The WP Minute+

Matt: Mario Peshev, welcome to the WP

Mario: Hey ma, thanks for having me.

It's been a hot minute.

Matt: I should have, yeah, you
know, I say this all the time.

If I was an experienced podcaster, I
would have looked up our last episode

together, which was on, the Matt Report.

And, you know, I'm gonna,
let me do that right now.

So let me just go search.

I haven't had any other Mario.

So let me search Mario.

the first, the last time
we chatted was 2015.

Mario: wait, I do have a 2017 thing from
your blog, but it could be a blog mention.

Yeah.

Okay.

So 2015 Yeah, just a
decade What do you know?

Matt: that's all.

Mario: Holy moly

Matt: So what have you been, what have you
been up to with DevRicks and your agency

Mario: Yeah.

Living a life, man.

Living a life.

no, seriously though.

I mean, we've been around
for like, what is it?

15 years now, give or take.

I mean, we're still, most of the team,
the vast majority of the team is on site.

so we actually started back
in the old days as a remote

company before it was cool.

Switched slowly to like hybrid 2016,
2017, then decided that it's about time to

spark creativity and do some stuff on the.

Kind of, whiteboarding, brainstorming
type of front on site, then the

pandemic hit and everyone went remote
and said, look, we're, trendsetters.

We actually decided to move in office.

And right now there's the return to
office and said, it only took six

years for people to get back to office.

So, so there's that.

but, but seriously though, I
mean, it's been, it's, it's

definitely been a journey.

WordPress has gone through like all
sorts of transformations Decade,

especially over the past year, I would
say there's, there's been a lot going

on, but, yeah, it's still, even though.

we've definitely kind of transitioned
over the past five, six, seven years

into a consultancy model with lots
of go to market kind of ITP research.

We are also HubSpot partners, SEMrush
partners, so lots on the kind of

marketing consulting front as well.

We still, WordPress is our go to
tech stack and our largest platform,

certainly on top of WordPress.

So we still consider WordPress
being our underlying framework.

And I also, I believe that I'm also
a contributor in the latest release,

but I'm waiting for it to drop.

Matt: Nice.

I, you're definitely the guy I want
to talk to you about the impact or the

perceived impact of AI, in our space.

sort of, tongue in cheek about
the last time we talked, cause we

did talk, when I worked at Pagely,
which one is selling commercial

or enterprise, WordPress hosting.

Back then you were focused.

your agency was focused on a
lot of media partners, right?

So, big publishers doing hundreds of
thousands, millions of page views a month.

Is that still the same sector you
found yourself comfortable in or have

you moved to a different niche in your

Mario: Yeah, we, I'm probably going to do
kind of a rundown of the past 15 years.

So starting around 2010, it was everything
that flies, everything that moves.

We captured it because it's the
beginning of the agency space.

Everyone was just starting out,
freelancers, young agencies,

they know what I'm talking about.

So it was like pretty much everything.

Over, over time.

We, we did a lot of consulting work
with including banking and telecom in

WordPress, just pretty tough project
that required consulting and we were a

small team of like three, four people
then 2013, 2014, maybe we, we were lucky

to work on some of the largest WordPress
based software and service applications.

And we kind of pivoted into a space of
building WordPress based SaaS, including

LMS and kind of, marketing SaaS platforms
with subscriptions and lifetime value

and top sales and down sales, like
the, the fusion engines that you can

now see on go high level or system
or some of the modern recent tools, a

decade later, then 2016 ish, which is
around the time that we spoke probably.

Is we landed a pretty strong strategic
partnerships with, an art major

and provider, it is called RTK at
the time that it was acquired by.

Rubicon, then Magnite, we're
gathering around, but you know, went

through a different acquisition.

They had about 400 clients.

we took a couple of them and
they were happy with the work.

So we just kept adding
more and more and more.

And that's how publishing
became a thing in parallel.

Our other channels are all around B2B
SaaS due to the other SaaS transition

that we had the expertise on that.

So we kept working with those
two segments for a while.

and you had some other
sprinkled here and there, like.

Franchise networks and
affiliate and some others.

But these were two very strong viewers.

Then what happened in, I'd say 2021
or so is like SEO started to pivot

into different realms that was close
to the time when open AI really.

started to penetrate the
space before chatGPT.

We were actually integrating open
AI, but lots of people already

use Jasper for content creation.

They start integrating
programmatic APIs for creating

mass programmatic SEO content.

So SEO's volatility started
to kind of, become a problem.

And also B2B SaaS funding also started to
become questionable and slightly volatile.

So in 2020, vast Percentage of our
clientele was hit pretty hard, you know,

mass layoffs losing tons of revenue and
all that so we are still working with

probably half of them but in the meantime
other Verticals and other trajectories

and kind of categories started to pop
up as well so now our portfolio is

pretty diverse some of the Kind of old
category of clients have been getting

back to us over the past six months
But it's definitely been a pretty dry

late 2022 end of 2024 period that The
core two categories that we counted on

for the most part disappeared and we're
in scarcity mode or shrinking down or

trying to build into something else.

Luckily, because of our marketing
expertise, we've been a HubSpot partner

since 2016 and SEMrush 2019 or so.

we, we got a bunch of other
contracts on the go to market space.

