And you can see us doing it with other projects in the future. So, that is, again, the curve we're doing with WooCommerce. The sort of means of productions are in the hands of the people. So, it's like, "Okay, now we're going to build Gutenberg," and Gutenberg will now open up an entirely new set of use cases to an entirely new set of people along our mission of democratizing things, which to me means making it accessible. So, as far as we get, WordPress got really easy, but then obviously more complex layouts or richer things were still hard. The good news is also that it could always be easier. So, it's easy to forget that that was just 10 or 15 years ago when these things were quite expensive and quite hard. People used to spend millions of dollars to do what now you can download and Woo does out of the box for free. This has all been possible for decades, but it used to cost a million dollars to have a CMS like WordPress and you'd probably spend a year building it, or you'd spend a ton of money paying for it. He was the God who stole the fire from the gods and brought it to the people. So, I sometimes tell folks that we have a Promethean task. If you look at the history of everything I've ever been involved in, it's taking something, making it really powerful, and then simplifying it. Ronald: Could that also be a danger of its success that, as it becomes more complex, that it becomes too difficult or is that something that Automattic's so conscious about and wants to work towards, to simplify, to make it easier, more accessible? It is its own project, which is this big, important, and complex thing that is on a path similar to where WordPress was in its early days of taking this thing that's really powerful and just making it easier and easier and more accessible and more accessible with every release. It could be anything that you imagine, but as soon as there's a credit card or something involved, it brings in an incredible amount of complexity, which is Woo is kind of now like the size and complexity of WordPress itself. And so, I don't think it's ever all the WordPress sites but some good chunk of people might want to have a commercial part of their, even if it's a personal site, maybe it's like selling prints from a photo you took or a little members area. Where does that go in the future? Well, WooCommerce will get easier and easier to use with every release. So, someone either is a little more technical or developer or had a developer help them, probably set up those WooCommerce sites. Matt: That's also remarkable when you think that, to use WooCommerce today, it is a more technical lift than WordPress itself. So, if you look at that trajectory since 2015 and where this is heading to, what is your prediction on that and how important is that figure? So, earlier this morning, I checked the statistics on WordPress and 43.2% is the latest famous statistic, but of those, 20.5% have also WooCommerce installed. It's been a lifeline for many businesses as well. WooCommerce at 20.5% of WordPress sites and what that means for the future And maybe you're selling something digital or physical or booking time or whatever it might be, but this can be a really, really empowering concept just like publishing was and still is for WordPress itself. It became democratized publishing and commerce, and very much so I believe that WooCommerce does take the philosophy, the mission, the sort of extensibility, everything that we love about WordPress and WordPress itself, and then brings it to this use case, which was nascent when we did the acquisition in 2015, but now is becoming pretty dominant, which is this idea that you have a commercial side of the open web as well. So, previously, Automattic's mission, which also overlapped with WordPress, was to democratize publishing. I guess there's a few different ways to answer that, but the first and simplest is that it was the first time in the history of WordPress that I modified my mission. So, just sticking to that topic, as of course, the title of the podcast is Do the Woo, how important has WooCommerce been for WordPress looking back? The importance WooCommerce has been for WordPress And one of which is WooCommerce going back quite a few years now when it was acquired under the name of WooThemes. So, I think everybody knows that you are one of the WordPress co-founders, but you also manage, own, and invest in a large portfolio of businesses. So, let me just dive in straight with a first question. It's really nice to have you on the first session of Woo Visions. And we have the first guest, which is Matt Mullenweg himself. And this one I'm co-hosting with the amazing Kathy Zant, who is the Kadence product manager at StellarWP. And we have a new show lined up for you, which is called Woo Visions.
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