As we’re working towards and in advisory conversations with product company founders, a recurring topic is valuation. What’s a WordPress product business worth? My hypothesis is that WordPress product businesses are consistently undervalued. Why? I see three key reasons.

# With governing a guild, the key problem I see us signing up for is decision making. Who decides who can join? Who decides how member resources are allocated? Lesley Sims pointed me to Elinor Ostrom’s book, Governing the Commons, and as I’ve dug in I’m forming what I think is a clear sense of…

WordCamps are part of the essential magic of WordPress. They connect community (including newcomers!) to each other, inspire attendees with what’s possible in WordPress, and encourage (and empower) people to contribute, which makes WordPress (and the ecosystem) better for us all.

I’ve been thinking about the benefits and tradeoffs of decentralization and my hypothesis is that the concept of a guild for WordPress product businesses might be just the thing we need to mitigate the tradeoffs of decentralization faced by extenders. So I started doing some research.

What I’m intrigued about most right now is how you effectively monetize an ecosystem plugin. My hypothesis is that ecosystem plugins within WordPress are undervalued and underdeveloped as value-based businesses and, accordingly, are far from achieving their economic potential.