Founder of statsig here- congrats. Super inspiring story.
Thanks! Vijaye
Thank HN: My bootstrapped startup got acquired today
401–410 of 414 posts
Re: Thank HN: My bootstrapped startup got acquired today
#402Earlier quoted context omitted.
And WordPress can thank CPanel and the tens of thousands of customer support and sysadmins that supported millions of WordPress users at $9/mo for a decade and have never once interacted or known who Mullenweg is. And they can thank mysql.. and apache.. and php.. Take your money and be happy. I met some of the worst people (CEOs) working in webhosting. Some truly awful people became very rich. edit; I thought this wa…
Could anyone summarize the drama? I’ve been poking around the subreddit, and it’s clear something is going on ( https://www.reddit.com/r/WPDrama/s/7931urG9ho ) but it’s not clear what he actually did. https://www.reddit.com/r/WPDrama/s/7eoTXQnwhh is as close to an explanation as I’ve found, but it seems tangential to whatever kickstarted the drama in the first place.
I don't know the minutia and I'm thankfully nowhere near the webhosting industry any longer but Wordpress dominated my life for almost 20 years- I'm pretty sure it can be summed up with "WPEngine is taking all of our enterprise/etc business and I'm mad.." And he's trying to get rid of the opensource (he dropped their monthly dedicated hours from I think 2k-4k to 45, just 45 hours) to funnel people to wordpress.com.
Which, honestly I really do get from his end money wise, because I have friends in that industry who are worth hundreds of millions today from lucky breaks, timing, etc. and I'm still a wee-engineer.
But he made those choices, he was always the CEO. I didn't start with the funding my rich friends had.
Re: Thank HN: My bootstrapped startup got acquired today
#403Earlier quoted context omitted.
My discovery having gone through something similar: If something made you happy and gave you purpose before, it probably will again. So just do it again. The second time around, you may discover that finding success, getting rich, etc., wasn't actually the reason you were doing it.
Getting rich was never the reason. I was a solo bootstrapper who rarely got paid for a decade+. If it was about the $ I would've dipped week one of the startup. My issue is product market fit. I've been building different ideas for the past few years, but traction has eluded me.
Out of curiosity, what have you built? Also, do you enjoy the process of building things?
Re: Thank HN: My bootstrapped startup got acquired today
#404Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it? I have friends who have very little money. Ok, they live safely, but not comfortably by any stretch. They value their leisure and live a good life. I'm also friends with people who became very rich. In their own ways, they all continue working hard.
> Ok, they live safely, but not comfortably by any stretch. > They value their leisure and live a good life. There's an inherent contradiction here unless you believe you can live a 'good life' (which I would expect to be free from excessive discomfort?) while also living 'not comfortably by any stretch'. You also have to consider what 'safely' means here. Sure, it means walls and a door so that you don't freeze to d…
I don't see the "inherent contradiction". Discomfort, as long as it's chosen and not imposed, is not much of a problem.
Yes, wrt safety it's hazy. Eastern Europe, so it's reasonably safe, and also we don't take safety as seriously as the Westerners. Our medical aid is all right. They have enough money to eat, but you'd be surprised how cheap and basic a diet can be.
> It's possible to 'live a good life' with no resources while everything goes in your favour but it rapidly gets awful if that changes.
Oh. It's possible to suffer even with infinite resources. Things can go horribly wrong. Health problems. Death. Other kinds of trauma.
> On your second point, I'd imagine that the people who became very rich did so because they're constitutionally unable to just relax and coast.
Yes, though some are learning and have improved a lot :)
Re: Thank HN: My bootstrapped startup got acquired today
#405Awesome. For others, I see that Paras is now running https://turingsdream.co/ "an AI hackhouse running a six-week residency for coders and researchers who're interested in AI. The hackhouse is in Bangalore, India and you can join it either in-person, or in a hybrid fashion."
Thanks for linking it here. If there are any AI researchers or engineers in Bangalore/India lurking here, please consider applying.
Hey paras I'm a doctor sitting in Australia. But have some analytical and coding skills and can have 3 startups which all failed to scale. I'm full time grinder and wokring on 505b2 FDA approval system. Off patient medications into market a knowledge graph system designed to convince the fda. I'd like to Jon the 6 week finger bleeder.
Re: Thank HN: My bootstrapped startup got acquired today
#406Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dan, thank you! I has been fun competing with you. I remember the golden days :) I've been following your journey post Optimizely! Hope your new ventures turn out to be equally fun and fulfilling.
I think it was a time when bootstrapping was a thing.. I feel its scary for new startups to bootstrap since the last decade with huge fundings, especially with funding in billions becoming a normal with the ongoing AI craze. https://news.crunchbase.com/ai/largest-ai-startup-funding-de...
I think that's more skewed towards the AI startups. Other startups have rather seen a dip in recent times, at least in India.
Re: Thank HN: My bootstrapped startup got acquired today
#407Earlier quoted context omitted.
And WordPress can thank CPanel and the tens of thousands of customer support and sysadmins that supported millions of WordPress users at $9/mo for a decade and have never once interacted or known who Mullenweg is. And they can thank mysql.. and apache.. and php.. Take your money and be happy. I met some of the worst people (CEOs) working in webhosting. Some truly awful people became very rich. edit; I thought this wa…
Could anyone summarize the drama? I’ve been poking around the subreddit, and it’s clear something is going on ( https://www.reddit.com/r/WPDrama/s/7931urG9ho ) but it’s not clear what he actually did. https://www.reddit.com/r/WPDrama/s/7eoTXQnwhh is as close to an explanation as I’ve found, but it seems tangential to whatever kickstarted the drama in the first place.
