Press This: The Business of WordPress

Welcome to Press This, the WordPress community podcast from WMR. Each episode features guests from around the community and discussions of the largest issues facing WordPress developers. The following is a transcription of the original recording.

Doc Pop: You’re listening to Press This, a WordPress community podcast on WMR. Each week, we spotlight members of the WordPress community. I’m your host, Doc Pop, I support the WordPress community through my role at WP Engine and my contributions on Torquemag.io. You can subscribe to Press This on RedCircle, iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you find your favorite podcasting apps. You can also download the episodes directly from WMR.fm.

Now, WP Engine has recently announced DE{CODE}2024, the company’s annual developer conference. It’s a virtual conference that you can attend from anywhere, but it will be happening from March 19th to March 21st.

And joining me today is one of the guest speakers from DE{CODE}, Miriam Schwab, the head of WordPress relations at Elementor. Miriam, how are you doing today?

Miriam Schwab: I’m great. How are you?

Doc Pop: I’m doing super well. Thanks so much for joining us. You just arrived back from, I’m assuming, back from WordCamp Asia. So we will be talking about that later on in the show and talking about your talk at DE{CODE}.

But before we get into that, Miriam, why don’t you start off with just a little bit of your history in the WordPress space.

Miriam Schwab: Okay. So I’ve been in the WordPress space for about 17–18 years. I got into it actually after my fourth kid was born and I wanted more flexibility in my work life. Discovered WordPress, fell in love with it, and started offering it as a service.

That eventually developed into an agency providing custom development solutions for WordPress websites for businesses, generally larger organizations, a lot of high tech and big nonprofits.

I did that for about 13 years, and through my work in the agency became very familiar with the pros and cons of WordPress. So, you know, the pros being open-source flexibility, extensibility, and an amazing community. And the cons were, you know, struggles around performance and scaling and security. And I was looking for a solution.

And based on trends that were happening at the time, particularly around something called Static Site Generation, I came to the conclusion that if we could publish WordPress sites in static architecture, that would solve everything.

So, actually started working on that as a venture, sold the agency, built that up as a startup, and in June 2022 Strattic was acquired by Elementor, and I am at Elementor until today.

Doc Pop: You have this experience of coming from the agency side, doing a startup afterwards, and now working for Elementor, which is a powerhouse in the WordPress space. You’ve kind of, I guess, seen the three different types of businesses that I think can survive in a WordPress space, and you’re going to be talking about business and ways for entrepreneurs to kind of work within WordPress at DE{CODE}.

And again, that’s going to be coming up March 19th through March 21st is going to be DE{CODE}. You’re going to be on a panel with James Hall, who’s going to be the host, Sujay Pawar, the CEO and co-founder of Brainstorm Force, and Leslie Sim, the co-founder of Newsletter Glue—we love Leslie here, huge Leslie fans here.

And so you’re going to be talking about entrepreneurial solutions for WordPress. Was just wondering if you could tell me how things feel now compared to previous years as for entrepreneurs in WordPress.

Do you think this is a great place to be for entrepreneurs?

Miriam Schwab: I think that we’re at a really interesting place for the WordPress industry where on the one hand, I think in some ways it’s more challenging.

In the old days—I’ve been around long enough to say that—if you created a plugin and it provided value, it got attention. People were excited about it and it gained traction. And I think in some ways it was easier back then.

Now, the ecosystem has grown so much that if you are bringing something new to the table, I think that the efforts needed to gain awareness for it and gain traction are much harder.

On the other hand, I think that the industry has matured in a way that, I don’t know if any of us saw it actually coming, where it’s become much more business-oriented and there’s an awareness of the importance of the businesses in WordPress in terms of keeping it sustainable, supporting it, and taking it forward.

So, that newer business-y type of perspective I think is actually healthy for the industry. From that perspective, it does make it more viable for people to come and be like, “I want to build this product and bring this product into the space, and it’s going to be a proper business.” And I think there’s more respect for that and more appreciation for it than there was in the past.

