Successful Internet Entrepreneur – Matt Mullenweg

Today’s Internet Entrepreneur is named one of the Top 50 People on the Web by PC World and also among the 25 Most Influential People on the Web according to Business Week and with all that he is in Inc.com’s 30 under 30, who is it?

This amazing feat has been comfortably accomplished by Matt Mullenweg, the famous co-founder of WordPress, the popular blogging software. A journey that literally started in his teen years has got on to reach milestone after milestone and is likely to materialise bigger things in the times to come.

Startling Start

Born on the January 11, 1984 in Houston (Texas, US), Mullenweg had himself begun with b2/cafelog blogging software and in fact even contributed to it though only with some minor typographic entities and permalinks.

It was this very b2 codebase which in January 2003 became the foundation on which Mullenweg, only 19 at that time, along with Mike Little started WordPress. What pulled WordPress to bigger glory was the joining of Michel Valdrighi, the original developer of b2.

Initial Rise & CNET

Mullenweg was not to be satisfied easily and within couple of months, i.e. in March 2003, he went on to co-found Global Multimedia Protocols Group which was the group that also pioneered the Microformats. The next milestone came in the form of Ping-O-Matic, now a very popular hub used in notifying blog search engines, which was launched in April 2004.

A major change in the profile of Mullenweg came in the same year when he joined CNET in the month of October. He left college and made a move to San Francisco. At CNET he continued working on WordPress and became their point man handling blogs and newer media offerings.

Birth of Automattic

The year 2005 started off with the release of WordPress 1.5 Strayhorn in the month of February and towards the end of the year there were many significant events that took place. In the month of October he said goodbyes to CNET and made Akismet public. The year ended with the announcement of Automattic. This company included the contributors to WordPress project and handled WordPress as well as Akismet.

Every year since then has been more interesting and intriguing for WordPress and Matt Mullenweg. If 2006 made him more popular and richer then it was 2007 when he was recognised by PC World as 16th most important person among the 50 Most Important People on the Web, a rare distinction for someone so young, thoroughly deserving nonetheless.

Diversification

In addition to his usual job he now serves as adviser to different corporations including Sphere, WeGame, Foodzie and Rescuetime. His company Automattic also covers Gravatar, bbPress, BuddyPress, etc. He also loves to share and speak which he has been doing through countless lectures and seminars he has attended across the world.

The laurels have never stopped coming and Matt Mullenweg has become the celebrity that he must be. Though he jokes that journey would be downhill now, yet he seems all set to greater glory.