Like, Hey, we are losing all of our
channels, losing all of our money.

And we are saying, okay, like we have.

specific playbooks that work for
email outreach, personalizing

data, like identifying buyer level
identity data, and lots of other

playbooks that we can quickly launch
inside landing pages, do A B testing

effectively, and launch different
campaigns pretty much twice a week.

so this was kind of what
kept us rolling 2022, 2024.

and now there's a lot more return to
where we were a while back, even though

again, AI has definitely a pretty.

You know, strong impact on
what do customers expect today?

Matt: Yeah, so it's safe to say that
you're you're not doing like the mom

and pop WordPress websites or even like
the smaller to medium sized business

that just has a lot of stuff going on
Which is you know scoping out a project?

custom post types content content
migration You're operating at a different

level and if I could I want to get your
opinions on As someone who has seen a

lot, who has done a lot in enterprise,
therefore understands enterprise

requirements, not just on the development
side, but on the delivery side, on the

management side of an enterprise customer,
if I could, can you compare that to

what I see in the page builder world?

Where Folks who operate with even
more, air quotes, professional page

builder tools like Bricks, and even the
longstanding Elementor, where do you

stand with running an agency or offering
agency services to the enterprise?

leveraging tools like that.

Is it possible?

Is it the wrong choice?

What is, what's your feeling around that?

Because so many people swarm
to different solutions as like,

okay, Elementor doesn't have this.

Let's go over here and
move over to this one.

Okay, Bricks has this.

Now Bricks doesn't have this one.

Let's move over to this one.

that's the kind of thing that I see
at early stage agencies, which I

think is detrimental to their, at
least, maybe short term success.

Like, they have to understand,
like, sustainability and

scalability and all that stuff.

So, if you could, it's a big loaded frame,
but if you could share your thoughts

Mario: Yeah, the only thing I'm afraid off
is the Dalpy minute may turn into the WP

week if I have to properly expand that.

But you just need to take a look into
that from different perspectives, right?

So over the past year, maybe two
years, we actually have More websites

running on Elementor or, you know,
Briggs or Oxygen or some other,

you know, existing frameworks.

We also have more websites, professional
websites coming up that were built

with Divi or Astra or some of
the other kind of more generic, I

would say, teams and team builders.

I see that other agencies in the
space and the kind of other top 10

agencies, if I have to put it this
way, are also using other teams,

again, Astra or Olly from Mike
McAllister, which is also pretty common.

My own website is with Olly, by the way.

so I see a lot more move into let's
try to reuse what, what's there and

kind of what exists in the market.

So whether these make sense or not is
contingent on several different factors.

First, is the client willing to
pay for a bespoke design nowadays?

And for a custom theme back in the
day when money was kind of broadly

available, funding zero interest policy
and all that, it was more common to

have, Hey, it's totally fine to pen
to pay, you know, another 10, 20, 30

grand for bespoke design and the custom
theme for like even small midsize site.

It was common.

Nowadays, it's more about,
we need a feature set.

We need a couple landing pages.

We are actually fine doing that with.

Unbounce, lead pages, any of the
other tools, or we also have HubSpot.

We're fine to use HubSpot pages, but we
need something like strong underhood.

Right?

So it's, it's less about design
bespokeness and more about, we need

an underlying solution that's stable
enough, not necessarily paying a

small fortune to get it rolling.

So we're just seeing a lot more
of that coming up nowadays.

Second thing is what is your
agency trying to deliver?

If you want to solve all problems
in the universe, you're not going to

be experienced enough to be a number
one professional in Elementor, in

Oxygen, in Astra, Cadence, Genesis,
like whatever you're using, right?

You can't really spread yourself too thin.

So if you like a framework, if you like
a specific solution, there's enough

market for that, and you can be a
professional, you can be an expert there.

But if you try to spread yourself
too thin, it won't be too different

from building websites in PHP
and in Ruby and in Python and

in Java and in everything else.

So, So if I'm, if I have to give,
you know, specific piece of advice

is once again, figure out what your
clientele wants, whether they want

a bespoke solution in the first
place or whether they're fine with

an existing theme and the builder.

Second, what do you feel most
comfortable with and most confident?

Everything has pros and cons.

There's no one unique solution.

Otherwise the other ones wouldn't
exist in the first place.

So again, we just need
to be aware of that.

So just use.

What you like and what you're
comfortable with that you can provide

and produce a proper solution with.

And, and the third thing is try to figure
out whether that's tapping into the type

of market that you want to conquer, one
or two or three or four or five years ago.

Because some of these solutions are not
necessarily acceptable in enterprise.

Others are.

There's also the type of enterprise
that runs 17 different companies.

And the top one is bringing, you know,
half a trillion in revenue, but then

there are several others that are
doing, you know, two to five million,

and they actually need your solution.

And it's totally fine to
just build something for the

enterprise, for the side brands.

There's no shame in that.

There's enough work in that.

And this is what kind of, you
can serve that population.

So that's the non 17 hour explanation
of what you asked me to do here.

Matt: Yeah, I appreciate that.

no, that, that's great advice.

