The WP Minute+

[00:00:00] Chris: We are, we've evolved quite a bit, I would say, beyond just selling Gutenberg blocks or patterns, which is where we started. . When we started X Extendi, our goal was to make WordPress easier. So like you mentioned, automatic, that's where Arthur, my co-founder and I were prior to starting X Extendi, and that was our first real, Opportunity to be exposed to the WordPress ecosystem for all.

[00:00:23] Its all its glory and all of its faults, and we saw how hard it was for a lot of people to get started. And so with X Extendi, that was the goal we set out to. That was, that was the problem we set out to solve when we left and. it started with a template library, pattern library, that allowed us to kind of figure out how to make beautiful designs and sites using just core components.

[00:00:46] Not requiring a third party builder or, custom block collections or things like that in order to get that done. And we've evolved to. A full onboarding solution for WordPress where hosts can use X extendi to help their customers be successful. So that's, that's a, that's our focus now is working with web hosts to make WordPress easier, activate, retain, and grow their WordPress customer base.

[00:01:11] So that's been fun.

[00:01:12] Matt: When you think about making WordPress easier for, the end user to me, like, again, you and I, and, and probably people listening to this, were very close to the WordPress flame. WordPress was going to be 20 years old fairly soon, and, When I think of how to make WordPress easier for, for users immediately, like my brain goes to, oh my God, like what is the internet?

[00:01:36] How do you get a domain name ? Like, how do, like how does technology work? what is a web protocol? When I start thinking about all these things that actually impact the most basic users, starting out like, how do people access my website, which is crazy to say in 2023. Has there been any revelations in your journey with X extendi when you first.

[00:01:55] What makes it easy for a user to where you're at today?

[00:01:58] Chris: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, It is wild do, doing kind of user research and watching people go through the flow and seeing where they get stuck. and just to your point, like how basic, how some very basic things to all of us that know the space really well are not basic or not easy or not intuitive to someone coming in fresh toward WordPress or even somebody with a little, a little bit of experience, but they don't live and breathe it every day.

[00:02:24] and for us, like we. Kinda the first focus for us in this kind of onboarding solution was how do we help people get an initial set of pages set up, styling that matches their brand and their preferences, some functionality that they need that aligns with their goals. So if they're looking for an e-commerce store, or if they're looking to start a blog or whatever it is, whatever they're looking to do, how do we get them set up in a, in.

[00:02:50] kind of off to a good start, but what we saw in our user research was, people would go through that, they would find that process pretty slick. They'd say, oh, that was easy. Awesome. And then they'd get [00:03:00] dropped into WP admin or the editor or something and wouldn't know where to go next. So even something as simple as like understanding that you need to click update before your page is published, the changes are published or you see the very top bar, you have options that say edit.

[00:03:18] Chris: Edit page, maybe you have something that says customized there all these different items. So there's a one in three chance that someone picks the right thing for what they're looking to do, but it's, people just don't know where to go next. So that's been, I think this is the type of research that companies like Wix and Squarespace and Shopify do.

[00:03:35] They're kind of look at how people go through the flow, where they get stuck and try to make it as simple as possible. and so for us, like we've, we've really had to, evolve. Our product to not just be about that initial experience, but how do we then teach people and guide people through the rest of the steps?

[00:03:51] And so yeah, that's, that's the most surprising thing, is how things that we take for granted, because we use them every day, are just totally not intuitive to, to some brand new users. So

[00:04:01] Matt: I wanna crack open the coach's playbook here a little bit because of your past experience in,. What I'll say is air quotes the real world or the enterprise landscape, or especially at automatic. a lot of WordPress product builders. we build our thing, we get to Twitter and we say, here's a, here's a tweet.

[00:04:18] hey user, it's so easy to add this block here. follow my tutorial on my blog, and we start thinking about marketing and promotion and reaching customers on this sort of like one to one basis, right? How can I help this one person do this one thing? Because isn't it cool that I've built this and I want to help folks?

[00:04:36] Matt: I'd imagine, cuz you've, you sort of said it before that you're working more with web hosts because why not work with one customer that could get you thousands of customers versus one customer that only gets you one customer. Is that a particular strategy? Is there anything there that you can share to enlighten some other product owners?

