Wordpress (Automattic) value could be over $1 Billion after latest round



Done told folks long ago G has been misappropriating their focus. Weirdpress is the company with potential to rival FaceBible, the Birds and G without even moving out of step. It just doesn't present itself as such which was so smart. With a few moves they can even out pace StopDaddy for domain registrations and eventually sideswipe the de facto arbitrage ad network after they're done testing it while on the G payoll of course .
 
dmnEPC said:
serious question about the moat. That looks like the least secure castle of all times. It would be nothing to take a few rafts across (to avoid the crocodiles) and hide out in the woods. The peasants could pickoff the kings forces one by one, simply stalking them from the islands woods. A few well placed shots from the bows-man and the men guarding the wall will be done. After that it's game over. Now they can take the bridge and go over the wall and capture, and kill the king. Nope that castle is a security nightmare.
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angkor wat is a temple built a thousand years ago

i imagine the landscape back then was very different
 
Kiopa_Matt said:
Whatever the fuck happened to companies just being profitable?

Nowadays it's all about how much funding you can get.
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It comes down to taking money off the table. It can take years for a business to become solidly profitable, so if you can pocket a few million while that happens, why not do it?

Plus it hedges against the risk of the business not working out. Look at Andrew Mason, founder and former CEO of Groupon - he took over $200M off the table over multiple funding rounds. Groupon is basically in the shitter, but Andrew is taken care of for life.
 
titanium777 said:
And Warriorforum is only valued at 3 million? It's less then half a percent the value of WordPress?
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Strange comparison^^

Jags_fan.gif
 
Yahoo bought Tumblr for 1 bill, right?

Seems logic would put WP @ 25 bill in comparison or more.
 
dmnEPC said:
serious question about the moat. That looks like the least secure castle of all times. It would be nothing to take a few rafts across (to avoid the crocodiles) and hide out in the woods. The peasants could pickoff the kings forces one by one, simply stalking them from the islands woods. A few well placed shots from the bows-man and the men guarding the wall will be done. After that it's game over. Now they can take the bridge and go over the wall and capture, and kill the king. Nope that castle is a security nightmare.
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K.







10K's.
 
Its because automattic is kinda a screwy largely remote company. Investor / angle types don't know what to do with them and view the workforce as a bunch of loose cannons.

With a more traditional management and workforce backend the valuation would be more more silicon valeyesk.


Honestly, I just think the valuation reflects the real value of businesses like these, and that the goofy valuations were for things like tumbler.
 
Update: May 5, 2014, 8:00 AM PDT

WordPress.com Parent Automattic Raises $160 Million, Valued at $1.16 Billion

Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com and other Web publishing tools, has raised $160 million from investors, including Insight Venture Partners, CEO Matt Mullenweg confirmed.

The round values the nine-year-old company at $1.16 billion, after the investment, which is its first since it raised $12 million in 2008.

According to a blog post by Mullenweg, the round was led by Insight Venture Partners, as well as other new investors Chris Sacca and Endurance. In addition, longtime backer True Ventures has created a “special vehicle” to increase its investment and existing secondary investors, Tiger Global Management and Iconiq, also participated.

WordPress software now powers 22 percent of the world’s top 10 million websites, according to W3Techs. (That includes this site — Re/code is a customer of the WordPress.com VIP service.)

Fortune had previously reported that the round was in the works, and it is now closed. A source said interest in the round was high, and Automattic could have taken as much as $220 million in funding. Coincidentally, $1.16 billion was about the same amount that Yahoo paid in cash for social blog site Tumblr last year.

Automattic had previously raised a secondary round from Tiger Global and Iconiq. Mullenweg, Automattic’s founder, recently took over the CEO role from his long-time business partner Toni Schneider.

In an interview, Mullenweg said that he is aiming to use the money for a number of things, including growing the business, expanding its small employee base of 240 and increasing marketing. While Automattic has been run as a break-even business, he noted that it would now begin “leaning in aggressively to take advantage of opportunity, which we all believe is a big one.”

Automattic’s competitors have certainly been investing, noted Mullenweg. In their last rounds, Weebly raised $35 million, Squarespace $40 million and Medium $25 million. In addition, Wix is currently valued at around $730 million, raising $127 million, in an IPO.

“I believe the Web deserves a truly open platform and operating system to do the next generation of content-oriented business on,” he said. “I want WordPress to be the best publishing platform in the world, bar none, including the best interface, authoring environment and design tools.”

In his blog post, Mullenweg noted that it would take the funding to do so, including a focus on its mobile products, e-commerce tools and a new version of WordPress.com:

“It was also only a year ago I said ‘Automattic is healthy, generating cash, and already growing as fast as it can so there’s no need for the company to raise money directly — we’re not capital constrained.’ I was wrong, but I didn’t realize it until I took on the CEO role in January.”

As to what is next, Mullenweg said that he thought that a “long-form renaissance” was an interesting new trend. “We have to keep up the innovation,” he added. “It is a massive market we are aiming at.”
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