And what I'm trying to do with this
episode, while I, while I have you, cause

you're, you are a wealth of knowledge
and you've had this massive breadth

of experience and you're a guy that.

you know, obviously we don't, we just
said, we really haven't talked in

many years, but I always watch, you
know, the stuff that you're doing.

I use you as one of my, barometers
for like where the market is going.

I won't call you a canary in the
coal mine, because I certainly

don't want to see you pass out.

But, you're the guy that I
watch to see like, okay, like

what, what is Mario doing?

Like what, what is him and his team doing?

Because you're always sort of at that,
that leading edge, in my opinion.

where that takes me is you mentioned
a few times being a HubSpot partner.

for the folks listening who are like,
man, I'm struggling to get clients.

Where do I get my next client?

Where I landed my, you know,
luckily I got a referral to this

big 30, 000 contract and how do I
get more of these types of clients?

The importance of multiple
channels for your agency, right?

Referrals obviously marketing
inbound outbound channel

partners with like HubSpot.

How, if you could, if you can remember,
Paint the picture of how you got involved

with HubSpot and how one should think
about partnering with these, what

I'll call like, elevated solutions.

Like, you know people using HubSpot
have money, you know, versus like,

I don't know, maybe MailChimp.

I mean, I'm sure there's people that do
a lot of revenue using MailChimp, but

the average user on MailChimp is probably
a mom and pop shop versus a HubSpot.

How did you make that, that connection
and how does that help serve the business?

Mario: Look, that's,
this is a great question.

And we signed with HubSpot
again back in 2016.

And at the time inbound marketing was one
of our strongest lead generation channels.

But I also want to stress on that.

I would live and die by the idea
of SEO, but SEO has not been

the same since September 2023.

So I'm, it's no longer a
priority channel for us, even

though we do have SEO contracts.

It's, it's, it's the whim
of the SEO algorithm gods.

And something that changes
overnight with a click of a

button and an algorithm change.

So it's, I would hardly call
it something sustainable.

But to the point of HubSpot and also
Salesforce and Pipedrive and some of

the other professional CRMs out there.

over time, what we found out, especially
working with, you know, different

clients, is that larger cohorts of
businesses in different categories,

Rely on certain tools and systems.

And if you get to know and understand
these systems better, you can become

a niche expert in a given field.

What I just said, like, 10 minutes ago
or so is we went through different phases

of we were the the WordPress SaaS gurus.

Then we went into what is it publishing
and then B2B SaaS and then go to

market consulting for not just
WordPress and going international.

We have several of these verticals
actually have a whiteboard out there,

which is experimentation as a service.

It's one of our also key packages that
we have right now, just iterating and

testing new offers every single week.

So niching down and kind of turning
yourself into a core expert in a In a

market, in a skill set, in a specific
vertical, like over 100 million pages per

month or e commerce doing over 50, 000
products per show, or, again, a tool like

HubSpot, like NetSuite, like Salesforce
and PowerDot, a bunch of different tools.

Try to, try to discover and uncover
some of these and figure out

whether you can deliver that better.

I wouldn't, I wouldn't give
a blanket advice of you need

to specialize in HubSpot.

Why?

On Thursday, I had a call
with a partner agency.

They said, we take all of our
contracts from LinkedIn partnerships.

So you can be a LinkedIn partner.

Monday, we met another friend who's
also taking HubSpot partnerships.

It's kind of the core channel.

Yesterday I had a call with a friend
from Meta who said, Hey, we have

tech solution partners from Meta.

There's, there's budget to
be allocated and so forth.

Two weeks ago, I had a call with
Google and they said Google's

allocating 500, what, what was it?

50 million in funding,
different startups in like.

Google cloud and big
query and data packages.

So the truth is there are budgets
also again, a couple of weeks ago, AWS

partner saying we've been funding like
AWS is funding Ukraine for like three

years of like free credits and stuff,
but they're paying service partners.

So if you're a service partner, you're
getting paid, your client isn't paying

and essentially it's a win win situation.

So there are a lot of these
buckets, but it really depends on.

Your target audience, who are
you serving and whether they're

using whatever you're using.

We have a couple of large
clients using, Oracle's NetSuite.

So we specialize there.

We have several HubSpot, clients
and we are serving HubSpot there.

We have, again, many integrations with,
WhatsApp and, you know, lots of Facebook

and, you know, tons of Instagram as well.

So we're also delivering services there.

So if you, if you establish a specific
bucket of like several clients

within the same niche, it could be
Publishing, specific between SAS,

healthcare, FinTech, you know, large
e commerce, wholesale, franchising.

There, there are some of these buckets.

If you have three of these
clients, chances are at least two

are using one specific tool set.

Focus on building integrations and
features and extensions and, and

learning the APIs and the endpoints
and the core features that are needed.

And once you get to know them, Take
it a step further and try to become an

integration partner, because this is
probably going to open up more work.

We probably have 30 different
tools and systems that are very

important and integral, but
they're all market dependent.

Unless you're able to, unless you
already have kind of a case study of

two or three clients that you've done
that, it's really hard to push forward.

But if you've done the work successfully
for two or three that you managed to land

somehow, then it's easier to just use
them as a trampoline for the other ones.

