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Johannesburg - US based Automattic, which is behind blogging and website tool WordPress, has acquired SA-founded WooCommerce for an undisclosed amount.
WordPress is a popular open source content management system that powers about 23% of global websites, according to Automattic CEO and founder of Wordpress Matt Mullenweg.
Meanwhile, WooCommerce is a Wordpress plugin that that helps users more easily set up e-commerce sites. Mullenweg says that WooCommerce has over 7.5 million downloads, over one million active installs and powers 650 000 online storefronts.
WooCommerce is also linked to WooThemes, which is a business that sells Wordpress themes. WooThemes was started in 2007 by South Africans Adii Pienaar and Mark Forrester along with Norwegian Magnus Jepson.
Pienaar told Fin24 earlier this month that by the time he left his post as WooThemes chief executive officer in 2013, the business had annual revenue of more than $10m. Pienaar has since started a new venture dubbed Receiptful that is also funded in part by Mullenweg.
“I'm just very happy for the whole WooTeam,” Pienaar told Fin24 over email.
“This acquisition shows that WooThemes is indeed the premier WordPress products company and is testament to the business the team has built over the years,” Pienaar said.
Mullenweg in a blog post this week said the deal means that WooCommerce’s 55 people in 16 countries are set to be added to Automattic’s 325 people in 37 countries.
Automattic is described as a distributed company that seeks to democratise publishing and development. Apart from driving Wordpress, Automattic is also behind the likes of technologies such as Jetpack, which helps enhance security and speed boosts for Wordpress websites. Other online tools that Automattic is behind includes the likes of anti-spam service Akismet.
“For years, we’ve been working on democratising publishing, and today more people have independent sites built on open source software than ever before in the history of the web,” said Mullenweg in a blog post.
“Now, we want to make it easy for anyone to sell online independently, without being locked into closed, centralised services — to enable freedom of livelihood along with freedom of expression,” he wrote.
Co-founder of WooThemes Mark Forrester expressed his happiness about the deal in a blog post as well.
“It’s the end of a chapter I’m hugely proud of, that began all the way back in 2007, and the start of an exciting new chapter aligned with our dream partner and the ultimate home for our open source platform, WooCommerce,” wrote Forrester.
The third co-founder of WooThemes Magnus Jepson has explained how the deal is set to help grow the business further.
“2013 saw the exit of one of our co-founders, which pushed Mark and myself to re-evaluate or position. We journeyed to figure out what was next for Woo, and after doubling the team to a 55 people spread out over 16 different countries and hosting WooConf in San Francisco for 320 attendees, we were definitely left with an appetite to go even further.
“Being a proudly bootstrapped company, we didn’t really need extra funding, but we wanted to partner with someone who could not only help us keep, but also grow our team and market dominance,” said Jepson.
While Automattic has not disclosed the value of the deal, US technology news website TechCrunch has reported that it is “the biggest acquisition by Automattic to date”.
