Co-Founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg (Founder and CEO of Automattic), chats with Jaclyn this week about his life, career, work with open-source, and the role kindness plays in it all.
Matt Mullenweg joins Jaclyn in the virtual studio to discuss the significance of kindness in his company, how his passion for music influenced his career, and the connection between open source and kindness.
Matt Mullenweg is co-founder of the open-source publishing platform WordPress, which now powers 43% of all sites on the web. He is the founder and CEO of Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Tumblr, WordPress VIP, Day One, and Pocket Casts. Additionally, Matt runs Audrey Capital, an investment and research company. He has been recognized for his leadership by Forbes, Bloomberg Businessweek, Inc. Magazine, TechCrunch, Fortune, Fast Company, Wired, University Philosophical Society, and Vanity Fair. Matt is originally from Houston, Texas, where he attended the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and studied jazz saxophone. In his spare time, Matt is an avid photographer. He currently splits his time between Houston and San Francisco.
This podcast is one of the many ways we live out our organization's mission to educate and inspire people to choose kindness. Visit our site kindness.org and sign up to become a part of our global community which spans more than 100 countries. It's free to join and when you do you'll be the first to get access to our latest research, tools, and even episodes of this podcast. Let's build a kinder world, together. Contact us at podcast@kindness.org or on social at @kindnessorg.
Important links from this week's episode:
kindness.org
automattic.com
Follow Matt & Automattic
Credits
Transcript available at this link.
Intro: Why kindness? Because it makes a difference. For connection. Kindness can change lives. It's contagious. The science says you'll be glad you did. Kindness is beautiful. The key to a healthier, happier world.
Jaclyn: Why kindness? While no one answer is the same. One thing is clear. Kindness is something we all know, but do we know why it matters?
I'm your host, Jaclyn Lindsay, co founder, CEO of kindness. org. And you're listening. To why kindness? Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of the why kindness podcast. Matt Mullenweg is a founding developer of WordPress, the open source software used by over 43 percent of the web. His goals in life are to democratize publishing, commerce, and messaging.
Born and raised in Houston, Texas, he writes code, poetry, prose, and music, often in support of those three goals, but sometimes just to make the world a more beautiful place. Matt also founded Automatic, which is now the force behind WordPress. com, Jetpack, WooCommerce, SimpleNote, and many other products.
Their mission is to make the web a better place. I am so honored and thrilled to welcome our guest today, Matt Mullenweg. Hello, Matt.
Matt: Hello. Hello.
Jaclyn: So we start with the big open ended question. Why kindness? What would you say to that?
Matt: Why not? What's the alternative? Right?
Jaclyn: Love it. Yeah.
Matt: I feel very much so that I think a lot about pro social behavior and also how we can get communities to work together. And in my world of open source, we don't usually use the word kindness, but really what we're doing is saying, okay, how can we channel our activities, our productive work into something that benefits the whole group?
Um, not just us as individuals. So it becomes, again, a very pro social behavior of collaboration, of ownership where with open source it belongs to everyone. Yeah, it's funny, probably we should talk about kindness more when we don't. But if we do our job right, that hopefully is very helpful to the world.
Um, as a kind solution, that's an alternative to Things being proprietary and things being, um, locked up. So it's a little bit of a roundabout way of answering it. But when, when I saw this question, this was what I thought about was like, okay, what is a kind way to operate a business or kind of
way to operate software?
And yeah, I really kept coming back to open source, something that both gives ownership and agency to all of its users.
Jaclyn: So let's talk about that. As far as the origin, uh, for WordPress, uh, one of, you know, the things that you're probably most known for underneath the automatic umbrella. Um, is that the right way to describe it?
Would you say this WordPress fall under automatic or are they two separate things? Entities.
Matt: Well, technically, they're separate. Yeah. So WordPress. com is part of automatic. And then there's a WordPress project, which is looks a lot more like a nonprofit of all volunteer organization.
Jaclyn: Okay. Okay. So let's talk about the origin for WordPress
specifically.
And this idea of open source, where did that business model come from for you?
Matt: Well, open source predates us by quite a bit. So I'm glad to say that although Oh. You know, we're 21 years old now, but by 2003, when I discovered all this stuff, there'd been a long history of Richard Stallman, Eric Raymond, Linux, Linus Torvalds, that had been doing open source for many years or decades.
And it did come back to often this idea of software companies were not aligned with their users necessarily. So they had an unkind relationship where they wanted to restrict what you could do. Restrict the. Usage of the software restrict your ability to see how it worked, restrict your ability to change how it worked.