Doc Pop: You mentioned something interesting about that professionalism or business kind of shift in WordPress. It seemed like you could just roll out a plugin and if there was a need for the plugin, people would find it.

And now, as you said, it does definitely feel like you have to be a little better at like, maybe having—you have to have a social account or maybe even have a Discord. You have to market it. You have to do a lot more.

So it seems like the investment is higher, but the payoff—there’s a bigger pie now for all of us to have.

Do you think that investment in startups in the WordPress space has changed with that, or is it still like it was before, but people have to put up a little bit more of their own capital now to start their own company in WordPress?

Miriam Schwab: I think from what I can see and what I’ve seen—so for a long time, there wasn’t investment into the WordPress space. And then there was like a few years where people started to be like, “Oh, WordPress is huge. Like that’s a ginormous addressable market, and so that seems like a good place to invest.”

And so hosting companies were taking on investment, whether from venture capital or private equity. And there was a lot of movements around that and acquisitions and, you know, Elementor took on investment at one point. And of course, Strattic, the company I co-founded, we were venture backed and we took on funding.

But I think there’s kind of been a slowdown around that. I think we will start to see more investment over the next 6 to 12 to even 18 months coming back. I do think that the slowdown in investment in the WordPress space has a lot to do with the general trends in the overall market where, you know, there was a kind of tech bubble that kind of burst.

And so investors are being more careful in general in the downturn of the economy, so that’s affecting the WordPress space. But I am hearing chatter and conversations of some WordPress companies that are actively working on raising funding.

And I think they will be successful and I really hope they are. I think it’s better for everyone. So I think if we all keep our eyes open, we’ll see some of that coming back soon.

Doc Pop: Yeah, and I’m thinking there’s folks like Yoast and Marieke who have left Yoast and are doing venture capitalism now in, presumably, investing in WordPress. So these are folks that have seen the WordPress space from both sides and are looking to invest in it.

Aside from outside investment, what are some of the advantages someone might have if they’re developing within WordPress, if they’re starting a company?

There’s obviously open-source tools that we have. Is that something that young entrepreneurs can use to start their WordPress businesses?

Miriam Schwab: I think WordPress is a great place to start for a few reasons.

One is, because it’s open source, your kind of startup costs can be pretty low. You know, you don’t have to license software and all sorts of things like that. And you can get up and running with some amazing tools that exist for developers and otherwise and, you know, just start working on your thing.

So getting an initial product to market, in terms of the costs and resource intensiveness of it, I think it’s pretty low in the WordPress space, and so that’s an advantage.

And then, once you get it to market, because of the cohesiveness of the community and the accessibility of the community—meaning the community is accessible to you pretty easily—you can start a feedback loop, which is super valuable, especially at the beginning of, you know, trying to get people to use your product, test it out, and give you feedback so you can make it better. And I think you might be able to have a tighter feedback loop in the WordPress community and potentially in other spaces.

So those are two pretty big advantages of starting to build a product in the WordPress space.

Doc Pop: So obviously we’re all giving back to the WordPress ecosystem and trying to contribute to core kind of on top of what we’re doing.

Do you see many businesses that are not just asking for feedback, but also, like, maybe a small business actually asking for contributions, you know? Like help us translate this or, you know, help us fix these bugs.

Is that also part of what businesses are doing now?

Miriam Schwab: I hope so, because the nature of the WordPress community is that people are just, are doing that anyways.

So Elementor is an example of that. So we’re contributing to the WordPress space, we’re contributing to the performance, core performance team, and to the plugin review team, and we sponsor the big flagship events, which we see as an important contribution to making sure that they happen and are well supported.

But interestingly, we, you know, our core plugin, like the free one, it’s in a GitHub repository, and people submit PRs to us to review and consider merging into our product all the time, and they don’t have to.

And, with regards to our translation, also, we have active translators, many of whom are in the company, but also not—people who just care about making sure it’s accessible in their language.

