Automattic Founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg
You’ll Never Hear “No” Like This
Founders build their company on their own judgement. In the early days, you have the most to lose, and that control feels warranted. Most days that judgment earns its keep. As the team grows, more voices come to the table. When a key leader raises a hand about the hire you should undo, or the margin that has been sliding for a while, two things happen. That moment hands you information, and the person that raised it took a risk to do so.
If your judgement overrules that person, everyone watching takes note. Do that often enough, and the people that disagree with you stop trying. They leave, person by person and seat by seat. In a large enough company, a board seat or an advisor with a real vote holds for as long as you're willing to lose an argument to them. But if you control the votes, you never have to. A founder wrestled for control in front of lawyers, reporters, and a paper trail, and came out on top. But at what cost?
Thirty-Three Hours in a Slack Channel
On Wednesday, September 9, 2026, Automattic founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg posted in a Slack channel visible to all employees. Chief financial officer Mark Davies, he wrote, had "conspired" with directors Ann Dunwoody, Toni Schneider, and Sue Decker to vote him onto a paid leave of absence. "I voted against that," he added. By his account, he received the resolution 50 minutes before the meeting and asked repeatedly for time to have independent counsel review it, "even a few hours," which was denied. Davies told employees that Mullenweg remained on the board. Automattic's emailed statement said Davies would lead as interim CEO with the board's "full confidence," and the board has never publicly shared its reasons.
Mullenweg had other plans.
Sources told TechCrunch he removed other admins from the company Slack and told employees everything had been worked out; at one point he posted, "I'm a pirate now." On Saturday evening a spokesperson told TechCrunch he was chairman and CEO "with full support of the board." In its statement, Automattic put the gap at 33 hours and 20 minutes.
The directors that voted him out were gone within days.
TechCrunch confirmed with sources that Schneider and Decker resigned, that Mullenweg removed Dunwoody, and that he let go both Davies and chief legal officer Andy Missan. By September 25 Mullenweg had a new board: novelist Hugh Howey, who hiked the Camino de Santiago with him in 2018, "Breakup Bootcamp" author Amy Chan, and Henry Khachatryan and Krutal Desai, co-founders of the app IRL.
He pulled this off with his voting shares; he said in 2024 that he controls 84% of the vote. He also posted on X that a founder without a coup attempt every few years is not hiring strong enough leaders.
The vote came after two years of public disputes.
At WordCamp US in September 2024, he told the room that WP Engine customers should think about switching hosts at renewal, and in a follow-up blog post he called the company "a cancer to WordPress." He banned WP Engine from WordPress.org soon afterward. By December a California district court judge ordered the access restored; Automattic called the order preliminary.
That same year, TechCrunch reported, he told employees to quit with severance if they disagreed with him, and 159 did. In 2025 he deactivated WordPress.org accounts after two contributors allegedly said they would spearhead a fork; those involved denied it. Layoffs that April included longtime employees, sources told TechCrunch.
In February this year, WP Engine's amended complaint alleged that Mullenweg threatened to take its customers with a carrot-or-stick line and described his approach to its defiance as "nuclear war." Automattic replied that there was "nothing new here."
When Psychological Safety Is Scarce
In the Vital6, Mindset is how a founder sorts disagreement: as information to weigh or as a fight to win. Mullenweg's own words are the evidence available. He called WP Engine "a cancer," called the board's vote a "coup attempt", and told employees to quit if they disagreed. This goes beyond leading through command and control; it looks like waking up every day looking for an argument.
For Leadership, running a company with an iron fist does little to build a culture of psychological safety. Establishing a governance system has little impact on stability when a board’s judgement can be easily overruled. Automattic's board tried it, and it lasted 33 hours.
The evidence has been building for the past two years on public record. While the company runs an ecosystem that powers 40% of the internet, the distracting legal battles are revealing instability and tension inside a once resilient tech darling.
The Lesson For You
Think of the last person on your team that pushed back on something you had already decided. It could be the bookkeeper that flagged aging receivables and stopped mentioning them after you waved it off. Maybe it’s the sales lead that pointed out the price list hadn't moved in three years and now sends the numbers without comment.
Are they still working for you? Not as in drawing a paycheck, but working to make the company the best it can be? Or have they learned from your judgements that it’s better to stay quiet? Nobody will log the moment feedback stops making it to your desk, but when it does, the isolation creates more exposure than your veto was trying to protect.
Who told you “no” in the past twelve months, and what happened to them afterward?
If your best manager thought you were wrong about something, would you hear about it from them directly, second-hand, or not at all?
Which cross-check at your company (a review meeting, a partner's veto, an advisor) could you override tomorrow if it said no, and what stops you?
The Vital6 Assessment shows you how these dynamics are playing out in your business right now.
Want to go deep on the Vital6? I wrote a book about it.