Um, so open source is really response to that and it's become, I would say, the most interesting social and philosophical movement of the past. You know, 30 years, a lot of ways, and that's, it is in some ways almost like a secular religion, you know, I'll say that that gives a, a moral framework and a guideline to a large group of unrelated people who can then produce things software in this case, uh, but also Wikipedia information, like the There's so many versions of open source applied to different domains that has truly made the world a better place, you know, by every measure.
And open source is now embedded in about 90 percent of all software. So it went from being very fringe to being something that's now, even if what you're using is not open source. It probably uses some open source on the backend. So even if you're using a proprietary tool like macOS, it's using a ton of open source behind the scenes.
Um, so, you know, give us another decade or two, it'll be at a hundred percent. And I think that'll be a world that'll be a lot more free, a lot more agency. It's a little orthogonal to kindness, but I hope that it enables more kindness in the world.
Jaclyn: Where did kindness begin for you? What's your earliest childhood memory or experience with the idea of kindness?
Matt: Hmm, I mean I was blessed with Well, a good family and good teachers. I went to all public schools in Houston, Texas. And, um, I got involved pretty early on in music. So, for me, it was playing the alto saxophone, starting from second grade at Parker Elementary, where Beyonce went. She also went to my high school of HSBBA.
We had, you know, it's funny on my about page today, if you go to ma. tt slash about, um, I actually think a number of teachers that I had throughout the years, part of that is that, you know, as a kid who was maybe a little bit different from, from some of my, my peers in school, really my lifeline was teachers who saw that and, you know, helped me navigate being different from kind of the norm and also providing me some great opportunities to learn and grow and uh, excel, ultimately excel.
So yeah, I think I'm Mr. Maxi or like some of these other teachers. It's funny, more than my academic teachers, these music teachers really come to mind as people who taught me to push myself, so do deliberate practice, to perform, so get in front of a stage. I was, you know, I was very shy in many ways and so to breathe and perform and those sorts of things, which ultimately became a huge part of, uh, helped make me successful when I went into business, you know, many years later.
That was always fun. They also gave me business opportunities. So my first websites were for jazz musicians and the musicians in town. And so my former teachers would get me gigs essentially and say, oh, you make websites. You know, here's this thing I'm doing for the University of North Texas, or here's this thing I'm doing for a friend.
And so like, there was a lot of that also sort of passing around. Um, there's very much a culture in Houston, I would say still, where if you're fortunate, you share it. You know, if you get something, you share it. I mean, they didn't have to do that at all. And I'm so, so, so grateful. And I'm also very fortunate to still be connected to most of these teachers.
And it's, it's been really lovely.
Jaclyn: Love that. When you think about being in the school environment and having those teachers, championing and advocating, you know, equipping you in those ways. What was your experience like as a student with your peers? Did you feel like there was Disconnect or separation or challenges you were experiencing and they acted as like a lifeline to you in that way?
Matt: Yeah, with my peers, so the other students, um, I just had to learn strategies to make friends. So, and sometimes that was, you know, writing papers for other people or doing work for other people or something like that. Whatever it be, I became like super geeky. I was always super geeky, but like I would, um, You know, I would fix other people's computers or like just being, I'd say like a culture of generosity was kind of my hack for, uh, being liked, if you will, in a, um, it was much better when I got to high school because I went to the arts high school.
So people are really oriented around the art area. Middle school was kind of tough, you know, that had a lot more of like the clicks and the more traditional, I would say school dynamics. Not as academically focused, not as art focused, but, um, yeah, the high school I went to, it's called the high school for the performing visual arts, HSPVA.
It was a fantastic environment for kids who are a little bit different. It was a public school, but you had to audition to get into it. So it really drew a special slice of, you know, the, you know, three, 4 million people in Houston. And, and that was a great opportunity for me actually, where I met a lot of my lifelong friends.
If you look, looking back now, cause for college, you know, I just went to university Houston at that point. I was so focused on WordPress. I barely went, ended up dropping out after two years, but my high school friends are the ones that, um, have been really lifelong friends.
Jaclyn: Do you still play the saxophone?
Matt: I do actually. And it's funny. I, um, I stopped for a long time and I had a sabbatical this year. Um, so automatic has this benefit where every five years you get three months pay time off. And for me, I'd never taken it. So after 18 years, I finally took it. And that was February, March and April of this year.
And it's funny, I planned to do a few things, uh, including like sailing and chess, and I found myself returning to music actually. And so I started playing the saxophone again, given this unstructured time. And, and then, you know, not having my normal theological drive towards WordPress and automatic, I was like, okay, um, I found myself going back to music.
That was really fun, although different than before. Uh, so before I'd often been practicing or working on songs. Um, in returning to music this year, I found myself a lot more drawn to long tones or almost like music as meditation, so practicing things that, um, or almost less musical. It's not really for other people, just for myself.
Jaclyn: Um, I went to a public high school for, um, art, an art school as well. Actually. I went for theater.