It’s quite amazing, actually. It’s remarkable. So I hope people, you know, set themselves up for that type of feedback, because the community wants to give it.

Doc Pop: You know, that’s a good spot for us to take a quick break. I definitely want to come back to talking about getting community involved, but we’re going to take a short break, and when we come back, we’re going to pick up our conversation about the business of WordPress with Miriam Schwab, head of WordPress relations at Elementor.

Stay tuned.

Doc Pop: Welcome back to Press This, a WordPress community podcast on WMR.

Today I am talking to Miriam Schwab, head of WordPress relations at Elementor, about Miriam’s upcoming panel with several other greats in the WordPress space about the business of WordPress.

And right before that break, Miriam, you touched on something that I think is very interesting, where you said that sometimes folks do—you put, you put stuff up on GitHub, right?

Which is kind of different than the ways we used to—we used to have a landing page and you know, here’s the final product and download the zip file—but now things are kind of different. And sometimes people like to be involved in a project and maybe even make a pull request, like you said, to help contribute.

How do WordPress businesses now—what are some ways that they can kind of keep those passionate users or make users more passionate and turn them into not just people who use the product, but advocates of the product?

Miriam Schwab: That’s a very good question. I think there’s a technical side and the communication side.

So first of all, make sure that you’re set up with easy tooling, easy instructions and directions, so that people can contribute with as little friction as possible. So you want to make their jobs—not that they’re their jobs, but their tasks—easier for them. You know, as easy as possible.

So that’s, you know, the GitHub repository, making sure you have documentation in there, how to contribute, how to submit different types of issues, etc. So, that’s number one.

And the other thing is communication. You know, in the end, people don’t understand the value of just saying “thank you.” People think everyone wants, like, some kind of reward, but very often, people just want to be recognized and given credit for their work and their contribution.

So I would say make sure that you have, you know, a good cadence of communicating with your contributors, talking to them, seeing how things are going, asking for feedback, and just saying thank you and giving them credit one on one.

But also, there’s ways to give contributors credit more publicly, like, you know, in a post or in different ways, like a more public forum, like saying, “Hey, Doc Pop, thanks so much for everything that you’ve been doing in the last month. You submitted 10 PRs, you know, pull requests or whatever issues, and we really appreciate it.” And, you know, sometimes that, that just means so much and it’s really important.

Doc Pop: I think now it would be a good spot for us to switch over a little bit. And this year has felt so much different than these last few years, just in tech in general. And you, you talked about some of those changes that have happened globally.

I’m wondering, what trends are you seeing on the business side of WordPress these days?

Miriam Schwab: I think we’re seeing a lot of consolidation with the bigger companies emerging as the main companies in this space, they’re, you know, picking up the smaller products and plugins. And those bigger companies tend to be hosting companies.

I think that there’s a positive aspect to it, which because those companies are so big and have so much volume in terms of revenue and resources, it creates greater stability.

Also, in the host—in the WordPress space, the hosting companies play a very important role in terms of how users experience WordPress. Because, whatever you do, your WordPress site needs to be hosted somewhere. How is that experience for you? It’s just, it’s equally as important as the WordPress experience itself. So, you know, strong hosting companies play a big role, and I think we’re just seeing that kind of consolidation.

My one concern with that, you know—and I think this is in any industry—is that there might be a stifling of innovation because of that. You know, creating something new is very risky and it might feel more comfortable to kind of just find a home in a hosting company.

And sometimes when products get picked up by larger companies, they kind of stagnate. So, that’s a concern, but I think with the right attitude and the right approach, even in this kind of era of consolidation, we can still encourage innovation in the ecosystem.

Doc Pop: I remember when that wave of acquisitions within the WordPress space started, I want to say like four years ago, but maybe more recently.

It felt like, well, in a way, this is nice because some of these folks did start something very casually and, you know, they were providing a service that people liked, but they didn’t have health insurance or, you know, they had a hard time, like, you know, being able to pay rent and they still had to kind of do other stuff.

