All About Wordpress & Blogger

Automattic Inc. is a startup from a handful of people passionate about making the web a better place. So far we’re best known for our work on WordPress and other projects but we have a lot of other interesting things in the pipeline as well. We are strong believers in Open Source and the vast majority of our work is available under licenses like the GPL. We work from places all around the world.

Automattic first got started around August of 2005, and has since grown to include the fine people you see here.


Barry Abrahamson Systems Wrangler
: Blog: Barry on WordPress
Born and raised on the banks of the Riverwalk in San Antonio, Texas, Barry is a relative newcomer to the Bay Area and the world of blogging. During the day, he makes sure the servers are zipping along while trying not to get too much BBQ sauce on his keyboard and at night… ok, well, he’s doing the same :) When he’s not on AIM, ICQ, Jabber, IRC, or reading about the latest and greatest in MySQL optimization, Barry enjoys traveling and playing a little lacrosse.

Michael Adams Quantum Bug Creator
: Blog: Blogwaffe
After escaping Moscow (Idaho), Mike has been hiding in academia for 20 or so years. We stole him from a PhD in Quantum Information at Caltech to join the real world, or as close as we get to the real world around here. In between carnitas tacos, because apparently there is no good BBQ in Southern California, Mike hacks on bbPress and the javascripty bits of WordPress.

Nikolay Bachiyski Iñtërnâtiônàlizætiønër
: Blogs: Аз, света и сметачите
Younger than even Matt, Nikolay is blogging from small but beautiful Bulgaria. He makes sure the eskimo teens can blog in their native language. When not in front of the computer, Nikolay is either in Sofia University, torturing freshmen, or wandering around Bulgaria. Being like House, M.D. is his secret dream, although quite unattainable, having in mind his lovable nature.

Sam Bauers Coderoo
: Blog: The Unlettered Gentleman
Rather than using his Commodore 64 to invent the internet, Sam used it to play games. This wasted youth was followed by several more wasted years pretending to be a graphic designer, before he worked out that he was actually a web developer. Seven years after that realization he joined Automattic. Along the way he open-sourced some software and meddled in a little project called bbPress, which he now calls home.

Ryan Boren Head Janitor
: Blogs: Boren.nu, Ryan on WP
Ryan is a Texas boy currently living in Northern California where he likes to hike, ride his bikes, and read. Ryan is a telecom industry veteran who decided to leave the server closet to create things that people would actually see and use directly. If the rest of the company sat on a bench, Ryan could “press it.” He’s the one we send when people are late with payments.

Lloyd Budd Digital Entomologist
: Blog: A Fool’s Wisdom
Lloyd is Canadian. We forgive him for this. We’re trying to guilt him into sending in a bio. Let’s see how long it takes him to notice. It’s been a few years so we’re not optimistic.

Raanan Bar-Cohen Media Engineer
: Blog: Raanan.com
After using Gopher to impress the ladies in the 80s, and starting a web agency specializing in serving publishers and musicians in the 90s, Raanan decided to go to the dark side. Between Time Inc. and Dow Jones, Raanan worked on social media initiatives including RSS, search, podcasts, and the launch of AllThingsD.com. Now that we’ve nabbed him Raanan works on media services, partnerships, and oversees QA for the secret company BBQ sauce. (No Kool‑Aid here.)

Maya Desai Anti-chaos Engineer
: Blog: MayaDesai.wordpress.com
Maya lives in Redwood City with her 2 daughters and husband. After teaching English in Tokyo for 3 years, she worked for Bank of America for 7 years in various cities, then joined Automattic in 2006. She still knits scarves for everyone she knows in between changing diapers and making sure everything is running smoothly at Automattic.

Demitrious “Meech” Kelly Code Hound
: Blog: Apokalyptik
Demitrious is a self portrayed jester (certainly not jack) of all trades and master of none. Leaving the heat of central California behind him he set out to make a difference in this new age of instant information. And what better place to make a difference than here with us at Automattic, where instant information isn’t just a goal but a way of life?

Marianne Masculino Happiness Engineer
: Blogs: MarianneMasculino.com
Marianne was born in Germany, yet grew up in exotic locales like Elizabethtown, KY and Houston, TX. She now happily resides in San Francisco. A designer at heart and by trade, she’s joined the team to sprinkle happiness among the WordPress community. Marianne has an affinity for useless celebrity facts and makes a mean white chocolate bread pudding.

