I’ve been blogging now for approximately 8,465 days since my first post on Movable Type. My colleague Dan Luu helped me compile some of the “greatest hits” from the archives of ma.tt, perhaps some posts will stir some memories for you as well:
Where Did WordCamps Come From? (2023)
A look back at how Foo Camp and Bar Camp inspired WordCamps.
Getting Real Feedback as a CEO (2018)
How do you make sure you get good information when you’re CEO? Something we’ve been trying that’s been working is having an anonymous internal forum. Like Blind, but internal to the company, and really anonymous, without anything linking a user ID to a comment.
That time Wix built their closed-source mobile app on GPL code.
What I Miss and Don’t Miss About San Francisco (2015)
Self explanatory 🙂
Why you need to think things through from first principles and not just blindly follow advice.
Why the Web Still Matters (2014)
A guest post by Ben Thompson of Stratechery on why “the web is dead” comments were wrong in 2014. Still true today!
A discussion of Stallman’s four open source freedoms. Our open source Bill of Rights, if you will.
The Intrinsic Value of Blogging (2014)
On ignoring vanity metrics and blogging for intrinsic reasons
What’s in My Bag 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2020, 2023, 2025
What I’ve been carrying in my travel bag
Why Your Company Should Have a Creed (2011)
I’m really jazzed that dozens of companies have adopted this or similar ideas since then.
1.0 is the Loneliest Number (2010)
On the importance of releasing quickly and getting feedback.
A discussion on the Twitter API missing the boat on, as Jack Dorsey put it, becoming a protocol.
Just like they say, youth is wasted on the young, I think I squandered school when I was in it.
What Startup Idea Would I suggest? Start a Bank (2009)
There’s been a lot of action in the payments space since 2009. For new companies, we have Square (2009), Stripe (2010), and Wealthsimple (2014), among others. Ally Bank (rebranded from GMAC in 2010) has also been trying to provide a modern customer-focused experience.
Six Steps to Kill Your Community (2009)
Platform and product anti-patterns.
In Defense of the GPL for Open Source Projects (2009)
This was a response to a popular post about how GPL open source projects would lose out to projects under licenses like MIT, BSD, and Apache. I didn’t agree then and I don’t agree now.
Self explanatory 🙂
Infrastructure as Competitive Advantage (2008)
On the importance of performance, reliability, and security. This was a core priority for us and it shows. We dominate the competition on third-party performance comparisons at the platform level and on the default user experience, and our security is top-notch.
The Price of Freedom and Open Source Licenses (2007)
A response to a user who wanted the ability to remove GPL freedoms from WordPress.
How PHP5 forced us to divert time and attention away from users to deal with migration costs.
Mitch Kapor vs. Mark Zuckerberg (2007)
At Startup School, Kapor advocated for having team diversity while Zuckerberg advocated for a “young and technical” because the best work comes from young people. Now that Facebook (Meta) has grown up, Zuckerberg is doing what Kapor said companies should do and not what Zuckerberg said companies should do! Zuckerberg’s trusted people aren’t young anymore and aren’t being replaced by the young.
Sun Isn’t Relevant to Startups (2007), and Followup (2007)
A discussion of Sun’s Startup Essentials program and Jonathan Schwartz’s (then CEO of Sun) reply.
The RSS Feed Validator is Dead to Me (2006)
The RSS 2.0 feed validator is old news today but the experience here is a good example of why people didn’t take any of these validators seriously and they’re all old news
There’s No Correlation Between Hours Worked and Work Done (2006)
Self explanatory 🙂
Should We Have Hidden Options? (2005)
A discussion of the hidden cost of hidden options.
We probably missed some, if there’s a post you think should be included leave it in the comments.