Just like any other cliche entrepreneurial story, Matt Mullenweg was 19 years old when he decided to drop out of the University of Houston to pursue his passion and interest of technology. Prior to leaving Houston, Matt was studying political science and also doing consulting on the side. He soon realized consulting and school was not a career objective he wanted and eventually decided to take a job in San Francisco with CNET Networks – a news information company covering the latest technology breakthroughs. While at CNET, Matt was able to recognize different areas of opportunity within the web and roughly two years later he left to create a business from the opportunities he noticed. In 2005, Matt founded “Automattic” which is now the force behind WordPress, Jetpack, WooCommerce, Simplenote, Longreads, The Atavist, and many other products in the market. Matt’s mission for the company upon inception was, “To make the web a better place” and he has done exactly that.
Even though Automattic has become an extremely successful company, Matt has also been able to expand into other markets, including the angel investing market. Matt also advises and invests in startups through his company “Audrey Capital”. The main purpose of Audrey Capital is to help innovative ideas grow through his own investment. A few of the companies Matt has invested in through Audrey Capital are “Telegram, Sonos, 3D Robotics, and Student.com”
I really like the success story of college drop-out to CEO of your own company (despite the cliche haha!). I think it’s really interesting how Matt created his own company after realizing that the path he was headed on was not what he truly wanted. But also I like how he had made a separate place to invest in other companies! That’s so unique and allows him to be a part of so many other company success stories!