Automattic Coup: Founder's 33-Hour Return — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] Earlier this month, while I was migrating my WordPress blog to Kubernetes, the board of directors at Automatic, the company behind other companies like WordPress.com, Tumblr, and WooCommerce that has two Ts in its name for its founder Matt, tried to pull an OpenAI

[00:13] and fire their founder out of nowhere. And just like an OpenAI, on paper, it went great. The CFO got a promotion to CEO, the company issued a statement saying the board had full confidence in him, and employees told TechCrunch they were ecstatic. But they underestimated that

[00:27] that co-founder, Matt Mullenweg, who co-created WordPress at 19 years old and has spent the last two years in an ugly legal war with WP Engine, has a martyrdom complex that would make Al-Qaeda proud. One thing, if you're really open and open source, sometimes you have to stand up to bullies and you

[00:40] have to fight to protect your open source ideals. In today's video, we'll find out how Matt clawed his way back into the CEO chair in just 33 hours, find out why the guys who tried to replace him left with $8 million in severance, and learn what it means when a man who hasn't sworn in 42 years

[00:54] starts calling himself a pirate. It is September 23rd, 2026, and you're watching The Code Report. If you're unfamiliar with how most tech companies work, the board of directors sits above the CEO so the company has some leverage in case the CEO decides to get into a petty legal battle that

[01:09] devalues the company by 80% before spending Labor Day weekend microdosing homelessness at Burning Man which in this case is awfully convenient because that exactly the situation the automatic board found themselves in earlier this month So while Matt was busy finding himself in the desert the board was busy finding his replacement and when he returned on September 9th seemingly still covered in feces from the playa

[01:28] he received a written proposal from his board stating that in 50 minutes, they'd be voting to remove him as CEO of a company he started 21 years ago. Then, he asked for a few hours so his lawyer could read their proposal. The board said no.

[01:41] Then 50 minutes later, CFO Mark Davies, with the help of board members Sue Decker, a retired four-star general named Ann Dunwoody, and Tony Schneider, the same guy Matt hired to be Automattic's first CEO and who he once called his business soulmate, sealed his fate.

[01:58] So then Matt did what any of us would do in a similar situation if we were filthy rich and HR hadn't cut our slack access yet. He posted that he wouldn't be at the leadership meeting the next day because Davies had conspired with the board behind his back. And though they never gave him a reason,

[02:12] Matt assumed it was because of his ongoing legal issues with WP Engine, which spent the summer accusing him of destroying evidence in the case after 20 months of his Signal history and two of his phones went missing. So one theory is the board figured removing the guy who may have destroyed evidence

[02:25] might make a judge go easier on the company. But Matt's theory is that Silver Lake, the private equity firm behind WP Engine, was involved in a plan to destroy his life. Then the next day he tweeted that he needed to hire security researchers to move some of his stuff off automatic servers Most likely referring to WordPress the site he owns personally where every WordPress install downloads its plugins

[02:47] themes, and security updates from. Then things got even weirder in Slack. Matt wrote, and I quote, Oh, since I'm a pirate now, I f***ing curse. After 42 years of never uttering a curse word, it's kind of f***ing fun. Then he said, the Slack smells funny, like turncoats. Removed every other

[03:02] admin and moved to the WordPress.org Slack where a pirate flag emoji appeared next to his name. But the more insightful post came from Reddit where he told someone asking about replacing the board that he could fill seats on the board whenever he wanted. But that wasn't the point,

[03:16] and he's not wrong, because he holds 84% of Automattic's voting power. The board can vote him out, and he can replace the board with members who will vote him right back in, which is exactly what happened. Early Friday morning, he returned to the announcements

[03:28] channel on Slack and posted that the board was back in agreement and he was back in control. He then tweeted that if you don't have a coup attempt every few years, you're not hiring strong enough leaders. TechCrunch asked if he was trolling and he eventually told them that he's

[03:41] not a troll, he's a pirate. By Saturday, Automatic confirmed Matt was CEO again and had full support at the board. But what they didn't mention was that the entire existing board was gone and Matt fired Davies and Chief Legal Officer Andy Masson as well. In total, Matt was gone for 33 hours,

[03:57] But in that time Davies and Masson the two executives running the company while Matt was out drafted their own severance agreements where if they were fired they be paid out a full year salary a year of health insurance and all of their stock would immediately vest

[04:10] Then Matt came back, fired them both, and Automatic now owes them over $8 million. Good work if you can get it. Meanwhile, employees still don't have a clear answer why any of this happened, and when they were told to wait for a message from Matt, what they got was a blog post about him trying to buy a houseboat.

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