Where it's possible, I'll always invest in product and engineering over marketing (specifically external ad spend). The Tumblr acquisition is a good example of that, we actually scaled back WP.com marketing in anticipation of that to give more room to bring on Tumblr's entire 200ish-person team. 90%+ of our growth is organic, and that percentage is going up.

Translation: We're actually doing well, but you only hear about Wix and others because they spend more money on advertising than we do.

I wish I could stop having Wix ads on youtube, I have seen it like 500 times already. While Squarespace is on all the information channel as sponsors.

I have yet to see a single ads on Wordpress.

Not necessarily a bad thing, but now whenever I think of doing a simple website my brains clicks on Wix or SqaureSpace instead of thinking about Wordpress.com

Youtube premium removes video ads. Plus you can skip the product placement ads if you want.

(only if you live in countries where youtube premium is offered)

I see a lot of WP ads lately so perhaps I’m just being targeted.

300m in pure ads incoming

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.

Valley state of mind, though.

"I'll always invest in product and engineering over marketing"

This is an often overlooked strategy from small to to big businesses, but one that pays off long term. We're a 3 people SASS having the same philosophy, and it's starting to pays off (we're 100% organic :)). Nice to hear Wordpress has the same.

If you ever have offices in Atlanta, let me know, I'd love to apply. :)

We don't have offices. 100% distributed. You should apply: https://automattic.com/work-with-us/

hi Matt :))) congrats!!!

The "middle ground" you speak of has not been ignored, and in fact has seen an explosion in "visual builders" to compete with the like of Wix.

Example: We use Divi (the theme), which is what we call a theme "framework" (not like Genesis) that allows almost any design & layout. This differs from most themes that typically have 1 or a handful of layouts that you must not stray too far from. While Divi offers pre-baked layouts, you're free as a designer to create something custom and then use the Divi toolset to build. We used to build every WP theme by hand, but Divi allows us to focus on design, and not the intricacies of WP theme development which is not core to our business (client solutions)

Thing is, Divi isn't something that your typical Wix / Squarespace user is going to consider when they look at WordPress.

Absolutely. We serve the market above Wix/Squarespace. We build the site with Divi, then hand it over with tutoring on how to manage page content and create simple layouts (the latter was impossible with stock WP before Gutenberg). If you're DIY you're most likely going to WordPress.com/Wix/Squarespace etc. and aren't a good candidate for our firm.

What do you mean by the "middle ground"? The way you described it, there's more middle ground with WordPress than with all other CMS platforms combined.

There are a number of fantastic visual website builders for WordPress that allow you to generally build whatever you want without writing any code.

If you have custom data needs you can use plugins to visually generate and present complex custom data, without writing any code.

If those don't meet your needs, you can write code to generate even more complex custom data structures.

If writing code isn't your thing, there is an absolutely massive market of WordPress developers ranging from pennies on the dollar to expert teams that charge $100+ an hour.

There are hosting platforms ranging from $5/mo to $100/mo to enterprise level. (And free options, but I wouldn't recommend any of them.)

Small businesses can go on just about any freelance or job site and get your site customized or a completely custom site built for hundreds of dollars, thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars, or hundreds of thousands of dollars. You get what you pay for, but saying the options aren't there I just don't understand?

I've been playing with WebFlow a lot lately after using WP for years. I'm not a designer but the sheer amount of control that I can have directly on WP is really incredible.

I know there are a million visual designer plugins/themes for WP - but I've tried them all and WebFlow makes them look like kid's toys.

There's some limitations with WebFlow, but I'm making it my 1a option going forward.

How does oxygen compares with webflow?

Competition in the enterprise market is also heating up.

Adobe Experience Manager can be mentioned as an inferior product tech stack wise, but strong marketing including targeting the C level with PowerPoint presentations let’s it win customers.

Feature wise Wordpress needs to do something at the analytics level. It does not make sense to host everything via Wordpress however everything data related is done via third party analytics. This is also Adobe’s selling proposition (marketing cloud) and they have a point here, however weak, since for example Adobe Target is some very basic “if then” rule system. But it might impresses C level noobs. ;)

Agreed, although I don’t think WordPress itself needs it. There’s plenty of room for everyone in the ecosystem, and there’s a lot of room to grow at the high end.

I work for a company (Human Made) which is pushing heavily on this, and our WordPress-based DXP shipped in-house analytics in our last major version. I can’t see consumers using this stuff, but in the space we’re operating, we need it.

Adobe must have the best salespeople ever, for what people pay for Experience Manager vs what it actually does.

Anecdata point: A while back I worked for an agency where the _client_ had signed a $600k/yr contract for Adobe CQ, which was completely unused for the ~2 years I knew about it... Expensive suits and haircuts, and "meetings" on golf courses and in expensive restaurants, and the client shows up with zero notice saying "here's our Adobe CQ license!" and then rejected all the estimates for migrating their site from Alfresco to CQ... (And I just looked, it's now 5 years later and the client is onto at least the third agency since the one I was at - and the site is on Sitecore... I wouldn't be _too_ surprised to find out they're still paying for that CQ license... Either because they got signed up for a 5 or 109 year "deal"m or because they get re-schmoozed by Adobe's sale team every year...)

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.

I went to “word camp” Boston a couple years ago, although I’m not a wordpress user. The keynote was on “Gutenberg” there new in place content editor. Wordpress is is keenly aware of the Wix/squarespace etc competition.

It’s the laser focus of a proprietary platform vs open source. Since wix and company are now adding market places and other functionality to there core it should be interesting.

I think they’re moving in the right direction, but it’s hard with all the legacy cruft. I’m in the process of learning WP modules (my goal is to move an open studios over as a plug in)

Automattic is no different than any other private venture-backed company despite its "multi-generational open-source freedom fighter" marketing jargon. They raised because they are running out of cash and cannot sustain the business for much longer without an additional investment.

Private venture-baked companies that have been around as long as Automattic and are profitable or have favorable financials are going public right now. Automattic doesn't have the numbers or potential to IPO so they must raise.

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.

What does this secondary and primary mean?

Primary: money from the financing that goes to the company.

Secondary: money from the financing that goes to employees, founders, or other existing shareholders.

Companies often use part of a financing to “take out” existing shareholders. Many larger financings are actually to a large extent a “secondary”.

Possible reaction to the recent Webflow Series A ($72M) maybe?

This is the middle ground that WP Engine is in and they are minting money.