Fireship
AI-assisted summary of The most expensive 33 hours in WordPress history... — original source. Check the original for full context.
Source published:
Key ideas
- Automattic's board attempted an ambush coup to remove co-founder Matt Mullenweg as CEO following his return from Burning Man, voting him out within 50 minutes. (0:00)
- Mullenweg reversed his ouster in just 33 hours by leveraging his 84% voting majority to dissolve the sitting board and reinstall himself. (3:07)
- The aborted coup resulted in over $8 million in golden parachute liabilities after Mullenweg fired CFO Mark Davies and Chief Legal Officer Andy Masaan, who had enacted emergency severance terms during their brief tenure. (3:07)
Detailed notes
## Background Published by the tech channel Fireship on YouTube on September 23, 2026, this video examines the dramatic corporate infighting inside Automattic. According to the page description, the company's board attempted to fire WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg while he was at Burning Man, only for Mullenweg to replace the entire board and declare himself a pirate 33 hours later.
## TL;DR While Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg was returning from Burning Man, the company's board of directors staged a rapid boardroom coup, voting him out and installing CFO Mark Davies as the new chief executive. However, the board overlooked Mullenweg's decisive 84% voting majority, which he promptly wielded to dissolve the sitting board, reinstall himself as CEO, and purge the conspirators within 33 hours. The aborted takeover proved disastrously expensive, as Davies and Chief Legal Officer Andy Masaan secured golden parachute agreements during their brief reign that left Automattic on the hook for over $8 million in severance payouts.
## Atmosphere & style The presentation is trademark Fireship: fast-paced, irreverent, and dripping with dry satire. The host frames serious corporate intrigue with deadpan comedic punchlines, contrasting solemn boardroom governance with Mullenweg's absurd pirate persona, missing Signal logs, and sudden houseboat blog posts. Watching the segment feels like taking a whirlwind, popcorn-munching tour through Silicon Valley absurdity where massive valuations collide with petty corporate melodrama.
## Bulletin - [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylO0DQeVEBQ&t=0s) Automattic's board attempted an ambush coup to remove co-founder Matt Mullenweg as CEO following his return from Burning Man, voting him out within 50 minutes. - [03:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylO0DQeVEBQ&t=187s) Mullenweg reversed his ouster in just 33 hours by leveraging his 84% voting majority to dissolve the sitting board and reinstall himself. - [03:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylO0DQeVEBQ&t=187s) The aborted coup resulted in over $8 million in golden parachute liabilities after Mullenweg fired CFO Mark Davies and Chief Legal Officer Andy Masaan, who had enacted emergency severance terms during their brief tenure.
## Key takeaways - [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylO0DQeVEBQ&t=0s) The Automattic board orchestrated a corporate coup while founder Matt Mullenweg was attending Burning Man, following mounting tensions and valuation losses tied to ongoing litigation with WP Engine. - [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylO0DQeVEBQ&t=0s) Upon his return, Mullenweg was handed a written proposal giving him only 50 minutes before the board voted to strip him of his 21-year CEO position. - [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylO0DQeVEBQ&t=0s) CFO Mark Davies was elevated to CEO with backing from board members Sue Decker, Ann Dunwoody, and Automattic's first CEO, Tony Schneider. - [01:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylO0DQeVEBQ&t=118s) Speculation surrounding the firing pointed to WP Engine's spoliation of evidence claims regarding Mullenweg's missing phones and Signal logs, though Mullenweg claimed private equity firm Silver Lake was plotting against him. - [01:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylO0DQeVEBQ&t=118s) Following his removal, Mullenweg adopted a 'pirate' persona, stripping administrative access in internal Slack channels, threatening to move infrastructure, and migrating to the WordPress.org Slack. - [03:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylO0DQeVEBQ&t=187s) The board failed to account for Mullenweg's 84% voting share in Automattic, which allowed him to unilaterally dissolve the board of directors and replace them. - [03:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylO0DQeVEBQ&t=187s) Within 33 hours, Mullenweg reclaimed executive control, fired the entire board, and terminated both interim CEO Mark Davies and Chief Legal Officer Andy Masaan. - [03:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylO0DQeVEBQ&t=187s) Davies and Masaan had drafted golden parachutes ensuring a year of salary, health benefits, and immediate full equity vesting upon termination, costing Automattic more than $8 million. - [03:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylO0DQeVEBQ&t=187s) Instead of addressing staff concerns after the ordeal, Mullenweg's first public post focused on his process of buying a houseboat.