Matt: Yeah.

I, I'm gonna ask you a broad question.

and, and, you know, hopefully, folks
listening to this get, get a real, some

real value out of this one, because I
think this is one of the most important.

I've, I've been talking to a, a friend
of mine who's, you know, running an

agency and stuff like that and really
trying to like, and it's just a solo age.

It's just him.

It's just him, you know, trying to get
this thing off the ground and I'm trying

to tell him like, you have to think
at, you know, depending on what his

goals are, his goals are to, you know,
grow it and become an agency operator,

let's say, which is very different
than somebody who loves the craft.

You know who I'm talking about.

Like the two or three person shop, the
owner just loves to design or loves to

develop or loves to do marketing and
that's all they're thinking about, but

they're not thinking about how do I.

How do I operate this thing?

How do I get out of the work and
become the operator of this business?

What's your best advice for getting
somebody to, to think in that way, if

that's the direction they want to go?

Like, no longer will you be
developing, no longer will you be

designing, you'll take a step back.

And grow different channels,
explore new opportunities.

How did you get yourself out of
that mindset of like, I'm done

optimizing my databases, and
now I'm building the business?

Do you remember that point, or
do you have a piece of advice for

Mario: my, my follow up question or
rather my, my contradiction towards what

you're saying is, is it really worth
going through that hassle or rather

some people are just great consultants
and individual contributors and maybe,

you know, indisplaceable assets in even
large organizations and they can be

just fine doing whatever they're doing.

so I've.

You know, I've spoken a lot about
entrepreneurship and founding companies.

I believe there's a lot of value in that,
but I also feel it's, it's, oversaturated

in the sense of everyone and their mom
are building WordPress websites right now.

So getting into a vastly competitive
space, it's, there's a popular book,

you know, Blue Ocean, which is comparing
the blue ocean and the red, red ocean.

It's pretty common.

but.

certain spaces are oversaturated
and you turning into that operator

means that you're doing completely
different things on a day to day, right?

I had six hours of meetings today.

You know, I had interviews, I had
feedback sessions, I had brainstorming

and roadmap sessions, and, and
they have more coming up, right?

Like sales goals and like prepping
proposals and, you know, assessments

and lots of other things that are not.

I'm going to design the most
beautiful website in the world, right?

It's a different craft.

It's a different skill.

So my personal passion is, so
I care about entrepreneurship,

but I care about education.

I care about giving back
in order to educate.

I need the resources and the know how to
be able to educate with the types of tips

that I'm sharing here on that podcast.

In order to give back, I need the
resource of the entire company to

allocate portion of the profit and
fund more causes and all of that.

So my.

My intrinsic motivation, my core
values require capital, so I'm

willing to sacrifice what I want
to do, like write articles all

day and, you know, philosophize.

Yeah, for example, so I'm
willing to sacrifice that for

the greater good in a sense that
requires different type of work.

But I know a lot of people, you
know, especially the 95 people who

want their, you know, pay time off
or working from home or not really

dealing with payroll or chasing.

You know, overdue invoices and all that
stuff, people like that, for the most

part, they shouldn't be entrepreneurs
and they may look for a kind of small

acquisition or maybe calling, you know,
say yet or some of the other companies

that are buying companies left and right
and just getting assumed and making

sure that payroll is guaranteed so
they can focus on kind of what they do.

So I just want to delineate it.

So if you, if, if craft, if you want
to design for the next 20 years,

don't focus on elevating as operator.

If you want to operate, Okay.

There are completely different skills
related to sales, negotiations,

finance, OPEX, you know, adopting
something like EOS or at least OKRs,

managing teams, reviews, scorecards,
one on ones, lots of other things

that are almost 100 percent major.

I think it was Paul Graham who
had that essay for maker versus,

what was it, maker versus manager.

These are two different
roles as an operator.

You're going to be a major full stop.

There's going to be very little making
happening on your own unless you're

spending nights and weekends, which
is, by the way, what I'm doing to

make to, to engage in that initiative.

But your core value, your, your, the
highest KPIs, the highest return on your

own investment is managing, educating,
coaching, selling, negotiating, coming

up and visualizing processes that you
can repeat and, you know, increase

better yields and do PR and lots of
other things that are not making.

So essentially decide on
whether that's for you or not.

And if it is just step into the
executive functions and roles

that you need to be working on.

and, and you definitely have to
shift from making in the first place.

Yeah.

Matt: answer because it definitely
frames, well, to simply put

it like the grass isn't always
greener on the, on the other side.

Right.

And, that's a lot of decision making
that, that, that folks have to make.

And, yeah, I'm right there.

I'm right there with you on, on
that kind of critical thinking.

I want on the last, third of our episode
here, I want to turn to the interior of

WordPress and talk about the challenges,
of course, AI, and we'll get to that.

Yeah.

But also, the current
temperature in the room, right?

automatic in Mullenweg versus, WP Engine.

Lots of folks, at least on my Twitter
feed, are saying it's the end of days.

you know, I, you know,
listen, I'm also concerned.

There's a rumor that we might only
do two major releases up until 2027,

until this court thing is done.

whatever that means for
open source WordPress.

