WPwatercooler

EP390 – The Age of the WordPress Acquisition

June 18, 2021

With all of the acquisitions occurring in the WordPress space we asked friend of the show Cory Miller from Business Value Academy and Post Status to discuss with us these various acquisitions and what to expect in the future.

What is the next acquisition?

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Episode Transcription

Jason Tucker: [00:00:00] This is episode number 390, the age of WordPress acquisition. Sponsored. by serverpress.com makers of desktopServer they make local WordPress development, easy. Check them out at serverpress.com. And loft provide support for WordPress sites, including disaster Sé patches, and plugin management, content updates, and more all for a flat monthly fee, you can get a free trial over to poweredbyloft.com to check it out. I am Jason Tucker. I’m an it director and web developer to find me over at Jason Tucker.

Steve Zehngut: [00:00:46] I’m Steve Zehngut. I’m the founder of Zeek interactive and I run the WordPress meetup. Hey.

Jason Cosper: [00:01:00] And the hood is it’s your boy, Jason Cosper, AKA fat Mullenweg, and no one expects the WordPress acquisition.

Jason Tucker: [00:01:08] Go and leave us a review on apple podcasts, Google podcasts, and Spotify. And if you haven’t joined yet, go over to our discord, go to DPR Corp com slash discord, where you can go in a follow up over there. Find folks hanging out in that room. What’s up, everyone. How are y’all doing?

Steve Zehngut: [00:01:31] Look, it’s Cory Miller.

Jason Tucker: [00:01:33] I know. Now, I know why you guys were warning me.

Sé Reed: [00:01:37] Post status.

Steve Zehngut: [00:01:40] Yeah.

Cory Miller: [00:01:41] That’s gotta be the best intro music ever. Like you’re number one, I rate you number one on that, because that’s the best intro I’ve ever been a part of.

Sé Reed: [00:01:51] I agree. I think it’s the best intro you’ve ever been a part of too.

Steve Zehngut: [00:01:56] Yeah.

Jason Tucker: [00:01:56] It sounds way better on the podcast though. When I turn off say’s audio, cause it, it echoes the echo and it’s echoing the echo. It’s pretty awesome.

Steve Zehngut: [00:02:03] yeah. Say need some headphones.

Sé Reed: [00:02:06] I’m sorry, who wants to chip in? Can we start a go fund? Me from my,

Steve Zehngut: [00:02:10] I’ll just buy you some headphones. They’re going to be the $10 Skullcandy ones, but I will get you some headphones.

Sé Reed: [00:02:17] work day was last week. By the way.

Steve Zehngut: [00:02:19] Oh, they’re in the mail.

Jason Tucker: [00:02:22] I said happy birthday.

Sé Reed: [00:02:23] I know you did

Jason Tucker: [00:02:24] So let’s talk We have Steve, who I typically think of as like the Mr. Business type person, but then I needed to get a more Mr. Businessy type person on the show other than Steve. So I was like, Cory Miller. Let’s get Cory on come and talk. Now I know Mr. Business is also like the evil person and like a movie and all that stuff. I totally understand that, but it’s just, I needed like somebody that’s not Steve to talk about businessy things. And

Steve Zehngut: [00:02:52] Yeah.

Jason Tucker: [00:02:52] Every time. And every time I think about this stuff, I think Cory and then Cory add, there’s been acquisitions. There’s been all sorts of things that have happened in his past. And I was like, perfect person to pull this, pull in and talk about this stuff.

Sé Reed: [00:03:07] I want to point out that you thought Mr. Business equals Cory Miller prior to the post status acquisition.

Jason Tucker: [00:03:17] Oh,

Sé Reed: [00:03:18] Like you’ve mentioned that before and the

Jason Tucker: [00:03:20] Yeah. I haven’t mentioned that before.

Sé Reed: [00:03:22] Just happened. So I just want to say your reputation as mr. Business.

Cory Miller: [00:03:31] That’s awesome. I’ve got a new bio to share with people, which is on the Mr. Business, which is a K plus one to Steve Zehngut. Okay. That, that sorry, my friend, Steve, but I felt

Steve Zehngut: [00:03:45] All good. Yeah.