## Detailed walkthrough ### [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylO0DQeVEBQ&t=0s) The 50-Minute Coup at Automattic
While the tech world was quietly humming along and the host was busy migrating his WordPress blog over to Kubernetes, the board of directors at Automattic—the parent company behind WordPress.com, Tumblr, and WooCommerce, notably spelled with two T's in honor of its founder Matt—attempted an OpenAI-style corporate coup. On paper, their initial execution looked clean: Automattic's Chief Financial Officer was promptly elevated to Chief Executive Officer, the board released an official statement expressing complete confidence in new leadership, and relieved employees even informed TechCrunch that they were ecstatic about the change. However, the board critically miscalculated the resolve of co-founder Matt Mullenweg, who built WordPress at age 19, spent the last two years locked in a brutal legal war with WP Engine, and possesses what the host describes as a "martyrdom complex that would make Al-Qaeda proud."
In tech corporate governance, a board of directors typically sits above the CEO to provide oversight and maintain leverage—especially if an executive embroils the enterprise in a petty legal feud that wipes out an estimated 80% of company valuation before taking off over Labor Day weekend to microdose homelessness at Burning Man. The board seized that exact opening: while Mullenweg was off wandering the desert, directors maneuvered behind the scenes to install his replacement.
When Mullenweg returned on September 9th, dusty from the playa, he was ambushed with a written proposal declaring that the board would convene a vote to strip him of the CEO seat he had occupied for 21 years in exactly 50 minutes. Mullenweg requested a delay of just a few hours so his attorney could examine the documents, but the board flatly refused. Fifty minutes later, CFO Mark Davies—backed by board members Sue Decker, retired four-star general Ann Dunwoody, and Tony Schneider (Automattic’s very first CEO and a man Mullenweg once characterized as his "business soulmate")—voted Mullenweg out.
[01:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylO0DQeVEBQ&t=118s) Missing Phones, Conspiracies, and Going Full Pirate
Left on the outside but still retaining his enterprise Slack credentials, Mullenweg immediately went public internally. He announced to company channels that he would not attend the upcoming executive leadership meeting because Davies had secretly conspired with the board behind his back. The board provided no official justification for the abrupt firing, prompting two prevailing theories. One industry theory tied the dismissal to Automattic's escalating litigation with WP Engine, which had accused Mullenweg over the summer of spoliation of evidence after two of his smartphones and 20 months of Signal messaging logs mysteriously vanished; the board likely hoped that cutting Mullenweg loose would curry favor with presiding judges. Mullenweg offered a far more conspiratorial explanation: Silver Lake, the private equity titan backing WP Engine, was engineering a targeted plot to ruin his life.
The conflict escalated rapidly onto public platforms. Mullenweg tweeted that he needed to contract security researchers to migrate core infrastructure off Automattic servers—an implicit threat targeting WordPress.org, the independently controlled portal where every standard WordPress installation downloads plugins, themes, and critical software updates. Inside Slack, things devolved further into surreal behavior. Mullenweg famously announced:
> "Oh, since I'm a pirate now, I curse. After 42 years of never uttering a curse word, it's kind of fun."
Complaining that "the Slack smells funny like turncoats," he stripped administrative permissions from every other user and decamped to the WordPress.org Slack instance, appending a skull-and-crossbones pirate flag emoji to his display name.
[03:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylO0DQeVEBQ&t=187s) The 33-Hour Counter-Coup and the $8 Million Golden Parachute
Despite the boardroom maneuver, the board had overlooked a fundamental corporate reality: Mullenweg controls an 84% voting majority in Automattic. As he nonchalantly explained to a user on Reddit, he retained the unilateral authority to seat or unseat directors whenever he pleased. While a board can technically vote out its CEO, an owner with 84% voting power can simply dissolve that board and seat replacements willing to reinstall him.
By early Friday morning, Mullenweg marched back into Automattic's announcement channel to announce that the board was back in alignment and he was firmly back in the driver's seat. He took to Twitter to dismiss the drama, asserting that if an executive does not face a coup attempt every few years, they simply aren't hiring strong enough leaders; when TechCrunch pressed him on whether he was merely trolling the public, he retorted that "he's not a troll, he's a pirate." By Saturday, Automattic put out an official statement confirming Mullenweg's reinstatement. Behind the scenes, the victory was absolute: the entire sitting board had been dismissed, and both CFO Mark Davies and Chief Legal Officer Andy Masaan were fired on the spot.
