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asmartbear

Founder/CTO at WP Engine

@asmartbear Austin, TX joined Mar 2010

longform.asmartbear.com Slack: @asmartbear

    Bio

    Founder of WP Engine, 14-year-old managed WP-only hosting platform with 200,000 customers, 1200 employees (as of 2024). Blogging since 2007 about personal experiences and philosophy of operating startups.

    WordPress Origin Story

    My blog was intended to be “the voice of our company” for my previous startup (Smart Bear). I was the only one who actually wrote on it, so it morphed into a personal blog. After 3 years of writing, it started to get popular, with 30,000 RSS subscribers and getting on the front page of Hackernews many Mondays (when I’d schedule posts). I had trouble keeping my site online and fast on my $40/mo VPS, found solutions in tools like nginx, Varnish, and W3TC, discovered that lots of people had the same need, and WP Engine was born.

    Badges

    COMMUNITY
    1 badge
    WordCamp Speaker '14

    Current Job

    Founder/CTO
    Present
    WP Engine

    Recent impact

    Score weights high-impact work (commits, releases, approved translations, props) at 3x routine activity.

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    Last 90 days
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    Last 12 months
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    Contributions

    Type
    October 2021
    Oct 05 Tue · 15:17
    Forums med
    Created a topic, Fast and pretty UI, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    I know I'm biased, but it's rare to have a plugin with…
    April 2014
    Apr 09 Wed · 20:06
    Meta high
    Confirmed as a speaker for WordCamp Austin