Cory Miller: [00:03:48] if Steve gets introduced, I can come in

Steve Zehngut: [00:03:50] a On a normal podcast, they refer to me as not Cory

Sé Reed: [00:03:55] true.

Jason Tucker: [00:03:58] I’ll be to update the video intro. I’ll update the video to try to reflect those changes.

Sé Reed: [00:04:03] All business all mr. Business aside, I think this is a really crucial and interesting time in the WordPress ecosystem. And I think that there really isn’t a better person to talk about that from a drug. Can we say drums? I perspective now instead of like equals.

Steve Zehngut: [00:04:23] sure. It’s very, that’s very 20,

Sé Reed: [00:04:27] ecosystems and Eagles, like looking for bugs, not bugs, like nice. Like I want the drone shot, like Genentech, dude. What do you see? That’s what I’m looking for.

Steve Zehngut: [00:04:38] so it does, it seemed every week or nearly every day, somebody is getting acquired within our space. And it’s only recently that it’s really ramped up. It feels like this year, it’s just everybody’s being acquired and their mother.

Sé Reed: [00:04:54] Okay.

Cory Miller: [00:04:54] Yeah, truly.

Jason Tucker: [00:04:55] for Jetpack to acquire WordPress. That is where it’s going to be pretty bad ass.

Sé Reed: [00:05:00] For the record, the day that happens, we have to like, I don’t know, we should all get Bitcoin or something just because of our amazing prediction skills for that. That’s going to happen anyway.

Steve Zehngut: [00:05:11] Okay. So were there any particular acquisitions, recent acquisitions, Jason that made you think of this topic for them?

Jason Tucker: [00:05:18] We talked like we, we went to go see because Cory does the businessy things. I, as I was talking to his assistant about these things, trying to figure this stuff out, and it was a couple of weeks back when there was another acquisition, I actually searched for the word WordPress acquisition. Cause I just wanted to see like, where was it that we were at? But there was another acquisition that happened a while back with I think it was the one with with liquid web. But they just recently did. And that was the one

Steve Zehngut: [00:05:47] with WWP. Give WP again.

Jason Tucker: [00:05:50] yeah.

Steve Zehngut: [00:05:52] Sorry.

Sé Reed: [00:05:53] They don’t have their cup.

Cory Miller: [00:05:54] Yeah.

Steve Zehngut: [00:05:55] My apologies to Devin and Matt.

Jason Tucker: [00:06:00] So that was the one that triggered this whole idea, but then on top of it the most recent one that happened is with let’s see here. Oh, with the journaling app day one that wordpress.com which is one of my favorite apps by the way.

Sé Reed: [00:06:17] That’s a word that’s an automatic

Jason Tucker: [00:06:19] Automatic.

Sé Reed: [00:06:20] acquisition. So while that does indicate Matt of automatic is on a spending spree, which it’s totally a thing. How does that so I’m S we’re seeing that, I think in a really larger ecosystem thing, it’s not just the big players. There are a lot of little companies that are getting bought up right now. Not don’t really want to talk about it, but some people are combining those into other groups of things. That, that’s a thing that’s going to launch also coming from liquid web. How much of this is liquid web behind

Cory Miller: [00:06:56] Yeah, they.

Sé Reed: [00:06:58] liquid web acquisition spree or is it word, press.

Cory Miller: [00:07:03] So a couple of years ago, I would have said the theme of the acquisitions is our friend. SIADH and awesome. Like he was on a tear and I think I texted him privately, but I said it publicly to someone, everybody know how jealous I was his idea to do the accelerator. It was was one of the best ideas ever and the way he always wrote for the entrepreneur, by the way. And so I had been one where I know for sure Stephen has dear friends. I root for say it, but he’s just a brilliant. Entrepreneur a strategic master and he’s built this empire where it’s so interesting to see what he’s done. So a couple of years ago it had been saying he’s like killing the end. He still is there for sure. This year. It definitely feels like our last six months plus months, it feels like liquid web for sure. And they’re going on a tear. In fact, I interviewed my, my former colleague, Matt Danner. Who’s now GM. I think it was and has led a lot of those acquisitions about it yesterday. It was just really interesting. And I love it. They obviously see something in the market and have the cash to go out and do it. And then now the kind of structure infrastructure to do that. And for me it’s when you talk to M and a people particular like another friend of ours, cream, cream at crowd favorite, this is a, you’re seeing a bunch of roll-ups.

