Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg talks succession — ‘I don’t want to pass it to a committee’

Calls for WordPress co-founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg to step down from his leadership role have increased in recent months amid his controversial fight and legal battle with hosting company WP Engine.

Mullenweg not only intends to stay, he’s also thinking about how he plans to manage succession planning. He doesn’t want to pass on what he helped build to a “committee,” but rather to another CEO who will continue to act as a steward to the WordPress community.

In a recently aired episode of Lenny’s Podcast, Mullenweg largely rehashed the drama surrounding his fight with WP Engine — a company he believes has been taking advantage of WordPress’s open-source nature to build its business without contributing back sufficiently to the WordPress project and community. WP Engine is built on WordPress.

Mullenweg also briefly commented on what he sees ahead for WordPress’s future and that of Automattic, the parent company to the hosting company WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Tumblr, and other businesses.

Mullenweg pointed out that the most “iconic” companies of our generation are those where the executive has retained some majority in voting control, which is a factor he considers in succession planning.

“…If or when I’m gone, I don’t want to pass it to a committee,” Mullenweg said, speaking of what he’s built with Automattic and WordPress. “I want to pass it to someone else who could have a role similar to mine, and really sort of try to be a steward.”

“And there ultimately is a check and balance on that, because, again, the community could leave, they could fork the software, people could change…,” he added, noting that the role was “a lot more being like a mayor than a CEO” in that the person would ultimately be accountable to others, like users and those who are contributing to the project.

Mullenweg also touted the role that Automattic itself plays to boost adoption of WordPress, referencing how the free version of WordPress.com helped introduce more than 100 million people to the software.

“That kind of for-profit, non-profit, open source, working in concert — I think is a really informed model that we’re starting to see a lot more companies do,” he said of the collaboration between Automattic and WordPress.org. “It’s actually very exciting to me that some of the things that were controversial when we started — like open source or distributed work — are now the default for so many exciting new startups and this whole ecosystem.”