Talkin smack

I was posting a while back about people in their mid twenties and I was talkin smack about not really seeing roll models that age. Well I think Matt Mullenweg from WordPress is a great roll model, and not just because I am writing this using wordpress. He is a smart, driven, articulate person and I appreciate that. Alanna and I went to an early WordPress meetup in SF a long time ago and he practically chased us out the door so that he could talk to us. Alanna was already using WordPress but I was using Movable Type. He immediately said I should try WordPress, and you know what… I did.

The weird thing is, is that he is more of a roll model to geeks and older people rather than people his own age. More younger people know who Mark Zuckerberg is than Matt Mullenweg. Hell, more people know who washes Britney’s car than know who Matt is.

I have asked myself why I don’t really like Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook and I have a weird time with that. I don’t really like Facebook as a product I think it is a time waster and just another set of training wheels for the web. I have also heard Zuckerberg speak and I didn’t really think he was that great. He talked like a much older CEO talking about strategic vision rather than someone focused on the product and the people who us it. I think he is a great story and I think he smart enough to know that stories get investment capital in the valley not products and not innovation. The silicon valley is littered with great products and companies that couldn’t get themselves arrested because they had no story. Mark is playing the game. Matt is changing it.