Sé Reed: [00:08:24] my favorite names of people.

Cory Miller: [00:08:26] You’re seeing a lot of roll-ups in companies. And I think I’m not speaking for liquid web, but this is a great example of a roll up which happens in all kinds of other industries for hundreds of years.

Sé Reed: [00:08:40] Meaning like the serve, the companies and services are consolidated right under one roof, another company, by the way, it’s not just liquid web. I would say that it’s mostly the hosting companies, but it is also WPS. Who’s been buying up, they bought up which switch Gatsby do they buy up? Not Gatsby, but like the,

Jason Cosper: [00:09:02] Graph QL plugin that helps integrate Godspeed.

Sé Reed: [00:09:06] yeah. So they are making, they’re like putting a lot of effort into. and they’ve been acquired. So it almost looks like everyone’s acquiring services for a really particular persona. Like all of these big hosting companies are really. Putting they’re like, all right. WP engine is going after the kind of app creator or the all-in-one their experience, right? The web experience that they’re doing and liquid web seems to be going after more of the user or the business user, that would be my obsession with better.

Cory Miller: [00:09:46] I think he nailed you. Nailed it. If you think about what I would do in the past is I put on my okay. WP engine hat, or my automatic hat and try to think if I was controlling the ship there, what would I want to do? And typically they talk about bill. Buy or partner okay. We want to do something new. We want to try to take more markets, share whatever that is. Okay. Let’s go build it. People like Cosper, H how do we build this? But then the buy in partner are the other sides that you’re seeing in, which is acceleration. A lot of the deals you’re seeing, I think are accelerating feature sets, acquire. Customer and market and revenue. A lot of the hosting companies particularly think about like endurance who I believe still own split hosts. They were. International group, I think edgy. So they were rolling up all kinds of shared hosting companies because they wanted to get that market share. And to me, it’s there’s kind of two people in that space go daddy in the shared hosting space and EIG. And then you still got this awesome independent called site grant out there fighting. And there’s a bunch of others. I’m not sure. DreamHost too. Yeah, absolutely. And but the field is consolidate so much where for instance, back in the day, 10 years ago, I was a huge host Gator fan and everything ebbs and flows. been through this a bunch of times.

Sé Reed: [00:11:12] a very small orange. Do you remember a very small orange?

Cory Miller: [00:11:15] That’s an AIG brand now, too.

Sé Reed: [00:11:17] Yeah. I just want a brand name and then that gets just how do you like even fit that in a portfolio? It’s just such a funny.

Steve Zehngut: [00:11:24] W we’ve talked so far about the what’s going on in our immediate world with some of the hosting companies with automatic. It does seem like that has exploded, but there’s actually a lot of acquisitions that’s happened. Outside of our world as well. This is happening in the agency space as well. There’s a lot of agencies that are being rolled up into larger agencies. It’s happening on a small scale too. For instance, Alex Vasquez did just have a, he bought a plug-in a couple of years ago called ignition deck and he took that over, so it’s not just big players, right? It’s small and medium-sized players as well. It’s happening all over the place.

Cory Miller: [00:11:55] Okay.

Sé Reed: [00:11:56] I wonder if some of it has the longer term, I think obviously I think right now there was a really big shift because of last year and the COVID and all of that stuff. So I think there was probably a lot of shifting of priorities for a lot of these one product, one person project. Advanced custom fields, for example, with Elliot. See whose last name? I can’t remember how many RS or ends or DS it has in it. All right. But that’s kinda like this has grown so big and I can’t even handle it. And so many people, more people got online last year that a lot of freelancers and devs and probably a plugin support, this was something you might be able to comment on in terms of plugin developers and their support requests going way up. It just got too big to handle. And so they needed to either expand or grow themselves or go to a company that has the resources to manage it. I think that’s like a weird, like growth impact that the COVID and the lockdown had on our industry.