[00:04:52] Chris: Yeah, it is. I mean, I think it comes to, comes back to like where we, where in the user's journey we want to be involved and help them. And for us it's right at that initial stage, right? We don't want to help someone. Once they've tried it on their own, they've installed a bunch of different page builders or tried a bunch of different themes and failed and struggle, and they're frustrated looking for a solution, and then they find X extendi.

[00:05:16] That's not the experience that we, that we want for that user. So for us, it's particularly important to partner with the hosts because that's where the users are starting their WordPress journey. they. , they're not downloading WordPress onto their computer and building their site and then finding a host.

[00:05:32] Everyone starts almost ev, almost everyone, I should say. It starts with a host, right? So, so for us to impact that experience to make sure that those customers are successful and they stick around both at that host, but also within WordPress, right? Because if someone's signs up for. WordPress plan and they fail.

[00:05:49] They're not gonna go just try another WordPress host. They're most likely churning to Wix or Shopify or one of these other solutions. So, so that's particularly important for us. But it's also, I think, from day [00:06:00] one, we've been focused on distribution. It, it is hard to get in front of users. It's easy to put out a tweet, and sometimes you can build a following and grow that way.

[00:06:09] And that is a, a valid way to grow a business. But for us, we always, were kind of thinking about how do we reach customers in a way so that we can have the biggest impact possible. So, and, and the hosting channel is a, is a, is a good strategy for that for us.

[00:06:25] Matt: Is it as easy as saying, Hey, web host, you don't wanna build this beautiful UI and these blocks and these patterns and these integrations, we've already built it for you. And oh, by the way, maybe you can white label it to a degree and we'll support you on a more enterprise sort of offering. Is, is it as easy as that or a little bit more challenging?

[00:06:43] the, the messaging is quite, quite straightforward. when we talk to hosts, we talk about the problem that we're solving, the fact that a lot of their users struggle with WordPress and, just pre-install a few plugins, adding a form plugin and a couple, themes and some cashing plugin, like that's not enough to help those customers be successful.

[00:07:02] Chris: And, To a person they, they agree with and validate that problem. there, there was not along very, very rigorously, vigorously, when they hear that and they, they, they have this issue. working with those, I mean, Most of the time, they're not as deep into the WordPress ecosystem, despite it being 80, 90% of their business.

[00:07:23] I mean, a handful of them are right. You have some of the very large hosts that are very involved and have teams focused on their WordPress offering. The vast majority of hosts in all these different geographies, in different regions, like they. They don't go to Word camps, they don't listen to the WP Minute, even though they should, and maybe, maybe, maybe more of them will over time, but they're just not as deep in the ecosystem.

[00:07:44] So, so kind of reaching them, kind of describing our value proposition and our approach. I think it's. It's not always super straightforward, but the, the, the me, it really resonates the message and then our, our solution doing so in a way that combines the kind of ease of use of some of the close platforms with the power and flexibility of WordPress that you still get so,

[00:08:07] Matt: Hmm. There's. An obvious probably win as well. And, and maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, but how about integrating with other themes,becoming the premier sort of Gutenberg integration, four themes. Is that on, on the plate or is, or do you find that theme companies, especially smaller ones, are kind, trying to do it all themselves and an integration just doesn't.

[00:08:30] Chris: We, we've taken the approach of we want to be theme agnostic, so we wanna extend how to work well, regardless of which theme with an asterisks, that as long as it's a modern kind of block-based theme that's taken advantage of everything that's coming out with WordPress, people can switch and shouldn't be locked into a theme.

[00:08:47] I think we'll see that more and more actually as more themes. Decouple functionality and content with the styling layer, the kind of the style and design layer. and I think that'll be exciting [00:09:00] for most WordPress users where switching a theme doesn't have to be a, a big project and a, you hold your breath and you hope it all works out and you're not sure you have to go redo a bunch of stuff because so much was tied to the theme.

[00:09:11] and so we're, we're kind of all in on that future where we have, our own theme. It's called extendable, but it's very lightweight and it's meant to. This canvas that we can build everything on top of. And if someone wants to switch to a different theme, that's totally fine as well, so.

[00:09:26] I'm gonna paraphrase of course, everyone's favorite thing to do. Matt Mullenweg, the state of the word 2022, which is roughly about a month ago. Sort of, it said in passing, like, boy, wouldn't it be great to only have one theme, , or like, no more core, no more, sort of like that, that annual theme, 20 20, 20 21, 20 22.

