SANFRANCISCO
Matt Mullenweg has appointed a new board of directors and advisers to Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com, Tumblr and WooCommerce, weeks after the previous board attempted to remove him from the CEO role.
Mullenweg holds 84 percent of Automattic's voting power, giving him unilateral authority to reconstitute the board. The prior board voted to place him on paid leave in an ouster attempt, but Mullenweg regained control in 33 hours and 20 minutes and forced out or accepted resignations from the directors involved.
New board members include Hugh Howey, author of the "Silo" science-fiction series, and Amy Chan, author of "Breakup Bootcamp." Henry Khatachryan and Krutal Desai, co-founders of the social app IRL, also joined. IRL shut down after investigations revealed significant bot activity in its user base; the co-founders have since sued SoftBank and other investors, who themselves sued them for securities fraud.
New advisers include Jaime Waydo, former CTO of fitness-tracking company Whoop; Matt Van Horn, co-founder of June; and Hiten Shah, co-founder of analytics platform KISSmetrics.
Former board members Toni Schneider—founding CEO of Automattic and current CEO of Bluesky—General Ann Dunwoody, and Sue Decker departed. Mullenweg removed Dunwoody; Schneider and Decker resigned.
Mullenweg told Automattic employees in an internal Slack message that he now serves as CEO, President, Treasurer and Secretary for "purposes of Delaware law." He characterized the confrontation as bringing in "amazing supporters" and described the subsequent board meeting as "the most interesting board meeting in a decade."
