The board of Automattic has sidelined the founder who built it, placing Matt Mullenweg on paid leave against his wishes.
Mullenweg told staff in a company-wide Slack message that chief financial officer Mark Davies had worked with board members Ann Dunwoody, Toni Schneider and Sue Decker to push him out. He said the resolution reached him 50 minutes before a meeting began, and that requests for a few hours to consult independent lawyers went unanswered. Davies, now interim chief executive, told employees the founder keeps his board seat.
No public explanation came from the commercial company behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce and Tumblr. Mary Hubbard, executive director of the WordPress.org open source project, said the foundation was untouched and that Mullenweg remains its leader.
The upheaval caps a bruising stretch for Automattic, which has fought hosting rival WP Engine and reworked its contributor programs over the past two years.
For founders, the lesson is that board control outlasts the honeymoon. Even the builder of the web’s most used publishing platform answers to a majority vote.