[00:09:45] Matt: So on, any sort of in passing said, wouldn't it be great to, to have this, like this one theme? That's always, I mean, I've seen plenty of, discourse around that idea, like, why do we make one every year? Isn't this the point of like, Gutenberg and patterns and, and full site. Do you think that, would be disrupted, the theme market, any sort of take on what it would be like if WordPress just came with a core canvas theme?

[00:10:08] And does that threaten you at all from a product perspective?

[00:10:13] Chris: I think, there will be some evolution in the role that themes play. I think that's pretty obvious, like, as Less of the functionality that you need to power a site. It ends up coming with the theme. And I think that has benefits for users where they can switch more easily. They can, they're not locked into something that.

[00:10:32] Makes it very difficult for them to, kinda maintain the site that they have. Even if they wanna switch the, the kind style design layer. I, I think there will always be a need for high quality designs, both the kinda styling elements of a site, high quality. Kind of layouts and patterns and, and things like that.

[00:10:51] the form that that takes, whether that is someone packages that all up into one theme and, and ships that, or sells that or offers that to users versus having these things be more. individualized where people can mix and match and kind of at pick their own styling, but also use patterns or layouts that, that, that fit what they're looking to accomplish.

[00:11:10] Chris: So I, I do think, I don't know if it makes sense fully to have, flip a switch and have just a single theme. I don't think we have the infrastructure within WordPress to really support that and allow people to pull these different components easily. But I think as much as we. Decouple things, gives users more flexibility and allows 'em to get to a better spot.

[00:11:32] Matt: Last question on this first segment of the program, full site. Moving faster and better than you thought, or slower with more friction. , what, what's your take on the development of full site editing? And let me give you a second to to, to think about it. I'll frame it with, my God, the other day I was using a new full site editing theme, and I don't know if it's the theme or if it's just full site editing, but the experience to add a menu [00:12:00] item, a navigation item in full site editing in a sub menu.

[00:12:04] Context, literally impossible. Like the dr the the, the fly out is like going off my screen and I have to like zoom in and put my mouse pixel perfect to just get the link to get the cursor in there. And I was like, this is terrible. No one's ever gonna do this. so yeah, that's my that, that's my caveman experience of full site editing.

[00:12:24] But what's your thoughts on full site editing? Is it getting there faster? Better than, than you expected?

[00:12:29] Chris: I, I don't know about the timeline. I, I, I, I know that there are things that are really hard to do still in full site editing, with the site editor. There are things that even if you can do it, It's hard to figure out how to do it. people don't even know that that certain things are possible yet.

[00:12:45] and I know I, I've done, Anne McCarthy will do these, monthly testing calls for testing. That's actually a pretty cool experience cause you can see what's coming down, kind of in future future work. And so you can see how some of these things are evolving. Menus was one that was, was one of the testing things just last month or a month, two months ago or something like that.

[00:13:05] Chris: And there was a prototype of a much better experience. So I have. Confidence that all of these things will be made easier. None of these, none of these issues I think that you're describing or all of us feel are unknown to the team. It's just kind of working through it. I think everyone wants it to move as fast as possible, and everyone would love to move twice as fast, but I think.

[00:13:27] There are a lot of components to full side editing and a lot of different use cases, cross WordPress, people use it for a whole host of different things. So it's, it's always gonna be a challenge to keep up with every, everything that everyone wants to be able to do and make sure that that's intuitive and accessible and easy for people.

[00:13:44] But, we'll, we'll, I think we'll get there. So.

[00:13:47] Matt: I wanna now, sort of transition to talk about, the business, of Word. The WordPress ecosystem and sort of your crystal ball moments for the rest of 2023 and what you see happening. I've seen, and, and here's the first sort of question here is where do you think, how do you think should WordPress product companies get better at business?

[00:14:08] And I'll frame this again to give you a second. There's a , there's a, a well-known company in our space. I won't say the. it's sort of like cool. Objective. is the, is the, is the riff of the name. And a lot of people are upset that there's this constant cross promotion, constant heavy handed upsells in some products.

[00:14:29] They have a suite, a range of products. and. On one hand, it's like, this is what happens when you get to this size business. These are the things you have to do to acquire new customers, to cross-sell, to upsell, to let your existing customers on one product know that there's another product in the suite that does this, this thing that you're looking for too.