Matt: Um, where was it? Where in the country?
Jaclyn: It was in South Florida. It was in downtown West Palm Beach area. It's called Dreyfus School of the Arts. And, uh, um, it's interesting looking back in hindsight now, you know, uh, 25 years later, I felt so inclined towards that side of art and performing and theater and all that that afforded me and taught me.
But the other side, the pendulum side, was also this, uh, idea of non profit social impact. And I felt wired for both things. Were you going through that? It sounds like, so you had WordPress happening, but you're also there for music. Did you feel a duality of who you were? Was it kind of like, were they in tension with each other and ultimately WordPress bled out over music?
Matt: I mean, well, I'm not surprised you were a theater kid. They were the coolest.
For me the websites is also musicians particularly jazz musicians are kind of hustlers You know, it's not like it's a very commercially viable career path. So you end up teaching, you end up doing weddings, you end up playing restaurants, like doing lots of things. But no one really complains. You know, it's kind of like, yeah, this is just, just what we do to be able to do what we love.
And so for me, making websites is part of that. I did it. All those early ones were in exchange for music lessons. So a music lesson was 50 bucks, which was a lot. I've only didn't have like as much to be able to pay for as much of those. So, um, I've kind of barter essentially with local musicians and, uh, you know, trade them either a website or a computer.
So at that time you would kind of build computers, like you'd buy all the parts, you put them together. So those are kind of two things I would did. The computers are probably better than the websites. Honestly, the websites are not very good. But, um, for the time, you know, late nineties, early two thousands, they, they weren't the worst and they brought in people business.
So I ended up doing more and more of that. And that was kind of the sort of hands on learning for me for what eventually led to learning to program, to create forms, to use open source software, and then later contribute to open source software. That turned into WordPress, essentially. Yeah, it was, uh, I really appreciate them taking a chance on me.
Jaclyn: Yeah. What do you think it was that, that stood out for them to say yes and to bet on you?
Matt: Um, well, no one else was selling what I was selling.
Jaclyn: You were the only game in town.
Matt: So it was, I mean, I guess there were firms they could have hired, but like, you know,
Jaclyn: yeah,
Matt: I was charging 500 bucks or 10 lessons really.
So they weren't even paying. They were giving me 10 lessons. So that kind of barter, I think was a pretty good deal for For them and me. And, um, yeah, I think I also just really love this stuff. So I had a passion for it. And so I was an all right musician, you know, but not like I had so many classmates and things that I would say were true prodigies that I realized pretty early on that I wasn't going to make it.
It's I had to like work really hard to match them because they were many ways like more naturally talented, um, or further along in their musical journey. Um, but I found that I could get gigs by like showing up on time, learning the music really back and forth, like kind of the things around the music and the art that became honestly good differentiators.
Um, yeah. So Peter, to. Classmates that might be more naturally talented, but might, you know, get there a little late for the gig or something. So if you're, if you're the kind of business owner or the person who's, who's paying for that gig or booking that gig, that kind of the non musical stuff can be as important or even more important than the actual music itself.
For better or worse, you know?
Jaclyn: And traits like that, does that feel inherent? Do you feel like you learned that kind of work ethic somewhere, observed that somewhere?
Matt: My mom and dad, you know, and my grandmother were kind of three role models there. My grandmother, I only had one grandparent and, um, you know, her husband passed in the seventies.
So she had five or six kids under 18 when her husband passed, she became a real estate agent. I think she had been a teacher. There weren't a ton of careers, my understanding, open to women at that time. So she became a real estate agent and worked really hard. And by the way, put the grandchildren to work too.
We'd pass out the flyers and other things. So, um, she was really frugal and good with money. You know, walked every day, very health conscious and just always an inspiration for me and my mom and dad, the same, my mom would be making bread to make extra money, you know, kind of cooking at home in the kitchen.
My father would go into work in a suit and tie. He was a programmer, but at that time they wore a suit and tie, carry a briefcase, you know, very early every morning before the sun came up. Um, Before I was born, he did things like go to college and marry my mom and work in a Ford factory during the day, like simultaneously.
So they worked pretty hard. You know, also church was a big thing then. So, uh, I grew up Catholic. My grandmother in particular was, was pretty involved with the church, but there's a culture there of kind of giving back. And my mom would put together packets for homeless people. We would drive around and pass out or whatever it might be.
That was Built into that. So things like being part of the Catholic church, uh, Boy Scouts, you know, lots of volunteering as a, uh, built into my world, even from a young age.
Jaclyn: Thank you for sharing that. I mean, those are all ways exactly that we are shaped and, uh, then it's nature and nurture, right? So it's like who Matt is and then how you were shaped by those around you.