And so that definitely, that first wave, at least, felt sort of empowering or kind of like a nice safety net. Like people had to—they didn’t have to be so reliant on generosity and they had a little bit more predictability and they could focus more on just building the product and not having to maybe worry about marketing or HR or anything like that because other folks were working on it.

And you are kind of touching on this thing where as it’s been going on, there’s this fear, maybe, that by having these acquisitions, things start to kind of go under these pillars and maybe be a little bit less usable by everyone or feel, just, I don’t know—

It’s an interesting…the vibe of those acquisitions has shifted a little bit where in the very beginning, it felt sort of like, “Oh, good for them.” And now, there’s a personal part of me where if somebody does get acquired, you know, there’s that little part of me that’s like, “Oh, I hope that this isn’t the end of that product or something. I hope this isn’t just a way to kind of stop that competition.”

Are you seeing any changes even in how acquisitions are happening now? Are they, is it, am I—am I being a little nervous about these acquisitions or is it still going pretty well as far as you’ve seen?

Miriam Schwab: I think it’s going well. I think we’ve seen some companies do acquisitions in a really good way where the plugins or products they acquired definitely continue to develop and provide value and that’s amazing.

So I think there’s enough of that. There was this recent news about Quickly, you know, shutting down. And so, you know, it can go either way. A product you love can be acquired and then kind of just disappear because nobody actually is investing in it.

On the other hand, if a product is standalone, that’s also risky, especially at earlier stages. And so if you love a product, it can also end up disappearing just because it’s so—I don’t know the reasoning behind Quickly, so just, I know that it happened—but in general, because running a business like that is so hard.

So, you know, if you go either way—and I just really hope that the companies in the industry, when they acquire something that people really love, do their best to try to keep it running and developing it and, you know, continuing to provide value.

But again, nothing, nothing’s guaranteed one way or the other. Yeah, that’s just how I see it.

Doc Pop: That actually kind of has me wondering if you think there’s any mistakes that companies might be making now in the WordPress space.

We’ve talked about how they could leverage different tools, but is there anything you’ve seen companies doing that you think maybe they shouldn’t be focusing on as much?

Miriam Schwab: No, not that I can think of. What I find to be very hopeful and I love to see is that, you know, in the last few years—and that to me is pretty new—there’s been some really cool companies that have risen up in the space.

Entrepreneurs who are really trying to make excellent products that provide a lot of value, they’re innovating. They’re even kind of pivoting or creating new angles to their products. And it’s really cool. And I think mostly they’re doing it right.

It’s a struggle, you know, there’s not exactly a right recipe for anything. So, everyone has to kind of get advice and hear what other people have to say, but then you also have to figure it out for yourself.

And overall, I see that these types of companies—and maybe that’s why I know about them—they’re very community oriented, which is great. And so then it gets on the radar of people like me and others, and I think that also is helpful. So, I’m seeing good stuff happening.

It’s a good thing to see because WordPress is over 20 years old, right? Almost 21. And you could think that it’s, you know, legacy and maybe people aren’t excited to innovate in the space anymore, but I’m seeing quite a lot of innovation. It’s great.

Doc Pop: We’re going to take one more short break, and when we come back, we’re going to wrap up our conversation with Miriam Schwab. So stay tuned for more after the short break.

Doc Pop: Welcome back to Press This, the WordPress Community Podcast. I’m your host, Doc Pop. Today, I’m talking to Miriam Schwab, the head of WordPress Relations at Elementor.

And at the beginning of the show, I talked about an event happening virtually: DE{CODE}. It’s a free event that WP Engine is hosting. It is a developer’s conference and it’s going to be happening March 19th through March 21st, 2024.

As you’re hearing this, that might be tomorrow. That might be today. That might be yesterday. Either way, good news. This is still something you can find if you are listening to this after DE{CODE} has happened, these episodes—the talks will be available for folks to watch. And Miriam’s going to be part of a panel called the Business of WordPress.