[00:14:51] And I think for a lot of the, die hard WordPress people, it rubs them the wrong. I see both sides of the fence. Sometimes it can be annoying, [00:15:00] sometimes it's is businessman and this is what has to happen. I think there's going to be an elevation of more targeted marketing, seo, user interface integration.

[00:15:11] I think all of this has to level up. That's my take on it. Do you feel the same way that businesses have to level up their business game in 2020?

[00:15:19] Chris: Yeah. Think there are ways to, for all sorts of all businesses, to reach customers in a more relevant way, reach the right person at the right time with the right message. And for the most part, and the same is true in the hosting world actually. If you go and sign up for a hosting plan, you are bombarded with six to 10 other different products that you can, you can sign up for.

[00:15:43] You don't know what they are, you don't know why you need them. That, that that company doesn't, also doesn't know why you need them either. They're just kind of shoving things at you and trying to get you to buy more things and increase their attach rate, so to speak. I think that's generally how.

[00:15:59] Traditional advertising has worked within WordPress, and promotion. It's kind of, putting an ad somewhere, trying to, get someone to upgrade, get someone to be aware of your other product, but it's not really relevant for that user most of the time. and so it ends up being annoying.

[00:16:14] It ends up being viewed as clutter and, and not something you need. So I think there are, my, my hope is that more of this evolves, Kind of personalized, relevant communication to, to users. So it's not just a a banner advertisement that shows up, but when someone is working through. A particular task. And then, at that moment, that's when they need something, some other solution that will help them and be of, be of value to them.

[00:16:43] And for us, as an example, like we will, as people are going through the flow of X extendi, one of the big questions we ask everyone is what are their goals? I mentioned this earlier, but both what type of site are they building and what are their goals? What are they looking to achieve? And that allows us then to give them the functionality and.

[00:16:59] Pretty relevant recommendations that align with their goals. And so I think everyone should be looking to for how they can do that, whether you're a, a web host or a WordPress product company. But how can you find either a really relevant partnership, some kind of op moment to, to message to that customer that is really relevant to them?

[00:17:19] So I think there'll be opportunities to approve, but it's tough. I mean, especially in WordPress, because a lot of c. have very little by way of like product analytics, like how people are using their products, where people find value out of their products. it's like you, you get some reviews on, on the, on the repo, but, it's, it's hard to understand how people use your products.

[00:17:36] So I think that'll be a good first step as people start to build, do user testing, user research, talk to your customers, really understand how they're using the product, and then you'll find really relevant ways to, market to them in, in, in a good.

[00:17:51] Matt: Does the hair on the back of your neck stand up at all? When you see, Matt announce these new tags for themes and plugins to sort of self-identify his [00:18:00] words, self-identify as a commercial endeavor, I forget all the. The tag names off the top of my head. Commercial open source. There's another one.

[00:18:07] and then there's, the canonical plugins, with a right, with right few months after, a few weeks after, there's an announcement of like, there's going to be a new ui, a new interface for wordpress.org/themes, and one would imagine that would eventually come to plugins. We all know there's billions.

[00:18:22] Matt: With an s at the end of the billion, going through wordpress.org. I've talked about it with Matt before. I'm sure you all have talked about it as well. internally at, at extendi and or maybe even at automatic, that that is a massive opportunity for a marketplace. Caveat being, I know how hard it is to, to launch a marketplace and the infrastructure you'd need for it.

[00:18:41] but there's billions of dollars passing through that. Does that, does that worry you at all? Like how results are gonna be surfaced, to end users, to what's going to be recommended to what these tags might mean for default filtering in the future? Does that ever come into play?

[00:18:57] no, I'm not really worried about the tags in particular. I guess I would say, I think it is really hard for people to find the right solution for their needs today, and so the. Experience for people to find plug-ins needs to improve tags, I think will only help that really, I think, and in some way I think people hear that and they're worried that if I'm a commercial, if I have a commercial product that also has a free version, or even if it's not a free version, it's, know, requires an account signup or something like that, then I will be.

[00:19:31] Chris: it'll be harder for me to be found and people will, my, my, my result will be deprioritized. I actually think the opposite will happen in many cases. If you're a business creating a website and that website is mission critical to the success of your business in some way or another, you actually may want something that's a commercial product.