I've had the incredible honor of knowing you. Gosh, 10, 11 years. We probably met for our first time, but we haven't known each other very well. And still to this day, I can say when I first met you, you just had an aura of kindness. You, you really are someone who just presents as someone who's so compassionate and, um, curious.
Um, so it's been something I've admired watching you growing the businesses you have and doing it with leading in such a kind, thoughtful, caring. way, I guess, leveraging those pro social behaviors. I would love you to share a little bit about what it's like to lead in that way because I do think it's often antithetical to what you're told is successful.
Um, being someone who invests so deeply into their team creates a healthy culture in the way that you have. So talk, talk through a little bit about what that's been like for you as a business leader.
Matt: Hmm, that's a good question. I think in business, what gets, what gets tricky is that people see altruism as weakness and what you could call kind initiatives might be the first things on the block if the business doesn't go well.
So one thing I talk a lot about internally, because I would say, you know, we've hired a lot of people and we're being an open source business. Like we attract a lot of people who are idealist. So I do have to emphasize actually that this is a luxury afforded to us by being successful with our customers and serving our customers well.
So we have to be a good business first and foremost to be able to be kind, open source, you know, do the things that we try to, very customer centric that we try to do. So that is, It's, it's an interesting balance, you know, uh, so I find, I found at least that building in the aspects like open source or being distributed, or some of our benefits, like the sabbatical benefit, sort of building those into the operating system of what we do.
So where they're, they're kind of non negotiables is helpful because those things are never on the block if the business gets tough or something like that. And, um, being removed from the decision making, if you will, then puts a focus on other areas, which I think are more important. Like how are we serving our customers?
How does a product work? How's our customer service? How is everything else that I believe contributes far more to our business success or not. But if you were looking from the outside in, you'd be like, Oh, great. WordPress has a million users. Like just charge for it and you make a ton of money. I'm like, no, no, it wouldn't work like that.
We wouldn't have millions of users if we had charged for it from the beginning. So it's not a. And I don't want to be a part of a bait and switch based business. So like, let's talk about other ways to make money. Let's talk about other ways to be successful. And then finally, better you're doing the less anyone cares, including like top investors in the world and other things that, that you would think of being like quite capitalist or, you know, um, harsh or whatever word you want to use.
Honestly, if you're growing, they leave you alone. So other business leaders that are, you know, want to do businesses like that. I would say, well, first. a ton and investors, et cetera, will just leave you alone and allow you to do your thing. Um, now if you stop growing, there's going to be some conversations, but if you're serving your customers very well in a way that they're resonating with and responding with, that's ultimately the judge.
I don't get to say what's good or bad. Our customers do. So that's what we try to orient to.
Jaclyn: Very wise. Do you have an example in business that, um, you saw kindness won out?
Matt: Say that again?
Jaclyn: The kind, like the kind path or the kind choice ended up, um, winning, you know? Is, is there like a specific example or scenario you've been in where you were faced with a dilemma, but you ultimately chose the higher road or arguably the kinder road?
Matt: Hmm, hmm, hmm. One thing that I've always just believed in life is that if you, make it easy for people to leave, they're more likely to stay. So I don't want to be in any relationship, whether that's personal or professional, or someone feels obligated or forced to be in it. So in WordPress, one thing we do is we made export very, very easy.
Some of our competitors like Wix literally don't even provide an export, much less a good one. So I find that that sort of thing in theory would increase our churn quite a bit or, you know, hurt our business. But what it really creates is the trust. So saying like, Hey. Use WordPress. If you ever decide not to, it's very, very easy to switch to something else.
All the data is the APIs are open in and out the data formats, very well supported and very open built a trust that people end up staying. So you still have to earn that with being responsive with your product and having, uh, You know, a good service. Um, but I, I, I like that model. So maybe that's an example.
Again, we we've never called that kind, um, but I think kindness is a different lens to look through all these things.
Jaclyn: Couldn't agree more. We, a lot of our work is. Uh, nested and very related to the idea of pro social behaviors. So our chief science officer is bringing in this background, you know, left Oxford to join us with this whole lens of all of it, empathy, gratitude, forgiveness, fairness, justice, all these different behaviors.
We call them, um, examples or extensions of how kindness shows up in the world. So kindness is the meta value that encompasses all those prosocial behaviors. So we're biased, of course, but we think it's all through the same one. So you're right. That is definitely kind, even if you've never said it was.
We're saying it today, but it's kind.
Matt: I like it. And actually being on this podcast has made me think about Should we use that word more in our, in our internal documentation or in other ways, because I do think it encompasses a lot of what we aspire to and a lot of what we want to encourage, particularly in behavior between employees, you know, so often.
And we've grown, I mean, we're over 1900 people now, you know, what's the antidote to internal politics or that zero sum thinking. Kindness is very much a positive sum philosophy, right? Like, uh, I can be kind to you. I benefit and you benefit. There's not like a, something that's taken away, I think at its most positive.