Jason Cosper: [00:13:04] This reminds me a lot of old hunter S Thompson saying, which is when the. The weird turn pro and all these companies getting acquired the going has gotten weird enough for them. Things are expanding in a way that they just haven’t expected. All right. It’s time to throw ourselves in with a managed hosting company or who whoever’s basically buying.

Cory Miller: [00:13:33] Yeah.

Sé Reed: [00:13:34] You think about it.

Cory Miller: [00:13:35] That was our, that was specifically cost for, that was our my, my decisions for being acquired and pursuing that is in 2008, when we started, I themes it was the wild west, but it was a great day and we enjoyed some blue oceans and and did a lot of good. And then I think it was like 2014. Some someone at server companies go, Hey could you run a report on WordPress and see what. Thing called WordPress is, and the result came back. I was like, Hey, it’s 40% of our infrastructure. And then now you’ve got all these huge companies with money, like going, oh, turn opportunity. And so overnight it felt like almost all these hosting companies started really pointing their attention toward WordPress. SiteGrounds has history was started in July and then they came in and are killing it in WordPress. So that’s what I played the script forward and go. We were a utility company and I themes and I go back up and security. If I put on my GoDaddy hat, my W2, having a liquid hat and trying to think damn, I’d go strategically. I want to expand out my value footprint from not just being bare metal or space on the box too. What if we create this whole feature set and

Steve Zehngut: [00:14:46] And I think it’s no coincidence that WordPress had hit a milestone recently. It just hit 40% of the entire internet. That’s a big number and Yeah. So when we were looking at those numbers, I can’t remember which recent episode we were looking at, the numbers and WordPress was at 40%, but woo commerce by itself runs 8% of the entire internet. And so those, both of those numbers are significant numbers, which is causing people. I agree, Cory I just want to mirror what you said, which is causing hosting companies and anybody that’s in this ecosystem to pay attention.

Sé Reed: [00:15:17] I think also what you said is that people are realizing that so much of the infrastructure is built on that. Oh, we like for hosting companies, they’ve invested like the big GoDaddy’s invested in liquid they’ve invested money. And at this point they need to make sure that the boat that is WordPress does not capsize. So I think there’s definitely a lot of, padding out your own space to be like we’ve at least got a lockdown on these particular plugins with these feature sets. So we know that we can offer our customers a stable feature set, even if everything else falls off the rails or gets abandoned in the repo.

Steve Zehngut: [00:15:59] Yeah. And I think it also, the hosting companies are acquiring some of these technologies because it gives them a unique selling proposition, a competitive edge over the other hosting companies. If they’re able to offer this thing, either exclusively integrated, exclusive, or for free or whatever it is, right. Because they own it, then that’s, there’s a competitive edge there. Yeah.

Sé Reed: [00:16:19] Yeah, WP and Jen bought Genesis. And then, so now they can offer a whole slew of themes. They also bought atomic blocks, which became Genesis blocks, which are basically like now they are, it really feels like they are hedging their bets so that if something happens the community goes off the rails. Possible, but they have their own in-house system. They’ll be able to continue to serve their customers and it will not have the rug pulled out from under them

Cory Miller: [00:16:47] you.

Steve Zehngut: [00:16:47] But I’m betting there’s only so much you can sell on, on, on server speed. And they’ve probably hit a, they probably hit a plateau. Marketing. They’re like, we’re really fast. We’re super fast. every, everybody sells speed now. Everybody’s fast. Everybody’s got their caching figured out. So ultimately your whatever hosting company you go with I there are small differences, but ultimately you’re buying the same hardware. You’re buying the same caching. You’re buying the same thing. So they do need a new, competitive a new way to compete.

Sé Reed: [00:17:16] That’s true.

Cory Miller: [00:17:17] this is if you play board games and things like this, I think about like monopoly and I go, and I’m not trying to say this in the evil sense. So give me a moment, but

Sé Reed: [00:17:25] No, not even monopolies like dictators. It’s a thing.

