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Joseph (JJ) Jacks for COSS Community

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OCS 2023 Fireside Chat: Matt Mullenweg (Automattic, Wordpress)

Matt Mullenweg is the founder and CEO of Automattic and the co-founder of Wordpress.

Joseph Jacks is the founder and GP of OSS Capital.

Joseph begins with opening remarks, and the projects and people developed from Automattic. - 0:45

How do you see the future of Automattic as a multi-platform company, with different investments? - 3:00

Matt discusses the future of Automattic - 4:30

Joseph discusses first-time founders, and asks Matt for his wisdom for first-time founders. What could solve for pain points and learnings? - 5:40

Matt responds with “meet your business soulmate” and explains the beginning of Automattic and taking on investment. - 7:00

People talk about new AI models as the modern Gutenberg. It feels like Wordpress was. How do you see these conversations, in terms of AI as a modern Gutenberg? Will closed models end up better or worse than more open models? - 9:06

Joseph explains Open Weights - 10:10

Matt responds on Open Weights and open-source AI - 11:45

Matt talks about AI augmenting developers and community in security and plug-ins - 14:25

Matt talks about Wordpress Playground and possible applications with Wordpress as a content store - 14:48

There’s laws, regulations, government response to AI. What’s your take on all that? - 17:45

What would you do differently if you were building a company today, with all of the tools available? - 20:00

Questions from the Audience - 21:55

Can you talk about the decision to focus on plug-ins with Wordpress? - 22:05

Commercial open source saw trust erosion due to source available. How do you think about open source foundations along a commercial company? What does it mean for competitors? - 25:15

Do you think the non-profit / commercial structure done by Open AI is viable? - 29:35

Do you have any recommendations as a remote company on workflows? How do you work remotely to make product decisions? - 32:50

Matt shares the secret ingredient to distributed work. - 36:30

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