```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: The 33-Hour Automattic Board Coup accDescr: Flowchart illustrating the boardroom coup, Mullenweg's voting rights leverage, the purge of leadership, and the resulting severance payout.
subgraph Coup["The 50-Minute Coup"] A["Mullenweg at Burning Man"] --> B["Board gives 50-min ultimatum"] B --> C["Board votes Mullenweg out<br/>Davies appointed CEO"] end
subgraph Counter["The 84% Counter-Coup"] C --> D["Mullenweg leverages 84% voting control"] D --> E["Board dissolved & replaced"] E --> F["Mullenweg reinstated as CEO"] end
subgraph Purge["The Aftermath & $8M Parachute"] F --> G["Mullenweg fires Davies & Masaan"] H["Interim Severance Agreement<br/>(1-yr salary, benefits, full vesting)"] --> I["Automattic owes >$8 Million"] G --> I end ```
The entire coup lasted just 33 hours, but those 33 hours turned out to be the most expensive in WordPress history. During their brief hours in charge, Davies and Masaan had drafted golden parachute severance packages specifying that in the event of termination, they would receive a full year's salary, twelve months of company-paid health benefits, and immediate full vesting of all equity. Upon reclaiming the company, Mullenweg triggered those exact clauses by firing them, leaving Automattic legally obligated to pay out more than $8 million. Rank-and-file employees waiting for an internal town hall or explanation from leadership received no clarity; instead, Mullenweg's next public communication was a personal blog post detailing his efforts to purchase a houseboat.
- **Total coup duration:** 33 hours from dismissal to reinstatement. - **Key ousting board members:** Mark Davies (CFO), Sue Decker, Ann Dunwoody, and Tony Schneider. - **Key leverage:** Matt Mullenweg's personal 84% voting share in Automattic and direct ownership of the WordPress.org domain. - **Financial fallout:** Over $8 million owed in executive severance to Mark Davies and Andy Masaan due to emergency contract amendments drafted during the takeover.
[04:25](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylO0DQeVEBQ&t=265s) Sponsor: Greptile AI Code Reviewer
Closing the report, the host transitions from executive chaos to software defects with sponsor Greptile, an AI code review platform engineered to run and execute pull requests rather than merely performing static text analysis.
Greptile features a sandbox execution environment known as "T-Rex mode," which spins up the developer's branch, clicks through the user interface, executes runtime code, and deposits logs alongside visual screenshots directly inside GitHub pull requests. The utility of this approach was demonstrated in the open-source Axios repository, where Greptile caught an edge-case bug where an unhandled exception thrown in a progress callback left the underlying request promise perpetually pending without resolving or rejecting. Greptile flagged the error for the maintainers prior to release, preventing a breaking bug from reaching millions of downstream developers. Beyond Axios, Greptile regularly catches production-grade bugs across open-source codebases at Netflix, PostHog, and Nvidia, and provides solo developers with 50 free code reviews per month.
## Notable quotes > [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylO0DQeVEBQ&t=0s) martyrdom complex that would make Al-Qaeda proud — Host
> [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylO0DQeVEBQ&t=0s) microdose homelessness at Burning Man — Host
> [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylO0DQeVEBQ&t=0s) business soulmate — Matt Mullenweg
> [01:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylO0DQeVEBQ&t=118s) Oh, since I'm a pirate now, I curse. After 42 years of never uttering a curse word, it's kind of fun. — Matt Mullenweg
> [01:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylO0DQeVEBQ&t=118s) the Slack smells funny like turncoats — Matt Mullenweg
> [03:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylO0DQeVEBQ&t=187s) he's not a troll, he's a pirate — Matt Mullenweg
## Mentioned Automattic, WordPress, WordPress.com, Tumblr, WooCommerce, Matt Mullenweg, TechCrunch, WP Engine, OpenAI, Mark Davies, Sue Decker, Ann Dunwoody, Tony Schneider, Signal, Silver Lake, WordPress.org, Andy Masaan, Greptile, GitHub, Axios, Netflix, PostHog, Nvidia
## Video description Greptile is the only AI code reviewer that actually runs your code. Try it for free: http://greptile.com/go/fireship
Automattic's board fired WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg while he was at Burning Man... 33 hours later, he replaced the board and declared himself a pirate. Let's dive in.
Want more Fireship?
🗞️ Newsletter: https://bytes.dev 🧠 Courses: https://fireship.dev
[Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylO0DQeVEBQ)