[00:19:49] You may want something that, has a real team behind it, and it's not just something that someone built and put up out there for the world to use, but isn't going to be supported long term. have, have the functionality that you need. so I, I think in, I think there, there may be a few kind of growing pains as we try to figure this out, but, but trying to figure out how we can better surface the right solution to people, whether it's a commercial option or a free option, or some sort of canonical, it's just something that's part of, the community that, that's driven.

[00:20:20] I think, I think that'll, that has to improve and I think hopefully it'll be good in the.

[00:20:25] Matt: Fair enough, for folks who have been sitting on the sideline watching investments in other WordPress products and services, acquisitions, seed rounds and all of that stuff, this is just a soapbox moment for you if you have a take on, anyone trying to raise money this year, maybe this quarter anyway, or the next two quarters, in the WordPress space.

[00:20:45] Any words of advice or any outlook on what maybe m and a looks? For WordPress product companies, throughout the rest of the year or investment or the health of the WordPress e.

[00:20:56] Chris: Yeah, I'm, so, by way of background, like at Automatic, one of the [00:21:00] things I was working on was both acquisitions and, investments that we made as a company. And then when we started X Extendi, we raised capital as well, both from a couple of traditional,venture investors and, but, but more, more of our, more of our, capitals come from, people with relevant experience within the WordPress community.

[00:21:17] and I think about, I mean, m and a has already slowed down right from, it's like the heyday of like during Covid, when the internet was going crazy and, everyone was, seeing. Higher growth than they'd ever seen before. And, there was a good time, good opportunity for a lot of folks to move on to other opportunities.

[00:21:35] Chris: I think there'll still be opportunities for m and a,where there's a good strategic fit between the companies. So I think the best bet for anyone out there who's thinking about it, a potential exit for their business is, Obviously try to grow the, kind of the best business you can, but also start to build some partnerships and relationships with other companies with whom your product or your offering may be a really good fit.

[00:22:01] And, and that's where you're gonna get the most value for the business that you've built. So, in terms of raising capital, I think, there's more of an opportunity to do that today than there ever has been. Right. So you've had. various individuals that have, exited their business and now are interested in.

[00:22:18] Experiencing that journey again, if you will, but doing it vicariously through others and, kind of investing or helping in that. And, and some companies as well, both within the WordPress space or kind of around the WordPress space that start to see the value that exists here. So I think about raising capital, it's, it's, it's, it's a very personal decision for someone, like, is that the right decision for your business?

[00:22:37] Would the capital be helpful, would the. Having a set of investors around the table and people who could support you, could that be helpful? And we've been super fortunate to have fantastic investors who help us in ways that are much more valuable than just the, the check that was written. whether that's being a sounding board, providing introductions,and just generally being supporters of the business and helping to, helping us in, in whatever way they can.

[00:23:02] Matt: I'm looking at 2023 as a potential, uh, sort of boom. Uh, the services the services side, freelancers, boutique agencies, regular agencies. 2007, 2008 I think was a perfectly good storm for WordPress. if I could say that phrase, economics uncertainty or economic crashes. And then you had sort of WordPress going from.

[00:23:23] Just Okay. To pretty good, during that timeframe, version three something, and it, it became a really good tool and a lot of products, coming out at that time. so I think it was like the perfect combination of like, wow, we can really make a business with this WordPress thing, especially since the economy was rough.

[00:23:38] A lot of people getting laid off. Potentially the same thing happening in 2023. Do you have any sort of outlook for services or any, any direction you'd point anyone in? If they were starting a A services business today and WordPress was the tool that they used,

[00:23:54] Chris: I, I, I think, I think there's certainly as much need for services businesses [00:24:00] as there ever has been. people are doing all sorts of things with WordPress, right? It powers. 40 some odd percent of the web, depending on what you look at. but you essentially have a hundred million different use cases.

[00:24:12] There are, millions and millions of people who use it for all sorts of things. And that's the, that's the beauty of WordPress is that it can be extended to do nearly anything. but. Al, almost a lot of those things take, take a lot of work and are hard to do. And, and there are so many different niches that people can, can find that, are quite large.

[00:24:32] Maybe a small percentage of, of WordPress, but are are large and in terms of absolute numbers that if you can get really good at helping people do x, there, there will be great, great opportunities for that. So I remain excited about people, as. Especially those as I mentioned, who can kind of specialize and really find something that they can do and help people be successful with.

[00:24:53] I think that that'll be great.