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Congratulations! Just curious, usually being purchased by a Private Equity firm spells a death knell for the company. Of course at the right price it makes sen

Congratulations! Just curious, usually being purchased by a Private Equity firm spells a death knell for the company. Of course at the right price it makes sense that you wanted to sell it away, but what are your thoughts about what will happen to the company now?

bigiain 2y ago
Just as a counter point, private equity seems to have helped WPEngine become so successful that Mullenweg has totally lost his mind over it.
- gobengo 2y ago
  private equity + a whole lot of commons to encircle
- swozey 2y ago
  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 was referencing old drama. This is brand new. www.reddit.com/r/wpdrama. I don't know anything about Mullenweg, I don't mean to sound like I'm calling him awful specifically.
  - bigiain 2y ago
    This brand new drama (well, August/Sept vintage drama) reveals a _lot_ about Mullenweg. I, for one, am happy to specifically call him awful.
  - sillysaurusx 2y ago
    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 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 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.
    - swozey 2y ago
      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.
    - bigiain 2y ago
      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-wordpress-and-wp-engine-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 https://github.com/bullenweg/bullenweg.github.io That used to exist at bullenweg.com until Mullenweg sicced his lawyer on it.
mooreds 2y ago
It depends on the type of private equity too. There are absolutely firms that want to milk a profitable business by shutting down investment. There are others that are all about growth.
stackghost 2y ago
Stylistic note: "knell" is a word for a sound, like the ringing of a solemn type of bell. So something can't be said to "spell a death knell".
- codetrotter 2y ago
  https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/death-knell#google_vignette https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/death-kn... This page has a couple examples that use the phrasing “spelling” a death knell: > If it does, it almost spells the death knell of a great number of football clubs throught the country. > Indeed, it may spell the death knell of the other place. If it sounds strange in US English, could it be a way of wording that’s more common in UK English?
- lgas 2y ago
  "X spells Y" means "X results in Y". It was used correctly.
- dahart 2y ago
  Please don’t forget about 2nd definitions of words, and idioms. The stylistic note here is to be really careful when language policing. From what I’ve seen, it’s almost always wrong and backfires looking bad on you to claim other people’s word choices are incorrect. I know this from plenty of experience being knocked off the high horse. ;) But language is broader and more fluid than we imagine, and it’s quite fun to be a student of the way language works and changes over time. In English it gets even more fun when tracing etymologies through the other languages where our words came from and see the weird subtle ways the meanings change. knell (noun) 2: “an indication of the end or the failure of something” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/knell https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/knell spell (verb) 2: “to add up to / MEAN”, 3: “come to understand” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spell https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spell Examples of the idiom ‘spell a death knell’: https://www.npr.org/2020/05/28/862658646/the-latest-u-s-blow-to-chinas-huawei-could-knock-out-its-global-5g-plans https://www.npr.org/2020/05/28/862658646/the-latest-u-s-blow... https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/gladstone/spell-a-death-knell-worry-over-groups-300000-event/news-story/15792bc7ea8f1ba176bfabf01428f17a https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/gladstone/spe... https://www.mca-marines.org/wp-content/uploads/Machine-Learning.pdf https://www.mca-marines.org/wp-content/uploads/Machine-Learn... https://www.protectingtaxpayers.org/international/to-shield-taxpayers-from-luxury-trips-and-corporate-scams-defund-the-u-n/ https://www.protectingtaxpayers.org/international/to-shield-...
paraschopra 2y ago
My co-founder is continuing and so is rest of the leadership team. So, I'm expecting company and its culture to remain as is.

bigiain 2y ago

Just as a counter point, private equity seems to have helped WPEngine become so successful that Mullenweg has totally lost his mind over it.

gobengo 2y ago
private equity + a whole lot of commons to encircle
swozey 2y ago
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 was referencing old drama. This is brand new. www.reddit.com/r/wpdrama. I don't know anything about Mullenweg, I don't mean to sound like I'm calling him awful specifically.
- bigiain 2y ago
  This brand new drama (well, August/Sept vintage drama) reveals a _lot_ about Mullenweg. I, for one, am happy to specifically call him awful.
- sillysaurusx 2y ago
  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 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 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.
  - swozey 2y ago
    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.
  - bigiain 2y ago
    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-wordpress-and-wp-engine-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 https://github.com/bullenweg/bullenweg.github.io That used to exist at bullenweg.com until Mullenweg sicced his lawyer on it.

mooreds 2y ago

It depends on the type of private equity too. There are absolutely firms that want to milk a profitable business by shutting down investment. There are others that are all about growth.

stackghost 2y ago

Stylistic note: "knell" is a word for a sound, like the ringing of a solemn type of bell. So something can't be said to "spell a death knell".

codetrotter 2y ago
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/death-knell#google_vignette https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/death-kn... This page has a couple examples that use the phrasing “spelling” a death knell: > If it does, it almost spells the death knell of a great number of football clubs throught the country. > Indeed, it may spell the death knell of the other place. If it sounds strange in US English, could it be a way of wording that’s more common in UK English?
lgas 2y ago
"X spells Y" means "X results in Y". It was used correctly.
dahart 2y ago
Please don’t forget about 2nd definitions of words, and idioms. The stylistic note here is to be really careful when language policing. From what I’ve seen, it’s almost always wrong and backfires looking bad on you to claim other people’s word choices are incorrect. I know this from plenty of experience being knocked off the high horse. ;) But language is broader and more fluid than we imagine, and it’s quite fun to be a student of the way language works and changes over time. In English it gets even more fun when tracing etymologies through the other languages where our words came from and see the weird subtle ways the meanings change. knell (noun) 2: “an indication of the end or the failure of something” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/knell https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/knell spell (verb) 2: “to add up to / MEAN”, 3: “come to understand” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spell https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spell Examples of the idiom ‘spell a death knell’: https://www.npr.org/2020/05/28/862658646/the-latest-u-s-blow-to-chinas-huawei-could-knock-out-its-global-5g-plans https://www.npr.org/2020/05/28/862658646/the-latest-u-s-blow... https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/gladstone/spell-a-death-knell-worry-over-groups-300000-event/news-story/15792bc7ea8f1ba176bfabf01428f17a https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/gladstone/spe... https://www.mca-marines.org/wp-content/uploads/Machine-Learning.pdf https://www.mca-marines.org/wp-content/uploads/Machine-Learn... https://www.protectingtaxpayers.org/international/to-shield-taxpayers-from-luxury-trips-and-corporate-scams-defund-the-u-n/ https://www.protectingtaxpayers.org/international/to-shield-...

paraschopra 2y ago

My co-founder is continuing and so is rest of the leadership team. So, I'm expecting company and its culture to remain as is.