Matt Mullenweg is a young entrepreneur and the founder of popular open-source blogging software WordPress which he started whilst still in high school.
Mullenweg's WordPress has become the No. 2 blogging platform behind Google's Blogger, signing up 10,000 new bloggers daily.
WordPress is "open-source" software, which means that anyone can access and contribute to the program code, Which is a major issue as it is opened to security threats.
Matt who wanted to become a jazz saxophonist, after studying performing and visual arts in high school, but ended up spending most of his time coding and also loves photography.
He started by launching Ping-O-Matic with fellow wordpress developer Dougal Campbell in april 2004, Ping-O-Matic which currently handles over 1 million pings a day.
He quit the University of Houston after two years when tech news site CNet offered him a job in San Francisco and said he could continue dabbling with WordPress on the side. He left CNet when WordPress got too demanding.
Mullenweg released WordPress 1.5 "Strayhorn in February 2005, which had over 900,000 downloads, he left CNET in October 2005 to focus on wordpress
He founded Automattic, the business behind WordPress.com and Akismet in In late 2005
Mullenweg acquired the Gravatar service reportedly and also turned down an offer of US$200 million for
automatic in a deal woth US$200 Million.
In March 2007 he was named #16 of the 50 Most Important People on the Web by PC World, reportedly the youngest on the list.
Mullenweg being named to the Top 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30 by Inc. Magazine and one of the 25 Most Influential People on the Web by BusinessWeek, again the youngest on BusinessWeek's list.
Automattic began with $1.1 million in funding from several venture-capital firms. After an unsolicited bid for the company came in for $150 million — Mullenweg won't say from whom — it received a second $29.5 million round of financing. Investors in the company include VC firms Polaris, True and Radar, and the New York Times Co.
