The guest
Matt Mullenweg — Co-founder of WordPress (runs over a third of all websites) and founder/CEO of Automattic, the open-source company behind WooCommerce, Tumblr, Day One, and the Texts messaging app.
The gist
Tim Ferriss and Matt Mullenweg cover Automattic's expansion from publishing into commerce and now messaging, framed by Matt's lifelong mission of open-source freedom and a 'digital Berkshire Hathaway' acquisition strategy that lowers coordination costs through open APIs. They dig into AI as a new form of programming, why Matt flipped to optimism about future generations, and how regulation and 'invisible' competitive friction shape big tech. Matt reveals he is taking his first sabbatical in 18 years and unpacks his fears around irrelevance and unplugging. The back half turns deeply personal: depression, suicide, psychedelics done responsibly, breathwork, accelerated TMS, and concrete tools for hard times. It closes with a rapid lightning round of changed minds (nuclear, TikTok, breathwork) and absurd obsessions (pocket ranch, cavity-eliminating bacteria, a USB-C disco light).
Big reveals
- Matt shares that not meeting your mentors is fine - you can grow up with a book, speech, or essay; he credits Tyler Cowen's blog and a single piece of advice ('write every day') for setting his trajectory.
- Matt reveals he changed his mind on having kids - after deciding ~6-7 years ago not to, he's now rethinking it at 40, influenced by AI optimism and the book Empty Planet (humanity won't have enough people, not too many).
- Matt announces he is taking his first-ever sabbatical (Feb-Apr 2024) after 18 years - Automattic gives every employee 2-3 months paid off every 5 years, and he's the 'biggest hypocrite' for never taking one.
- Matt names irrelevance and not being needed as a core fear, and asks Jerry Colonna's question: 'How am I complicit in creating the conditions I say I don't want?'
- Lightning round of changed minds: nuclear (now pro, build as many plants as possible), psychedelics (modified from full legalization to caution), and later TikTok and breathwork.
- Tim opens up about lifelong depression and nearly killing himself in college, and lays out concrete tools: the 'STATE -> story -> strategy' order, ketamine and accelerated TMS for acute cases, and Byron Katie's The Work.
- The two diverge on meditation - Tim finds 20 min twice daily helpful, but Matt warns meditation can be dangerous at high doses (hundreds of hours), citing oversensitivity and the Jhana scene in San Francisco.
- Matt describes a GMO mouth bacteria (Lantern Bioworks) that replaces the lactic-acid-producing bacteria to eliminate cavities, now being administered in a crypto-libertarian city in Central America.
Things worth remembering
- WordPress, co-founded when Matt was 19, now runs over a third of all websites in the world; Automattic has over 1,900 people in 97 countries and has been fully remote since 2005.
- Every new Automattic hire starts with two weeks of customer support, and every employee rotates back into support one week per year - including Matt himself.
- Apple shut down the multi-messaging app Beeper (which had supported iMessage) the week before recording, forcing Beeper to refund its paying users.
- Matt frames publishing, commerce, and messaging as the three Automattic pillars, arguing that truly free versions of all three would constitute a free society.
- Matt's high-school economics team did mock Federal Reserve FOMC meetings, role-playing figures like Greenspan and Bernanke; he later met Alan Greenspan and Tyler Cowen.
- Automattic's 2024 initiative is the 'Data Liberation Front' - open-source two-way import/export tooling to break proprietary lock-in (some CMS like Wix don't even allow export).
- X/Twitter under Elon Musk was caught inserting a 5-10 second delay on links to certain media sites via its t.co redirect; Google was caught using AMP to disadvantage rival ad networks.
- On security, Matt recommends keeping apps/OS updated, using a password manager like 1Password, and switching to passkeys (which replace passwords with a secure key exchange).
- Will Durant's posthumous book Fallen Leaves: 'Happiness is in making things rather than in consuming them.'
- Matt's mom's depression checklist - 'Did you sleep? Are you drinking water? Have you been in nature?' - plus 'Am I hangry?'; echoes Kevin Kelly's advice that if you don't know what you need, it's probably sleep.
Recommended in this episode
Books, products and media the guest or host genuinely endorsed here — with the buy link.
Affiliate link — we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
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