Nick Momrik Happiness Engineer
: Blogs: MtDewVirus
Nick grew up in northern lower Michigan and currently lives in Saginaw, population 57,523. He was undercover at the Help Desk and Microlabs at Saginaw Valley State University for 8 years before joining Automattic. Nick has been using WordPress since version 0.72 and vaguely remembers life before plugins and themes. When there isn’t snow on the ground, he can usually be found on a golf course trying to get his first hole-in-one.
Matt Mullenweg CBBQTT
: Blogs: Photo Matt, Matt on WordPress
As the Chief BBQ Taste Tester of Automattic, Matt travels the world sampling cuisine and comparing it to the gold standard of Texas BBQ. Although he originally aspired to be a jazz saxophonist, Matt somehow wound up studying economics which took him to Washington D.C. where he began taking pictures and blogging. The rest, as they say, is mystery. He lives in San Francisco and has a crush on Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Donncha O Caoimh Murphy’s Quality Control
: Blogs: Holy Shmoly!, In Photos, Donncha’s Blog
Donncha hails from Cork City, Ireland and is currently living in the picturesque Blarney village with his wife Jacinta. He’s a slightly obsessive photographer, dragging around a camera everywhere and posting photos every day to Inphotos.org. He loves getting out and about whenever he can and enjoys relaxing walks by the sea. (Murphy’s is the stout prefered by the fine people in the real capital of Ireland, the People’s Republic of Cork.)

Mark Riley Support Maven
: Blog: 69105
Mark has been living and breathing WordPress support since January 2004 and really has answered more questions than anyone has had hot BBQ. He can’t code, he doesn’t know much about the command line and his chosen OS would be Windows XP. But in his favour if your blog is broken he can probably fix it. His wife and 2 daughters put up with him in the UK.

Andy Peatling Social Engineer
: Blogs: Blaze Blog, Andy in Life
Originally from the UK, Andy had no trouble adapting to the rain soaked life of Vancouver, BC where he now resides. Andy likes to hop between coding and designing, sometimes mixing the two together and making his code look “pretty.” He has been tinkering with WordPress for a number of years both in theme design and plugin development. When away from his screen, Andy loves to watch and play all kinds of sports. Being in Canada, hockey holds a special place in his heart.

Warwick Poole Systemologist
: Blog: Linux Internet
Warwick (Rick) was born and raised in South Africa and has lived on a few continents looking for its equal. He currently hangs his toothbrush in New York with infinitely patient wife, Michelle. A mid 90s tryst with Mosaic, FreeBSD, Usenet, and IRC sparked an interest in Open Source software. If the Internet didn’t exist he would have been a wildlife photographer or a small plane pilot. Preferably both. Somehow his colleagues haven’t yet detected he’s a vegetarian. Don’t tell the CBBQTT…

Toni Schneider Band Manager
: Blog: Toni’s Garage
Toni grew up on Lake Zurich in Switzerland and moved to the fabled Silicon Valley to study computer science at Stanford. He started in the tech world in the realm of 3D sound and virtual reality, then came back to the real world and was the CEO of a great little company called Oddpost, which was AJAX before it was cool (or had a name). Oddpost was acquired by Yahoo (it became the new Yahoo Mail) and Toni was a VP at Yahoo where he created their developer network. As CEO of Automattic he hopes to introduce fondue as a light and healthy companion snack to blogging.

Joseph Scott Bug Exorcist
: Blog: Random Networks
Joseph is a California native, moving to Utah with his wife and two daughters. He got hooked on email when it meant dialing into a BBS with a 2400 baud modem and ended up memorizing way too much of the AT command set. Access to the Internet changed all that and going to work for an ISP cemented that shift. It also exposed to him to the world of open source, starting with FreeBSD in 1996. From there he spent a number of years in IT doing a little bit of everything.

Alex Shiels Code Bloke
: Blogs: Threshold State, Flight Path
A former Textpattern developer, ultra-low-speed communications engineer, corporate code monkey, and Python programmer, Alex has been writing software since before he even had a computer. He enjoys taking photographs and finding old risque music. Briefly a Sydneysider, he recently moved back to Melbourne with his wife and son. He doesn’t eat shrimp or own a BBQ.

Andy Skelton Code Wrangler
: Blogs: Skeltoac, Andy on WordPress
Originally a Vermont maple syrup gargler, Andy was called by high adventure to build the Automattic Ranch in Austin where he is kept warm by the socks someone knitted him for helping her move from Blogger to WordPress. It is rumored that he has an Internet Explorer voodoo doll that he sticks pins in while muttering “box model this.” His publicist was not available for comment.

Matt Thomas The Detailer
: Blog: I am Matt Thomas.
Matt has been a designer since before he knew what that meant. As a child, his parents would frequently return home to find their furniture re-arranged, art re-hung, and tables re-set. Ever since, Matt’s been interested in making things simpler, more beautiful, and more fun to use. Despite a four-year love affair with print design while obtaining his B.F.A. from the Savannah College of Art and Design, Matt’s loving the life of a web designer. He lives on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay with his trusty sidekick, Maggie. And most importantly, he doesn’t mind being the “other Matt” at Automattic.

Hailin Wu Ping-pong Specialist
: Blog: hailin.wordpress
When he was a child, Hailin helped his parents plant pumpkins and raise chicken, geese and rabbits. In third grade his older brother imparted this wisdom from graduate school: the “software” thing will be big someday. Next thing Hailin knew he had a PhD in computer science from University of Denver and spent three years at Array Networks. In his spare time, Hailin likes to jog, hike, and will soon resume one of his favorite childhood activities—planting pumpkins in the backyard!