And I’m wondering, as someone who just came back from WordCamp Asia, which I’m so jealous of, Miriam. Did you see any business trends specific, kind of, happening at WordCamp Asia that stuck out to you?

Maybe something unique either to that area or something unique to that moment in time of where we are, that’s a little different than the last WordPress WordCamp that you went to.

Miriam Schwab: I know that we had some really great business meetings while we were there. Less, like, business-y, but more product oriented. There were some companies demo-ing their products, like new features and new directions, which is really cool.

My sense of the flagship WordCamps—Asia, Europe and US—is they each have their own kind of vibe.

And I would say that the WordCamp Asia vibe is pretty developer oriented, meaning a lot of the people who come to this conference are people who are developing with or for WordPress. They either, like, have their own little plugin or they’re providing WordPress development services.

So they’re there very much to learn. And there’s—this is just how I see it, and I may be wrong—but my sense is less to, you know, conduct business. Which is okay; it’s great that each event has its own kind of style and focus. It’s just, you know, a matter of being aware of that.

But definitely business was happening there to some extent. It’s just less business-y than, let’s say, Europe and US.

Doc Pop: Yeah, well, that’s fun. That sounds kind of neat. Less of the hallway chats and more people taking notes during the talks I can imagine. That’s pretty cool.

Miriam Schwab: Oh, totally. Yeah. They’re very enthusiastic audiences for talks at this conference.

Doc Pop: And let’s wrap this up since I have someone from Elementor here, why don’t you tell me a little bit about what y’all are working on this year? Like what trends that you’re jumping on and taking advantage of this year.

Miriam Schwab: Well of course there’s AI. So we launched our AI integration and we have an early launch of our next feature which is called AI Copilot, which is basically like an assistant for you while you’re working on your site, whether in terms of layout or content. I think that will be pretty cool and, in general, you know, we’re super excited about AI.

Also, we’re branching out with new products. So obviously, you know, people are most aware, familiar with our page builder, which is—we actually just crossed the 16 million active install mark which is super exciting. And we have hosting, but we’re also releasing what we’re kind of calling “apps.”

So we have a new plugin called Image Optimizer and the adoption there has been really great. We’re seeing it providing a lot of value for people. And stay tuned for more of those; there’s some others that will be coming along over the next few months.

So it’s exciting. It’s exciting to see, you know, new approaches within Elementor to our product suite and how we want to better provide value for our users.

Doc Pop: And on that note, where can people find what you’re working on online?

Miriam Schwab: So a very active place where we provide detailed updates about what’s coming or what has been released is actually our Facebook community. So I think it’s called Global Elementor…something. I would join that and stay tuned for what’s shared there.

And other places you can definitely follow me on Twitter. I try to make sure that I’m updating about our releases @MiriamSchwab, and we have the Elementor account as well.

And our blog. We actually have two blogs. We have our main blog, but we also have a developer blog at developers.elementor.com which provides a detailed breakdown of every release, what went into it, and, you know, that’s a really good place to stay on top of what’s coming and what was released as well.

Doc Pop: Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Miriam. And just one more reminder that folks can check out your talk about the Business of WordPress at DE{CODE} happening March 19th through March 21st. You can go to wpengine.com and just find the label that says DE{CODE} and click on that to be able to find those talks.

And that’s it for this episode of Press This, a WordPress community podcast. Next week, we’ll be talking to Ryan Singel about how WordPress and other open-source CMSs can help save journalism. It’s a very noble topic. We’re excited about that one.

Thanks for listening to Press This, a WordPress community podcast on WMR. Please visit us on TorqueMag.io to see transcribed versions of all these podcasts, plus more WordPress news and tutorials. You can also subscribe on RedCircle, iTunes, Spotify, or download directly from WMR.fm.

I’m your host, Dr. Popular. I support the WordPress community through my role at WP Engine, and I love spotlighting members of that community each and every week on Press This.