Its hard to get the full picture of Mullenweg's behaviour in a summary, but I guess the TL;RD from my point of view goes something like:
Matt decides WPEngine are making "too much money" and "not contributing enough" buy selling hosting for WordPress, an open source (GPLv2 or later) project. He tries to blackmail them (using legally questionable trademark claims) to the tune of something like 8 million bucks a year or he'll"go nuclear" on them. WPEngine pushes back, and Mullenweg does his best to destroy WPEngine's reputation and business starting with his WordCamp conference keynote, and following on by blocking access to the wordpress.org theme/plugin repo/website for WPEngine and all their hosting customers sites, meaning millions oi WP sites could not install new plugins or get critical security updates. WPEngine lawyers up to get that access back, and to seek damages. During the drama, it come to light that contrary to most people's understanding, wordpress.org is not owned by the WordPress Foundation, but is personally owned and operated by Mullenweg, and there is zero accountability for Mullenweg who owns Automattic (a WP hosting company and direct competitor tp W|PEngine), owns the wordpress.org website (a critical piece of infrastructure hard coded into WordPress core), and the WP Foundation board consists of a guy who sold his WordPress related company to Mullenweg a decade or so ago, a finance person with no visible track record of ever having anything to do with software or open source or WordPress, and Mullenweg himself.
There's way more, but my TL;DR is likely already TL.
This covers it in detail (scroll down and start from the first September 20th, 2024 entry for the "current drama)
https://www.joeyoungblood.com/technology/timeline-of-wordpre...
And a long list of what happened and when, backed up with links: https://github.com/bullenweg/bullenweg.github.io
That used to exist at bullenweg.com until Mullenweg sicced his lawyer on it.
Re: Thank HN: My bootstrapped startup got acquired today
#408Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could anyone summarize the drama? I’ve been poking around the subreddit, and it’s clear something is going on ( https://www.reddit.com/r/WPDrama/s/7931urG9ho ) but it’s not clear what he actually did. https://www.reddit.com/r/WPDrama/s/7eoTXQnwhh is as close to an explanation as I’ve found, but it seems tangential to whatever kickstarted the drama in the first place.
Its hard to get the full picture of Mullenweg's behaviour in a summary, but I guess the TL;RD from my point of view goes something like: Matt decides WPEngine are making "too much money" and "not contributing enough" buy selling hosting for WordPress, an open source (GPLv2 or later) project. He tries to blackmail them (using legally questionable trademark claims) to the tune of something like 8 million bucks a year o…
Thanks so much! This was exactly what I was hoping for. I really appreciate all the detail you went into, and the followup links.
Re: Thank HN: My bootstrapped startup got acquired today
#409Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could anyone summarize the drama? I’ve been poking around the subreddit, and it’s clear something is going on ( https://www.reddit.com/r/WPDrama/s/7931urG9ho ) but it’s not clear what he actually did. https://www.reddit.com/r/WPDrama/s/7eoTXQnwhh is as close to an explanation as I’ve found, but it seems tangential to whatever kickstarted the drama in the first place.
Its hard to get the full picture of Mullenweg's behaviour in a summary, but I guess the TL;RD from my point of view goes something like: Matt decides WPEngine are making "too much money" and "not contributing enough" buy selling hosting for WordPress, an open source (GPLv2 or later) project. He tries to blackmail them (using legally questionable trademark claims) to the tune of something like 8 million bucks a year o…
know exactly you feeling on bullenweg, had to tread really carefully writing this: https://weareqed.com/wp-engine-matt-mullenweg-the-wp-drama/
Been asked to make it skip straight to the latest, will insert a button later
Re: Thank HN: My bootstrapped startup got acquired today
#410Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its hard to get the full picture of Mullenweg's behaviour in a summary, but I guess the TL;RD from my point of view goes something like: Matt decides WPEngine are making "too much money" and "not contributing enough" buy selling hosting for WordPress, an open source (GPLv2 or later) project. He tries to blackmail them (using legally questionable trademark claims) to the tune of something like 8 million bucks a year o…
know exactly you feeling on bullenweg, had to tread really carefully writing this: https://weareqed.com/wp-engine-matt-mullenweg-the-wp-drama/ Been asked to make it skip straight to the latest, will insert a button later
Just a comment from the first couple of paras there:
> Wordpress.org (WP.org) – Open source software, partially created & owned by Mullenweg
I feel that's wrong?
WordPress is an open source software project and the most popular CMS on the web.
(and it's probably worth mentioning that Mullenweg (and others) originally forked it from b2/cafepress, especially in the context of Mullenweg claiming WPEngine should be "giving back to the Word>Press community" in exactly the way he didn't do for the b2/cafepress community.)
wordpress.org is the main repository of the WordPress code and the home for a huge portion all the community contributed themes and plugins. It is hard coded into the WordPress core source code making it difficult to avoind or replace for most users. The website itself is exclusively and personally owned by Mullenweg, not the WordPress Foundation.
(And it might be worth explaining that he can and has banned people from logging in based on his personal drama, which removes the ability for theme/plugin authors to provide update and security fixes. Mullenweg has also "stolen" plugin urls, for example replacing WPEngine's wildly popular Advance Custom Fields plugin with his own "Secure Custom Fields".)