Automattic (Wordpress) Snags 29.5 Million in Series B

January 22nd, 2008

Interesting news out of Silicon Valley where the creators of popular blogging software Wordpress has taken a $29.5 million round of funding to help them grow into their next phase.

I’ve had a couple of conversations with founder Matt Mullenweg at conferences over the years and participated in the first Wordcamp event in San Francisco, and it’s great to see such a nice guy succeed. Matt’s a classy individual who really cares about what he works on, and it’s fun that he shares more of the Wordpress backstory on his announcement post.

Wordpress has always operated in a cheap manner being virtual for a long time and coming from the open source state of operations. It’ll be interesting to see what they do with such a large amount of money in the bank. Will it change how they operate? Do they have revenue models set up for the long haul that will earn their investors a big enough return on that investment? Supposedly they already turned down an acquisition offer of $200 million, and from Matt’s announcement post he seems to be in this for the long haul as an independent company. It should be fun to watch, I’ve enjoyed their software thus far.

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Entry Filed under: Blogging