The Latest from Chris Morrison
The Automattic TC-1
Sixteen years in and now valued at $7.5 billion, Automattic has found a multitude of strides, even as it strives to own ever more of the media market.
How doing everything wrong turned Automattic into a multibillion dollar media powerhouse
Nothing has been automatic about the success of Automattic. Today, for those who haven’t been paying attention, the company looks a bit like an overnight success story.
There’s nothing Automattic about balancing commercial growth with an open source developer community
The tech industry has made a full 180-degree turn with regard to open source in the 16 years since Matt Mullenweg founded Automattic, the commercial backer of open source CMS, WordPress.
Can social and e-commerce transform the future of the open web?
WooCommerce began life as WooThemes, a small design firm that didn’t look very different from the many others that created WordPress themes.
The future of remote work is text
It’s impossible to talk about Automattic without talking about remote work. The company is a role model and innovator in this area: It has been entirely remote since 2005, and at 1,700 employees, it
The Klaviyo EC-1
E-commerce is booming as retailers race to transform their brick-and-mortar footprints into online storefronts. By some counts, the market grew an astonishing 42% in 2020 in the wake of the COVID-19 p
How Klaviyo transformed from a lifestyle business into a $4.15B email titan
Startups are stories of feverish dreams and obsessive fears. Short of hearing it from the source, a glimpse into the inbox of a founder would be the best way to experience the travails they endure on
How Klaviyo used data and no-code to transform owned marketing
Email is the communication medium that refuses to die. “Eventually, every technology is trumped by something new and better. And I feel that email is ready to be trumped. But by what?” wrote the v
Marketing in 2021 is emotional and not just transactional
Brands are emotions made physical. The clothes we wear, the media we consume, the devices we use — all signal not only to others what we value and see in ourselves, they also are a way to construct
Drama and quirk aren’t necessary for startup success
Many of the stories in our EC-1 series tell tales of startups in the wilderness hacking out green field opportunities. Klaviyo is a different breed of company: One that went into an established market
3 lessons from Roblox’s growth to gaming dominance
Our recently published EC-1 on Roblox recounts the origin story and growth prospects of the company. But there’s one more piece to the story: what Roblox’s impact will be on gaming and the broader
Digging into the Roblox growth strategy
Could Roblox create a new entertainment and communication category, something it calls “human co-experience”? When it was a small startup, few observers would have believed in that future. But aft
The Roblox EC-1
Gaming has always been a part of human culture, but what may have once been a passive pastime enjoyed by some is now an ultra-competitive and lucrative business market with huge players duking it out
How Roblox avoided the gaming graveyard and grew into a $2.5B company
There are successful companies that grow fast and garner tons of press. Then there’s Roblox, a company which took at least a decade to hit its stride and has, relative to its current level of succes
How tech entrepreneurs think of Universal Basic Income
As tech has grown, policy debates have become an important pastime. Today’s tech industry aspires to replace human drivers with self-driving cars, secretaries with AI assistants, permanent jobs with
Remote workers and nomads represent the next tech hub
Amid calls for a dozen different global cities to replace Silicon Valley — Austin, Beijing, London, New York — nobody has yet nominated “nowhere.” But it’s now a possibility. There are two t