So that's pretty powerful. And how do we encourage that culture internally, particularly as we scale. And I would say that's one of the trickier things, because it's very easy for people to think about just our business unit or just a part of what they're doing without thinking really holistically about not just what we're doing within the company, but within the world,
Jaclyn: Hmm.
Yeah, I mean, definitely we can offline about that. And we think about this so deeply about the future state of work in our world and the role kindness needs to play. Um, a lot of our research has focused on trying to make a business case as much as you wouldn't want to have to do that. People do still, I think, need to see impact on things like bottom line or retention or employee engagement.
And now we've done that. We have so much to validate it. So the next era for us, and for the world, I think, not just kindness. org, but it's really Thinking about the role of kindness and business, you know, for a real, real successful company to make it and endure. I just think kindness has to be at the table of how the leaders are leading and building culture policies, procedures.
Um, so it sounds like you are probably a great case study.
Matt: Um, I think, yeah, I will introduce what it makes harder as well, which is performance management. So I would say our hiring and our culture selects really well for people who are kind, who are nice people. And so gosh, that makes it so much harder if we're not performing as a team.
And I'm very careful, you know, with automatic, we've always used the terminology of team, not a family. Because a family, you can't get fired, but a team, you know, we're trying to perform well in the marketplace and with other things. And so we do let go of people. We do do other things. Um, if we're not meeting our goals there and man, that is so much harder.
I would say it's one of the things that weighs on me heaviest as a leader is, um, yeah, performance management. In a environment, which probably is hopefully indexes high on the kind of scale.
Jaclyn: Yeah. Yeah. I think it is complicated. And when we think about it internally, ultimately it's not in the moment. So easy to see, but it's really honoring that person.
If they're not performing well, they're not able to contribute at the end of the day, then they're not. They're not going to succeed. You know what I mean? Like the kindest thing ultimately is for them to find a better place or a better home or a better team. It's just in the moment. It's not always easy to paint that picture when you're firing someone or let them go.
Um, but it's what's best for everyone at the day, typically. And
Matt: I've seen that so many times as well. Even when even people who've come back weeks or months later, weeks or months later and said, thank you.
Jaclyn: Yeah.
Matt: I think a lot of, I think it's Brene Brown who said clear is kind. Yeah.
Jaclyn: Clear as kind. Yes. Yeah.
Matt: Yeah. Another issue that we've had is feedback inflation.
Jaclyn: What's that look like?
Matt: Feedback inflation I would describe as, there's not a huge incentive for you to give a colleague negative feedback in our feedback systems, right? Especially if you like them and they're kind and they're a nice person.
However, I would say that is, uh, I think it's Kim Scott who has, who does Radically Candid, Radical Candor. She talks about this sort of. Four square of different ways you can communicate the best being radically candid, of course, but on the other end of it is kind of ruinous empathy, it's where you're trying to be nice to someone, but you're doing it in a way that doesn't actually serve them.
Um, and I would say that, uh, not sufficiently critical feedback falls into that, right? Because that person is then not going to be able to change their behavior or correct in a way that it's ultimately going to make them a high performer. But again, it's kind of like a short term easy versus long term easy.
Things that are hard in the near term, but really benefit you in the long term, are providing that really candid, clear feedback. And, yes, I do also think about the idea of, you know, candor and apathy. So, when I really care about someone, I'm gonna take more time to tell them, you know, what is most valuable for them to know.
Even if that's harsh, even if they don't like me after I say it or whatever that is, but if I don't care about them that much, I'll probably just, you know, go on with my day. There is that kind of idea of apathy is the opposite of love, not hate, you know?
Jaclyn: Yeah. When we, um, often get asked or, you know, if I'm being interviewed, I'll often have people ask what the difference is between kindness and niceness, um, or how we would distinguish those.
And, uh, what I, I go to is, To be nice is to not tell someone when they have food in their teeth and to be kind is to tell them when they have food in their teeth. Cause it's harder. It's you're making, you're uncomfortable. You're making the person uncomfortable. It's not ideal, but like you're letting them walk around after, you know, with food in their mouth.
So it's like, you're being polite, you're being nice. And that, I think it's the same idea. It's hard to do. Kindness sometimes take takes courage and it can be a struggle. That's why. We challenged the notion it's weakness. It's an incredible strength to be kind, to lead with kindness and be willing to do those things that are hard in the best interest of the individual or the team, the collective team.
Um, but that's what it requires. It's leveling ourselves up, you know, to really go that extra bit.
