Post by onetimemanytime »

AznHisoka wrote: post #5

Does anyone else see a misalignment between the $3B valuation and the huge impact Wordpress has had on the internet? 1/3 of all websites are powered by Wordpress, yet they seem to be valued low compared to other tech companies.

a billion used to mean something, once upon a time.

Re: Automattic raises $300M at $3B valuation from Salesforce Ventures

#46

Post by 40acres »

whalesalad wrote: post #9

> “The roadmap is the same. I just think we might be able to do it in five years instead of ten,” Mullenweg said. I tried to hunt for why the investment was taken and this is all the article mentions. It just doesn’t make sense to me. I’m guessing that competition is heating up and they need marketing fuel to keep people on the platform while they transform it from a duct taped blogging tool to something more flexibl…

Better to have a dollar today than a dollar tomorrow, especially with economic headwinds on the horizon. Assuming Salesforce has some foreign capital in this fund everyone is still desperate to invest in the dollar.

Re: Automattic raises $300M at $3B valuation from Salesforce Ventures

#47

Post by csomar »

buboard wrote: post #36
Johnyma22 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sensible and pragmatic. How dare you be a valley CEO with such an attitude? ;) /s Also, congrats on the raise! *Coughs in IPO...

Is he in the valley?

Automattic is fully remote, so it doesn't matter if he's in the Valley. They are not in the Valley.

Re: Automattic raises $300M at $3B valuation from Salesforce Ventures

#48

Post by csomar »

AznHisoka wrote: post #5

Does anyone else see a misalignment between the $3B valuation and the huge impact Wordpress has had on the internet? 1/3 of all websites are powered by Wordpress, yet they seem to be valued low compared to other tech companies.

My understanding is that Automattic owns WordPress.com and not WordPress.org.

i.e: You can be in Automattic business and make a dev team larger than them that develop the core WordPress. They don't rule WordPress the open source product but just are a company that made it.

Re: Automattic raises $300M at $3B valuation from Salesforce Ventures

#50

Post by ttul »

photomatt wrote: post #33
ttul wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of that $300M was a secondary to founders and employees? We may never know.

You will know, because we announced it. :) It's 100% primary. There's been a lot of additional interest so probably more secondary in the future.

From the horse’s mouth, as they say. This is an impressive sum of new capital for growth activities.
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