My particular opinion is Even if so,
if that's a direction that we go, that

means that maybe automatic, especially
now that automatic is clawed back

there, open source contributions.

They'll take that, those resources and
point that towards either dot com or WP,

cloud solution, whatever it is, they're
just basically at the end of the day,

make automatic products better, which by
the way, I have no problem with at all.

like I think that should have been
happening for quite some time, so

that, the mothership could have been
competing with the Squarespace's

Wix web flows of the world.

And we could have been doing this open
source thing, air quotes on our own.

So two particular challenges
to, to boil this down.

The temperature of WordPress.

Are you seeing your clients saying,
Oh, that Matt Mullenweg thing.

We don't like that.

We don't want to use WordPress.

And then we'll talk about AI.

But temperature in the room.

Are your clients affected by

Mario: Look, so in, in Q4 in particular,
there was definitely turbulence.

I remember several times, last minute
calls, emergency Sunday night call

by actual private equity saying, you
know, we're in the process of acquiring

a business and, and we don't know
whether we should do that or not.

And it's like an hour and a half
conversation on GPL, like, don't

worry, you're not going to violate
GPL, or like, you're not like, there

had been a lot of fear in that.

We had prospects that pulled back and
said, we're either going to pose that

for the time being, or we're just
going to pick Webflow or something

else in the meantime, just because
we don't want to deal with the drama.

So saying that it didn't have effect
in the space would be, would be false.

Whether it was.

a dramatic shift.

I wouldn't say so just because most,
most of our clients and kind of

most of the ecosystem that at least
kind of my broader circle isn't

paying too much attention on that.

Of course, when it's something that
bubbles up on ink magazine or tech crunch

or show it reaches us, there's some.

There's some disturbance
in the force, right?

and, and there's that fear of
is, is WordPress imploding?

Like whether we should dig into
that, you know, but, but it,

it hasn't been too fragile.

And right now in Q1 at least, we
haven't seen, we, we've almost seen no

indications of people being bothered.

They see it as if they heard
something, it was some drama

happening in September and October.

It's, you know, that doesn't set
out and it's not really a problem

per se, but for the most part, of
course, different organizations,

they have tech teams and they're
kind of advocating internally, like.

Hey guys, you know, there's some
stuff happening with WordPress.

Maybe we shouldn't spend the next six
months building a WordPress build.

We don't know what's
exactly going to happen.

Let's consider keeping it static
website or let's just, again,

use Webflow for another year and
see what happens and all of that.

So, there's still impact out there.

I, I definitely don't think it's,
it was wise for the community.

I can understand where Milawaki is
coming from, even though I completely

disagree with like tanking and dooming
the entire freaking community, because

when you're, what's the saying, post
economic, well then, then you can't

really relate to how people are making
a living with WordPress, like losing a.

If you live somewhere and you lose
your monthly website, essentially

you're out of work for that
month, which isn't cool at all.

so yeah, this, this drama seems
to be having less of a reflection

right now, but, but it's definitely
not fully out of the woods yet.

As to the updates to WordPress,
honestly, I wouldn't care if WordPress

isn't getting a bit for five years.

It's a stable framework with APIs and
hooks and, you know, a pretty resilient,

even if it gets detached as backpress
or whatever it was called back in

the day, there's the core product.

There are 50, 000 extensions.

There are several core teams that
you can use and you can build.

insanely powerful and stable
products without having to deal

with like a core development.

And that's with all my due respect to the
core contributors working on rest API and

like everything else they're working on.

It's great.

It's really helpful.

Thank you for that.

But the core product has been stable
for like six to eight to 10 years.

It, it hasn't, it.

There are very few gradual improvements
out there if you don't account for

Gutenberg, which I still believe
is in its infancy, honestly.

And all of that could have been built
as a plugin just as it is right now.

So, yeah.

Yeah.

Matt: this as concise
and on point as possible.

There's obviously a lot of noise,
like, there are people who don't want

you to use WordPress at all anymore.

there are people who don't want
any kind of like, you know, I don't

know, good, good vibes is the only
phrase I can come up with right now.

Like, people don't want you
to be nice to automaticians,

which I think is ridiculous.

People are talking about forks of
WordPress, which, fine, that's great,

but You know, show it to me like
when you have it, you know, and I'll

take a look at it, but it's, it's so
hard to stop the machine that is open

source WordPress being distributed
by hundreds, if not thousands of web

hosting companies across the world with
so many people already invested in it.

I've been saying that if we're sticking
around, a vote for WordPress is a

vote for Mullenweg at the same time.

And that's just what we have to deal with.

I've been trying to look at this
as, listen, we need to take a step

back from under, like, feeling
like we ever had control over this.

By the way, I never felt
I had control over this.

But I never had control over this.

And you can still make
a living with WordPress.

You know, until he pulls like,
you know, this is no longer

GPL, no longer open source.

Okay, we might have to
scramble and figure things out.

But in the meantime, even if you're
not happy with the direction that it's

going, you can still run a profitable
agency or side hustle or freelance

business leveraging this software.

You just have to care less,
I guess, about the direction.

I don't know if that's just too crude
of me to think in that, in that fashion.