Matt: I love that. Yeah. I think a lot about, um, when you talk about nice versus kind, a story my mom actually shared with me, you know, it's probably not true or real, but it was cool around politeness. In this story, you know, someone's having dinner with the Queen of England and instead of using, you know, the right utensils to eat their quail or chicken or whatever it was, they pick it up and the whole table looks at them shocked like, oh my goodness, I can't believe you just did that because that's like not the like proper etiquette.
Yeah. But then the Queen seeing this Picks up her quail to make that person feel comfortable. And so this idea of etiquette and politeness, not being about. following a set of rules, but actually making people feel comfortable was just such a cool idea. And I've always loved that.
Jaclyn: Yeah. That's a great story.
Do you know if that's real?
Matt: We're going to say it’s real.
Jaclyn: Okay. Okay. I love that. So let's talk about unless anything else on the business side, otherwise I'd love to talk more about personal life and what that's looked like for you and the ways you're showing up in the other half of who you are.
But yeah, I don't want to leave anything out if there's anything else, when it comes to leadership that you think would be important to share when it comes to kindness.
Matt: I do think a lot about how an element of Kind leadership is also just understanding the people you work with. So something I am working on also as someone who loves to talk is listening and how to really listen with an intention and a presence that, um, yeah, that makes people feel heard and allows you to really understand where they're coming from.
Jaclyn: Do you have a tactic you found that's helped with that? I think that's a wonderful thing to try to work on.
Matt: Well, it helps to not talk so much. So that's one. I think, so for me, it's just maintaining that curiosity. Uh, when I think about the times also that have been most generative for me in my career, it's usually driven by.
Sort of a deep curiosity of what's, um, an area or what's going on. So I just, you know, try to, uh, orient myself towards a deep curiosity for every person I talked to, uh, regardless of their position or recognition society or whatever it is.
Jaclyn: Yeah, it's really beautiful. Man. It's our first org value actually.
And it for us shows up with not just how we treat each other and show up as team members and colleagues and vendors or, you know, whoever we're partnering with in the education space. It's just making sure with this work of kindness, we don't have it all figured out because humans are complex. And we're talking about something that affects every single one of us, you know, every seven to 8 billion people out there understands kindness.
It transcends difference. It connects us across those differences. And yet it's so intimate. It's so personal. It's, it's understood so differently. Sometimes in meetings we'll, um, when we're meeting a group for the first time, open it up and ask people to define kindness. And it's really incredible all these years later, how many new definitions still exist that we've never heard of what someone thinks about kindness.
And, um, it is about being curious and open minded and asking those questions and creating that space. So I admire that. And I really love that. That's something you're intentionally focused on. Thank you for sharing that. Okay. So personal life, tell us a little bit like where you're at. You're still running everything day to day, but you also, I know are so deeply invested in to charity and giving back and influencing nonprofits you're passionate about.
Um, I just would love to know a little bit of how your personal life, uh, is kind of showing up in that way.
Matt: Sure. Um, yeah, probably going back to those, you know, You know, younger days being involved with like Boy Scouts or, or the Catholic church, you know, I've tried to reserve, you know, 10 percent plus of whatever I'm making in a year to donate.
And I believe I've done that. Yeah. Every year I've been an adult. And, um, so some years that's more, some years it's less. Um, and, uh, I try to find. You know, because my orientation is definitely more like, you know, if I'm an investor, I'm an angel investor. If I'm doing technology, it's usually bleeding edge or like kind of edge of society stuff.
So I do try to find organizations that are maybe a little bit on the earlier part of their stage or things that aren't being more traditionally supported. So, you know, I love the Red Cross, but my donation probably isn't going to have as big an impact. Um, but for example, you know, five or 10 years ago, starting to donate to some, some of the psychedelic science and other things that we're having a lot of trouble including having named donors.
So donors that were willing to put their name on it from more of a mainstream perspective. Um, was really, really helpful. You know, Tim Ferriss really led that. He's a good friend. And so that was great to be able to participate in. Um, I think we met through Charity Water and today I think a lot about, I'm less directed than I used to be philanthropically right this second, partially because I'm curious in this sort of climate, particularly with AI and everything else that's changing, like what are going to be the highest impact causes and benefits over the next five or 10 years?
What is the equivalent of psychedelics 10 or 12 years ago? You know?
Jaclyn: Anything on your radar?
Matt: Hmm. Nothing great to talk about yet. There is something in open source where there are a lot of open source projects which are really crucial to the operating of society, actually. They're built into everything, but they have very little outside support, or they might be done by a very, very small team.
Open source itself is also kind of a culture of generosity, where it's less about, you know, What you're paid to do and more about like what you believe in. So incorporating some more direct funding for these sorts of things. I think it's really interesting. I guess the other thing I'll mention is just, I'm really into mosquitoes right now.