Cory Miller: [00:17:30] So I go, how do I win? How do I dominate? And so the equation with business most times is just profit. Now I w you know, people like us and entrepreneurs like Steve, and I go it’s profit plus purpose. We do those. We want to do good in the well world, and we want to do well in the world. And so I think about that. Okay. I want to win. I want to. Okay. And that means expanding my empire. And so if I see this big wave called WordPress coming in and it’s come to my attention and all of a sudden, I go, that is a market to go capture. And so how do I monetize that? How do I capture all of this value? And then we get these roll-ups so look at if we just gave it. For a second liquid web strategy, it’s they have rolled up out their own WordPress division called stellar now, and to group all these, because it’s become a great way for them to one increase revenue and market share in WordPress. It’s a great thing. So you can just go if you just play it out, I don’t have any inside information. Despite my dear friends there, you gain it out. Is fast forward the tape and you go, I get it. It’s going to be a war between the hosting companies with money. So if I’m WP engine, Jason and Heather are brilliant over there, they know what they’re doing, but I just go, how do I compete and offer more and more value? Because at the end of the day, do I want them, my customers going prospective customers are now customers going to Keene state going to GoDaddy, going to whatever the liquid web. And so how do I get ahead of them? Specific like little nuance I’ve seen within the hosting companies besides WordPress is the local development. Somebody like Steven cusper can talk more about that kind of stuff, but I go, that’s a tool set for developers, building websites. It’s a common thing that makes total sense. Maybe it doesn’t give them like specific number on the bottom line, but it helps them retain, keep, retain, grow that customer base. And those are smart strategies.

Sé Reed: [00:19:25] Sona thing too. That’s the same thing. Go daddy pro is going after the developers and the like smaller agencies and freelancers.

Steve Zehngut: [00:19:32] And it’s interesting you say that because if I was just marketing to developers alone, that’s a very small slice of the pie. But what you’re really saying is by putting in tools or efficiencies for developers, then the developers are going to bring their clients over to that hosting platform. That’s really the play that you’re talking

Sé Reed: [00:19:51] Developers are the smart investment, like always and what’s interesting is how little WordPress and the community gets that.

Steve Zehngut: [00:19:58] but that’s,

Jason Cosper: [00:19:59] Developers or the smart investment, but also marketers or the smart investment. And that is something that that is something that WP engine has been going after. For, I’d say five or six years now, they started saying okay, we’re a managed WordPress host, but also they were one of the first ones to start pushing this. We’re a digital experience

Sé Reed: [00:20:21] Yeah. And they integrated with HubSpot, which was a big deal.

Jason Cosper: [00:20:25] Right.

Steve Zehngut: [00:20:26] And I was just going to say, this is only recent, right? Because before they were marketing to the content creators to the site owners to the bloggers of the world. And no matter what you say as a hosting company you’re always going to fall on deaf ears.

Sé Reed: [00:20:40] Yeah. Interestingly, liquid web is also taking the marketing approach by bunching all of those brands into stellar WP. And that then becomes the brand that is selling to. What the small business user, the nonprofit, because liquid web can then keep their bigger perspective. And when you land on the homepage of whatever it is, you’re landing on a targeted audience versus the broader liquid web audience. So by really consolidating all of those, they really do make it easier to market and they make an approachable, friendly brand that we’re gonna see now. So I think w we’re not going to see so much liquid web anymore. We’re going to see more of the stellar stuff. Excuse me seller WP. And that’s going to basically,

Steve Zehngut: [00:21:26] Okay.

Sé Reed: [00:21:26] because it’s a different market, right? Would, Webb’s probably going to go after more of the bigger fish. Interestingly, I wonder if gives if part of the gift thing, obviously I know Matt and Devon as well. They’re from here in Soquel. But I wonder if some of the impact of. Last year on the nonprofit industry factored into their decision because nonprofits are not great at paying for things in the first place. But yeah it’s hard to do. They don’t have a lot of money and last year was basically. Devastating a lot of, so a lot of my clients are non-profits. There was a lot of devastation in the industry and the impact that can have on a company like give WP or a product, give WP that’s focused on the industry, makes it Hey, obviously longterm non-profits aren’t going anywhere.