But I say, listen, if we
have Matt, Matt is WordPress.

As of now.

And that's the vote.

If we're sticking around,
that's who we're sticking with.

In other words, I'm done
complaining about it.

And I'm just gonna ignore it.

I guess.

I don't know if that's the right thinking.

That's how I think.

What do you think?

Mario: if I have to simplify
it, like if something happens to

WordPress, then there's the entire
rest of the ecosystem that has to

decide what happens afterwards.

You said the hosts, they have been the
biggest, you know, advocate of WordPress.

You go to a host, there's a one clicks
of Taculous or Fantastic or whatever

it is installed WordPress, right?

So it gets you a WordPress.

org version that you download and
you still go to the admin and you

can like add and install plugins.

If you don't want, you know, you
can download them from the repl.

So if WordPress isn't GPO
anymore, it's going to get fixed.

For if the WordPress repository
stops working, I don't think

that even automatic, would.

from that one way or another.

But if that happens, the way I see that is
if I have a client coming up and ask you

for WordPress, I'm going to say, we have
a better flavor for WordPress under hood.

100%.

All of your WordPress plugins are
going to work with that system.

A hundred percent.

We can still use whatever team you
like on the planet, 100%, and we can

still develop it for the next decade.

Right?

So what I would say is eight out of 10
times, this is going to be sufficient

and they won't ask for your questions.

So.

even though they will still come for
WordPress because of 21 years of branding

and tutorials and all that, even though
they still want open source and like

knowing that Yoast is going to work or
like any of the other popular plugins

like Gravity Forms or whatever they
are using, they, as long as they get

all of that, they're still going to
be content if I tell them we have a

flavor of WordPress that's just faster
or is like more stable in our hosting.

and, and I want to stress on that
because it's, I think it's, it's

not really talked about quite a lot.

like, you know, even small business coming
from a WordPress website, essentially

they want, they may have seen Elementor,
their nephew has showed them Elementor

and they want to see that they have
Elementor or whatever working or Bricks

or Oxygen or any of the other builders.

So if you can provide them with the
previous version of WordPress that

was stable, they'd be fine with that.

Do you think they're going to care
about updates over the next three years?

They want to make sure
they don't get hacked.

As soon as you provide that by
other means, which is not ongoing

updates, then you're totally safe.

So it's a little bit more cynical.

I definitely hope that there's
going to be a resolution for that.

But I think the lawsuit is in like 2026.

so definitely nothing coming in the
next like 18 months or something.

Matt: Yeah.

Okay.

Let's talk about the other thing
that's gonna end the world, ai,

and like where you stand on that.

I'm really interested to
get your opinions on that.

I wanna start with the marketing
side first before we start, before

we talk about the development and,
how it might impact WordPress as

a, as a CMS in, in the, in whole.

I was talking to another agency owner,
the, the other day, respect him a lot.

and he was saying like,
man, this AI stuff, I can.

Like I can replace an entire marketing
team, with what I'm seeing and I'm kind

of like worried, but excited also for,
for the future inherently as a marketing

person myself, who's always put my
face and my voice out into the world.

Like I have some bias against that.

Like I think humans will want
to interact with other humans.

Maybe some base level blogging stuff
gets replaced, but how do you get.

How do you extract the human out of
like human connections and emotions?

I'm not too sure about that.

So starting with marketing first and
particularly maybe for like your agency

or maybe for your clients Where do you
see AI impacting that over the next year?

I'm not even asking you to predict
five years Go ahead if you'd

Mario: so first up, the, I do have
like a, an open role for account

management here, but I have probably
three open marketing roles here.

so I just want to stay that pretty clear.

we use AI.

Intensely.

And we've been doing that for a while now.

by the way, you know, AI is a buzzword
when we are talking about the effort.

Most part of people mean wrappers
around chat GPT or cloud or Gemini.

first on that front, we've been
integrating open AI for ever since

2020 for product descriptions, for
e commerce and lots of other things.

Before that chat GPT was out there, we've
been building machine learning since 2013.

So we've done.

so we've been around the block for
a while and I'm actually looking

for more marketing people right now.

So marketing is far from that.

and again, want to stress on that.

the, the second thing is,
and I talk about that.

pretty much every week in my, newsletter,
by the way, cause this is kind of one of

the topics of the day, you know, Chinese
AI models and digital transformation

and go to market channels and like it's
inbound dying, like all that, because

it's pretty volatile and that's what
happens to be the topic of the day, but

literally, one of my common questions,
questions I'm discussing, but, to kind

of sum it up the problem with AI and
marketing is that the marketing is.

Spread across multiple channels, which
is again, SEO, paid ads, you know, video

content, like a few other channels,
you know, depending on what you use,

like Reddit or whatever it is, and it's
very, very easy to oversaturate these

channels, meaning that whenever you
discover a video that's doing an AI

avatar, or whenever you discover a channel
that's building viral LinkedIn copy

or X copy, it means that in two weeks,
50, 000 people are going to use that.

two months, Half a million
people are going to use that.

So your entire feed is going to
be quittered with that, and it's

no longer going to be effective.

And I can understand the use of AI for
operational efficiency internally, right?