And well, you know, the, it's actually, if you ask what the most dangerous You know, thing in the world is to humans, it's not rhinos or tigers or anything like that. It's mosquitoes kill more people every year than any other, uh, organism. And so, and luckily it's not like all mosquitoes. It's like just a couple of species that cause all the issues.
So it's not like that Simpsons episode where you kill all the mosquitoes and then like something else takes over. Like there's, there's a very small subset of mosquitoes that cause all the disease and everything. You know, and I would say that's a little bit of a subset of thinking about pandemics and readiness and biohazards and AI and, you know, synthetic biology and some of these other more sort of frontier areas, um, that just being in San Francisco, I, I'm exposed to a lot and what might be the best interventions there.
Because I think there's been some wrong turns as well, you know, uh, effective altruism, which was a movement pretty big in the Bay Area. Uh, we've now seen some, some of the negative impacts of that as well. So just like you don't want ruinous empathy and feedback to colleagues, you don't want it in philanthropy.
And so, right. Um, yeah, I think about that a lot.
Jaclyn: I love that. Yeah. I feel it is such, I know every generation probably says like, no, we've all been through this time where it's like, this is unprecedented, but I really feel societally, globally. Our world is at a place where it's never been because of the role of these things that are the new frontier and, uh, you know, things like open AI and what we're doing, how we're connected, like what we're doing, um, to connect with people globally in ways we've never been able to.
So I think the long term implications are just so unknown. There's so much uncertainty and there's really. A lot of challenge in projecting or planning for that. But when you think of the future, what gives you the excitement, the optimism, the hope for how all of this is benefiting us? Because I think so much of the narrative is about the risk and the concern.
But what would you say are the things that can be encouraging to people?
Matt: I would say it's the radical democratizing forces of technology. And what I mean by that is that when you think of the biggest technological shifts of the past decades, you know, the iPhone that you and I, that you or I can have for hundreds of dollars or a thousand dollars or something is the same that like world leaders have or that millionaires or billionaires have, you know?
Um, so it's not like they, Tim Cook has a better iPhone than us. Um, Which is kind of powerful, because throughout history, typically, you know, kings or, or wealthy people would have a significantly different life experience, even, from everyday people. And so now we've got where, you know, information. So universally available with the internet.
The internet is by far the best thing humanity's ever done. Means of access around broadband, things like Sterling and other stuff that's coming around the corner. Like it's going to radically open up, um, for not just a couple of billion that are currently online, but for really every single human. Um, access to the world's knowledge, technology, wisdom, and then all the compute that's happening.
So Moore's law, everything supporting that is meaning that the technology that's in your pocket is going to be able to do more and more and more and more and more, which I also love because. Open source is kind of a distributed power. Um, so I don't want a world where there's only like a couple of AI companies and we all have to like, you know, interface with their gigawatt data centers and things like that to get any access to this.
It's kind of fun when it's in our pocket and these models can run actually on the edge, on your computer, on the phone. So, um, and with open source as well. So, you know, there's great competitors to the frontier AI companies and things like Mistral or even what Meta is doing. That really provide these things in a very distributed way.
So that's what, that's what gets me excited. And then, you know, I think about it, I think a lot of back to, it's been almost 20 years ago, but there was, I remember committing the code. to WordPress that created the plugin system. So at the time there was no way to really extend the software without sort of hacking the core files.
Created this plugin system around actions and filters that was meant to be kind of an alternative to traditional object oriented programming that would allow people to hook into the software and extend it. And um, the first plugin was called Hello Dolly and it did nothing. It just put some lyrics from the song Hello Dolly in your admin.
Um, it was kind of a demo. But I remember like shipping that and being like, wow, this does nothing today, but I'm really curious what people are going to build on this. And fast forward, you know, 19 years, 20 years, 60, 000 plugins and themes, including, you know, billions of dollars in revenue and everything built on top of this in transforming WordPress into e commerce or into a learning management system or other things.
These plugins have really become the core of. Why anyone's even heard of WordPress today. It's less of what we're doing and you know, the core software is cool, but like it's the whole ecosystem, which is really why. In the community, why people adopt WordPress. So, um, occasionally, you know, I feel that sort of sense like, okay, we're putting in the framework, we're building like a system, maybe not on like music notation or something that it doesn't do anything on its own, but maybe it enables a lot of creativity and stuff on top of it.
Jaclyn: Well, we're, we're actually coming, um, out to a close soon. So I think before we do that, any other thoughts? Anything you'd want to speak on around kindness, unkindness, any perspective you might have that you didn't get to share already. We'd love to just open that up.
Matt: Thinking about kindness. I also thought about growing up in Texas and how it's very much a driving culture.
And, you know, I typically had, uh, kind of an older beater car. So I, there was a number of times I broke down on the side of the road, just the incredible kindness of strangers. And that culture was, you know, really impactful on me. And I remember once I broke down in the left lane of like an eight lane highway, and there was no shoulder.