But short term, it probably made some sense to go over there as well. So they made lemonade out of lemons in a way.

Steve Zehngut: [00:22:28] Isn’t that what you do with lemon.

Sé Reed: [00:22:30] I prefer lemon rind pie.

Steve Zehngut: [00:22:32] There you go.

Sé Reed: [00:22:33] Yeah.

Jason Cosper: [00:22:34] You can also chop up your lemons and send them down to do the garbage disposal. If your garbage disposal is stinking, it’s a wonderful thing to do. That’s it? That’s a little hint from Heloise there.

Sé Reed: [00:22:44] I have a question. So we’ve talked about one, I had a dialogue on Twitter when the give WP happened and I was it was like, what are your predictions for next? And I was like they arrive with yay, yay. E prep or whatever I said. And lo and behold ACF was just acquired by a smaller company, which made me happy. But the other one that I said I’m seeing in the future of acquisitions is gravity forums. Does anyone want to take a bet if that will happen in the next three months or six months? Anyone? Six months under, over, I’m taking back Timmy up and Twitter.

Steve Zehngut: [00:23:22] Hang on a sec. I ain’t gonna say I’m just, I’m putting a bid in for gravity forms right now. Give me a second.

Sé Reed: [00:23:25] Yeah. Wait, I want the real quick, you’re going to like heads the bets.

Steve Zehngut: [00:23:29] Yeah.

Cory Miller: [00:23:30] I’m trying not to comment on that particular one se, but I got to, I got another one.

Steve Zehngut: [00:23:36] Oh, we touched a nerve.

Sé Reed: [00:23:37] Oh,

Cory Miller: [00:23:38] got it.

Jason Tucker: [00:23:39] yeah.

Cory Miller: [00:23:40] I got another one for ya. I think this would be even more compelling. Evan thinking for years, when does cite grow and get it get acquired, so here’s the interesting,

Sé Reed: [00:23:49] foreign companies. So I think that’s more complex.

Cory Miller: [00:23:52] good Eddie.

Sé Reed: [00:23:53] acquire user role editor pro though, because it’s really complicated to try to pay Russia. So they really need to like, fix that situation. You’re hearing, if you’re out there, please do that. Cause I need some licenses to be renewed.

Cory Miller: [00:24:08] So go to the, as bought things internationally before. And I don’t think that’s a problem for them at all, but here’s the interesting thing about Saigon and I’ve got friends there and I love the Workday Dave, and I’m actually a customer too, but they are in a country that has economics too. Like it’s legit. I’ll just say it’s a little bit cheaper to live in. No Gary. Gary. Yeah. Then, yeah. Sorry, Bulgaria, for instance. And then they’ve got a killer product. So they’ve as EIG was acquiring all these companies. I thought to myself. Wow. Sacraments in the best position as a potential acquisition target, because they’ve got scale economics of scale, they’ve got a killer product or services unmatched still when all the shared hosting went straightened up SiteGround was just up there. You could hit live chat and all that kind of stuff. And again, cost for seeing this. We’ve all seen this as a cycle of good hosting, bad housing. Good. Everybody rides the wave.

Sé Reed: [00:25:08] I hate it.

Cory Miller: [00:25:08] That’s the one. I always think how big of a check does it have to be? For SiteGround to go, okay. Is it half a billion? Is it a bit, I don’t know how big of a check does it have to say? And they’re in the gravity forms thing for me is like gravity forms has been killing it for 10 plus years. Like they’re doing so well. Why do they need to be acquired there? Those two particular companies I think, are in some of the best spaces, because they’re just dominant what they’re doing and a little bit.

Sé Reed: [00:25:38] That the reasoning for that type of thing becomes not about the business model or the business is killing it. It becomes about the owner or owner. Tapping out or wanting to do a different thing, that’s really what makes the best acquisition, right? Because it’s not a company that’s struggling and you have to fix the company has got tons of revenue and is doing fine. And the leaders are just, owners are just like, we’re done.

Cory Miller: [00:26:02] Yeah.

Sé Reed: [00:26:03] That’s the acquisition you want.