Every company can upgrade its operational
efficiency, use more tools for research,

for building business plans, for wrapping
up proposals, for summarizing emails.

This one is here to stay.

But when it comes to marketing,
using role marketing right now out

there, it's more likely going to
embarrass you than serve you good.

If not, that's probably a problem for
your existing team being not skilled

enough, underpaid, outsourced to, you
know, areas that don't really speak

English well, that don't understand
marketing, that don't understand your ICP.

And if AI is doing better,
then there's probably a down

skilled problem with your team.

But AI is not the solution.

It's not solving your problems.

It's something that gets
sunset pretty quickly.

It's something that gets recognized
a mile away and is very far away

from the quality that you want
to have to actually do something.

I can't use raw AI to write content.

Build landing pages, write my
social posts or anything like that.

Nothing that doesn't take a lot of
editing or just patching things together.

Even if I feed an agent with my
own thoughts and my book and my

blog, it requires a lot of work
to actually make it work properly.

Like, I kid you not.

so this one is vastly kind of overrated.

And on the technical, on the technical
front, it's definitely a problem.

simply because the prototyping
part is shortened quite a lot.

So, a while back we, we discussed
HubSpot as people with HubSpot have

money and people with WordPress are
more likely looking for something

that's low in budget, right?

So the reason is when you get 90 percent
of your feature set with WordPress for

free, getting the other 10 percent is
really hard to justify as prioritize.

Really, really, really hard when you
pay 10 grand a year for HubSpot and then

adding some bells and whistles It makes
more sense to pay for custom development

and spend another 20 30 grand on other
things But WordPress this is kind of the

gap and right now what we have is Someone
building a prototype with bold or cursor

or v0 or something else and they say
look what I did in like five hours So you

just put it in the WordPress And build

Matt: talking about me, ladies and
gentlemen, he's talking about me, but

Mario: Yeah, but, but, to give you
an example, like, I actually have a

video in my channel from, like, last
March or so, and I said, here's an

ICP kind of proof of concept tool
that I built here in an hour, right?

So I'm breaking down how you do
that with Cursor or, or something.

And, and, there's a prototype,
there's like a stupid one

pager that I can use myself.

Then I assigned it to my team and
we started building that and it

took like five months building
that into an actual product.

And it's not a skill issue.

It's look, we need
proper login management.

We need a proper database to store these.

We need a cron job to pull
the data every single week.

We need to enrich with this.

We need to scrape LinkedIn.

We need to do this.

And the actual product has
nothing to do with the prototype.

It looks similar.

But it's a properly fully fledged product.

So the problem with AI is clients are
building something and they say, look,

how easy it is to build it myself.

And then it's the gap to pay
for an actual product that gets

lots of discussions nowadays.

So this is a bridge we
need to start crossing.

And this year is going to be about
that setting expectations of this is

what you get with cursor, but it's not
a product you can launch out there.

It's not a SaaS that you can
release out there in the public.

It's just going to be a GPT wrapper.

You need a lot more value.

You need a data mode.

You need research.

You need, that's the one thing.

And the second thing is due to that,
there are over a hundred SaaS apps

launched on Product Hunt every single day.

So go to market is just
becoming 10x more expensive.

So even if you build it, your marketing
is going to be 10x more expensive

and AI is not going to cut that.

Matt: Yeah, on the technical, I've seen
this argument, where people say, well,

look, and I had a good conversation
with my brother who's like deeply in

the stuff, but more on the finance side
where the argument was, well, now we're

going to see just many more individual
like million dollar SAS businesses.

because of this stuff, like individual
million dollar SaaS businesses.

I, I have a problem wrapping my arms
around that because if you're saying it's

so easy for, for somebody to spin up a
million dollar SaaS business, then it's

gonna be so easy to spin up a million
dollar SaaS business for everyone,

not just a lucky few that can do it.

So I have a hard problem wrapping my, my
hands around that because I just feel like

it's either just gonna go from a million
for the first year and then 500, 000

the next year, then 250 the third year,
because everyone's gonna be doing it.

Or, these big businesses, like Chad GPT,
Gemini, Claude, Facebook, Microsoft,

like, they're gonna just build the tool,
they're gonna build a solution that

does whatever these little stagnant
million dollar SaaS businesses are doing,

like, in my opinion, through native AI.

not a direct question, but just like a
thread of thought that I saw through,

like, through Twitter feedback.

Mario: I have a few of
these people in my circle.

I'm also part of 30 different
communities, some of them by very

highly esteemed, you know, gurus in
soberneurship and AI and all that stuff.

so I've been reading all that, you
know, breaking news, many AI, seven

figure businesses and all that.

So on the two schools of thought.

Yes, it is possible.

and the reason it's possible
is not because you're going

to build the next cursor.

It's because there's still
lots of untapped niches that

you can now tap into yourself.

And I'm talking about, I'm
talking about, Dali and, and

that's a very morbid example.

I'm sorry about that.

But like, Dali integrated AI
SaaS to, for, for funeral homes.

Right.

It's a pretty nasty space.

Nobody wants to touch that, but like,
imagine providing a tool for them

to set up and like, do like the, the
casket type of thing with this, right?