And a guy in the truck got out, stopped, got out of his truck, stopped traffic. So I could kind of, I had a tire blown. So, so I could kind of limp my way to the shoulder on the right. And, um, and then drove off, you know, I never met him. I never got to thank him, but I think about him as a lot as, as was one of the kindest things someone ever did for me, just the kindness of a total stranger.
Jaclyn: Yeah, so good. I love that. I love that. So much of our work has looked at that, the power of kind acts and the impact and long term impact. And, um, it's remarkable. And often people think it's about heroism or, you know, these life saving things, but sometimes it really is the simplest. things that stick with you and remind you of the power of kindness and never knowing who the person is.
We have a lot of research on the connection between strangers and the role kindness can play. So that's a really, really powerful anecdote. Thank you for sharing that. Well, we only have a few minutes left with you. So we love to end with a couple of things we do around Robin, where I'll just kind of throw Questions and you give me your first response.
Um, and then we end every episode choosing kindness. So first question, if you could define kindness in one word, what would it be?
Matt: Groovy.
Jaclyn: What? Groovy?
Matt: Yeah. Groovy.
Jaclyn: Yeah. See, we haven't had that one. That's amazing. If you could get everyone around the world to do one kind doc today, what would you want them to do?
Matt: I think to be present with someone they interact with.
Jaclyn: If kindness were a song, what song would it be?
Matt: If I were to kind of say a pop song, I'd say maybe Hey Jude from the Beatles.
Jaclyn: Oh, that's a great one. That's a great one. We have a Spotify list of answers, so that's gonna be, yeah, add it on.
Matt: If it were a jazz song, I'd say, um, maybe on the sunny side of the street, the recording with Sonny Stitz, Sonny Rollins, and Dizzy Gillespie.
Jaclyn: Ooh, okay. I don't know that one. So definitely can't wait to listen. Funny side of the street. Um, what are you reading or listening to, um, on Audible?
Matt: Oh, um, that's a good question. Right now I'm reading a book, uh, on breath by, I believe, James Nestor. Although, double check that. Yeah, it's just really interesting.
It's about how we breathe and how that impacts everything in our life.
Jaclyn: Who would you want to thank for teaching you kindness? I know you might have spoken to them earlier.
Matt: Mmm, I wish I could really thank my grandmother. who passed away, you know, 2005, 2006. Yeah. I only had one grandparent growing up, uh, but she was such a good role model and really taught me a lot of things about kindness, about work.
I think about also just having that sort of strong female role model in my life was really great. And, um, so yeah, she was, she would be who I want to think.
Jaclyn: Okay. So we end on action for us bringing this mission life is about. The choice and the agency, we all have our own kindness. So we love our guests to think about someone who they want to express gratitude or let them know, you know, you're thinking of them.
So you can either do it now. Um, in real time, we've had people call someone, which is always fun, or you can just tell us who you're thinking of and you can reach out to them on your own after this episode, but just would love to know how you would want to end choosing kindness for someone in your life.
Matt: Oh, and we spoke about him a little earlier, but I'll, I'll thank my friend Tim Ferriss. He, you know, we both met very much earlier in our careers and, um, it's been great to grow up together. And also he's exposed me to so much around, you know, sort of leading edge philanthropy or other things that, um, And a really positive impact in my life.
And I hope I've been the same for him.
Jaclyn: Love that. And Tim, I got to meet Tim and spend time with him when you and I went to Ethiopia. So sending you much love, Tim. And I think that's, yeah, that's a wonderful person. Um, and I appreciate that. Okay. Amazing. Well, Matt, so thrilled we were able to have you today.
And thank you for your insights and wisdom and perspective on kindness in your life and business and leadership. I definitely learned a lot myself, and I know our listeners will as well. So honored we could have you today.
Matt: And thank you for what your organization does. I think it's really important. I can't wait to see what the coming decades bring.
Jaclyn: Amazing. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us on this week's episode of the Why Kindness podcast. To learn more about everything you heard today from our wonderful guests, definitely check out our show notes. We hope you're leaving this episode inspired and reminded that every kind act truly does make a difference.
We'd love to hear how you're choosing kindness in your day to day. We write back to every email, so let us know what you think. And please leave a review on Apple podcast or Spotify. This podcast is one of the many ways we live out our organization's mission to educate and inspire people to choose kindness.
Visit our site today at kindness. org and sign up to become a part of our global community, which spans more than a hundred countries. It's free to join, and one of the many benefits includes being the first to get access to our latest research tools and even episodes of this podcast. We are so excited to get you involved in building a kinder world.
Please tune in next time as we continue to explore this big question. Why kindness?