Steve Zehngut: [00:26:05] I know we’ve only got two minutes here left why is the reaction when the when a company in our industry gets acquired, the reaction is always oh it was nice while that lasted right. Or this thing’s going to suck now that it got taken over. Right.

Sé Reed: [00:26:20] meet you at

Jason Tucker: [00:26:21] like music. It’s just like music.

Sé Reed: [00:26:23] Yeah. It’s if you get a producer to come

Jason Tucker: [00:26:25] No, it’s.

Sé Reed: [00:26:26] the third album of their favorite band, and now it just sucks. Hello. The happens all the time. It just happened.

Steve Zehngut: [00:26:33] Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. The reaction outweighs how often that the products actually change when they get acquired.

Sé Reed: [00:26:41] Sometimes some people aren’t fans of the people who work at certain

Steve Zehngut: [00:26:44] Aye. Aye.

Sé Reed: [00:26:45] why they,

Steve Zehngut: [00:26:46] Aye. I understand. I understand that. But just because that hosting company bought the product that you use, does that mean you’re going to stop using the.

Sé Reed: [00:26:55] no, which is

Steve Zehngut: [00:26:56] Okay. Okay. My, my point, exactly.

Jason Cosper: [00:27:00] So th there have been there have been two instances of a plugin getting acquired by a smaller entity recently and things have gone a little wrong. There was a dark mode plugin that ended up getting rebranded in the repository and turned into some sort of. Editor, I and then there was the WP user avatar plugin that got acquired and got rebranded to profile press.

So you could actually set originally with WPS or avatar, you would set a, an avatar for somebody not using Gravatar like a default avatar. And then it turned into a full membership plugin overnight.

Steve Zehngut: [00:27:45] Sweet. Oh, wait. No. Oh, wait.

Jason Tucker: [00:27:48] That’s when you were expecting though, right? Because you blindly update your websites, exactly.

Sé Reed: [00:27:53] Yeah, I just want to real quick before we go, what is it? Can everyone say just what their next target they think is Cory I think it’s gravity forms. That’s my, you can’t claim that one. Anybody else? One of them won’t get you in trouble for exposing deals. Zeke. Why did I call you? That’s weird, Steve.

Steve Zehngut: [00:28:21] Zeke interactive.

Jason Tucker: [00:28:25] Steve’s always said it’s been for sale. No insider knowledge

Steve Zehngut: [00:28:29] How big is that? Check? That’s what I want to know. Come on

Jason Tucker: [00:28:31] least five bucks, man, at least five bucks, you know what? I’ll get.

Sé Reed: [00:28:36] No.

Cory Miller: [00:28:36] I’m trying to be careful. I’m trying to be careful with what I say, because just like you said, as a user side, it doesn’t feel good. Always from a team side, if I start sharing names, I’ve got people in friends. Those, I think forms is compelling, but I think those are way bigger swings at the fence. I think e-commerce has compelling. And one of the big ones out there is easy digital downloads. I think.

Steve Zehngut: [00:29:02] My S my serious answer for you say it was going to be ninja forums.

Sé Reed: [00:29:06] I know it’s going to be one of the forms. Someone’s getting a

Steve Zehngut: [00:29:09] And I have no insider information. So if that’s true, I apologize that the Canada bank, but that’s my yeah. That’s

Sé Reed: [00:29:16] required.

Steve Zehngut: [00:29:18] long as they acquire it and shut it down, I’m fine with that.

Jason Cosper: [00:29:20] And I’m going to go ahead and end it with I think hello, Dolly will be acquired. Okay.
Jason Tucker: [00:29:28] If I had to guess I would think that maybe like Timbuktu or one of those backpack companies, I think that Matt is definitely going to go buy one of those so he can put it on his list for for this next year. That’s it. That’s it folks. I want to say thank you very much for hanging out with us.Cory thank you for joining us. We really appreciate it. Here’s an auction. Yeah. So if you’d like to subscribe, to ask over to the website, WBUR crop, while they’re cooler.com/subscribe, or you can subscribe to us over there. And if you want to listen to us on any of the different podcasts networks and places, you can go and find us over there as well. Talk to y’all later. Bye-bye.

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