Horrible example, right?

Not a niche that most people, not a
niche that most people want to get

into, but like, if you go there,
probably it wouldn't be too tempting

for others to just disrupt you.

Right.

It's not large enough to make a hundred
million dollars and it's not funny

enough to be worth disrupting you.

Right.

And there are lots of, especially
for traditional work, like.

plumbers, roofing services.

A lot of those traditional services
may get small micro AI tools that

help and get a thousand clients
paying a hundred bucks a month.

And there you have it,
a seven figure business.

this one is possible and we're
probably going to see more of

these niches tapped out there.

However, any niche that's.

that's cool and is trending and is
surprising and has like a vivid active

community, especially a community
that's online and just tracking the news

is going to be very easy to disrupt.

And we're going to see
the race to the bottom.

Everyone like a 13 years old teenager
is going to set something up and make

it a freemium with donations and going
to completely wipe out the space or.

You know, a solopreneur with an exit
of like 10 million dollars is just

going to do it for fun and then going
to sell the data in a different way.

So it's, it's going to be a
different kind of premium model.

So a lot of that disruption is going to
go because product is no longer remote.

Back in the day, it was because you
need money and capital to hire expensive

engineers to build something complex.

And it's a mode when product is not a
mode, there are different skills and

different ways to distribute your budget
to go there, contacts, relationships,

going to events, field sales, and a
lot of the other buckets that most

people are not really caring for.

AI.

Everyone is fighting for a very
tiny slice of the pie, which is.

Mostly, by the way, geeks like
you and I, who spend a lot of time

on social and read these news.

but the vast majority of the people,
yeah, real estate agents, or like just

traditional services, hunters, gatherers,
and like all the other people who are

not even online, they don't care about
that, they don't follow the news,

they don't go on product hunt, and you
need to actually do the footwork to,

door to door sales to make it happen.

Matt: yeah, yeah, I'm actually holding, an
in person, AI workshop next week here in

my co working space for small businesses.

And it is literally like, I, I
have no agenda, I'm not trying to

sell them anything, I don't have an
agency anymore, I just want to talk.

to, to small businesses and just see
and hear have you heard about this

stuff or am I just living in this,
this bubble on my Twitter sphere?

Like, is it really impacting you?

Are you really thinking about it?

Have you seen what it can do?

You know, show off some examples and
stuff, but I, you know, I'm just only six

months ahead of anybody who just needs to
sink their teeth into it and just learn

like I'm doing and just start using it.

so I think it's very important.

You know, keep our ears and boots on
the ground for this kind of stuff.

Because yeah, I think sometimes we're
just living in this, algo and it's

just telling us, you know, what,
what we want to hear half the time.

Mario, this is fair.

Go ahead.

Mario: there's, all I was
going to say is there's a lot

of the brand value is rising.

And a lot of the free content
and free resources we are seeing

that are high quality are going
behind walled gardens right now.

I want to make it crystal clear.

Almost all of my executive friends who are
public online are pretty pissed with chat

GPT scraping their stuff or other people
launching AI avatars with their content.

So they move to sub stacks to pay
it's like communities to other places.

I myself am.

Kind of partially doing the same,
and we're going to see that the high

quality content is not no longer
going to be open and available.

And you'll see that a lot of the secret
sauce of great SaaS is going to be

paid, maybe even expensive or invite
only, just because of that, rapid

acceleration of everyone can launch
something and the space is crowded

and you need a verification batch in
what works and what's available now.

Matt: Yeah, that's actually
a quick bonus round.

Like, I think that was, I've
been thinking about that too.

Like, WordPress is a great platform
to house all of your content, but

we need to shut it off, right?

At, you know, Google stole from us,
AI stole from Google, so like we,

we just keep getting stolen from.

And I just want to say like, you
know, let's put our content in

something like WordPress and that's
why I still have this, Desire to

see WordPress succeed regardless of
what's happening at leadership level.

And I still think it's a great open
source publishing platform and I want

to see that continue to have like.

A database.

It's a database of our content, and it,
you know, we can grant access in and out.

So anyway, Mario has been fantastic.

I want to have you back at the end
of the year so we can see, what

we're doing because, I always love.

Talking to you, derick.com.

DEVI, D-E-V-R-I x.com.

dericks.com.

You have a team picture there.

The team is about 10 times
larger than the last time.

we interviewed each, or I interviewed you.

check it out.

dericks.com.

Where else do you want folks to go?

you have YouTube channel.

I know you have your book.

Where else can go?

folks go to say, thanks.

Mario: well, I know my
website is mariopeshev.

com.

It's pretty trivial.

My, first name, last name.

com.

and I'm hosting all my others still there.

I do, my newsletter is where I
spend the most time nowadays.

Honestly, it's weekly.

and you can subscribe
there from insidergrocer.

com.

But, yeah, it, it happens to be the
place where I can gather a lot of data

and not rely on SEO distributing it.

Or LinkedIn showing it up because of
our great like if you sign up you get

it every single week and i'm talking
about Most of what we discuss here,

AI stuff digital transformation go
to market channels Whether there's

money in the b2b economy and all that.

So this is probably the
best place to go to today