
How WooThemes Quietly Built A $2  Million Per Year Business Selling Themes - iisbum
http://mixergy.com/woothemes-adriaan-pienaar/
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stevenp
Mixergy is always a gold mine for me. I get the same feeling listening to
Andrew's interviews that I used to get browsing Napster for all my favorite
music. I would _easily_ pay $20 per month for this stuff.

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AndrewWarner
This means a lot to me.

I got a couple of crappy emails on vacation this weekend from 2 viewers who
thought I wasn't doing enough. For some reason I let it get to me. So I'm esp
grateful to hear that you appreciate my work.

~~~
rasikjain
Hey Andrew, I really like the way you conduct the interview and the research
you and your team does in the background.

For a change, I would like to listen to your interview regarding how you
started your career and what were your experiences. If you have given
interview previously please provide the link on your website or on HN.

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chrisboesing
Hi, there are two interviews that talk about Andrew's career:
[http://mixergy.com/how-must-marketing-helped-me-
bootstrap-a-...](http://mixergy.com/how-must-marketing-helped-me-bootstrap-a-
profitable-startup-andrew-warner-interview-by-lisa-bruckner/) A fan interviews
Andrew.

<http://mixergy.com/christel-hyden-bradford-reed/> Andrew talks to the first
person he hired.

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rasikjain
Hey Chris, Thanks for providing the links....

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callmeed
I'm still under the impression that WordPress themes have to be GPL'd (because
WordPress is).

Is this not the case?

Regardless, it's impressive.

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dangrossman
There's no legal precedent that a theme is somehow a derivative work of the
software it's designed for. There haven't even been any good cases to give
precedent for dynamic linking creating a derivative work. That's the only way
the GPL could possibly apply, since nobody's distributing WordPress with their
themes.

How is taking the HTML for a webpage you've created, replacing the title with
<?php the_title(); ?> and putting <?php the_content(); ?> in the content area,
a derivative work of the WordPress code base? Yet that's the argument they're
making when someone say you're bound by WordPress's license by creating a
theme that will work with it.

You can't just throw a license at someone that hasn't agreed to it. It's a
completely untested legal theory Matt relies on when he says WP themes have to
be GPL. There are lots of people that don't buy it at all, like the creator of
Thesis, which is one of the best selling commercial WP themes.

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_delirium
There's no legal precedent, but if you want to read a ton of legal speculation
on a related topic (some by informed people, some by those less informed),
there's a pretty large body of writing on the hypothetical issues of whether
proprietary Linux kernel modules violate the GPL.

edit: here's a pretty thorough law-review article:
[http://web.bu.edu/law/central/jd/organizations/journals/bulr...](http://web.bu.edu/law/central/jd/organizations/journals/bulr/volume85n5/Stoltz.pdf)

~~~
dangrossman
That was a good read, thanks. It supports that WordPress themes are likely not
derivative works, though -- dynamic linking, use only minimal non-complex
interface code, are primarily unique code that could run on any platform
(HTML/CSS/etc) with only a small amount of WordPress "compatibility code" as
the paper calls it.

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jasonlbaptiste
my response to this: <http://i47.tinypic.com/2eg5j4o.jpg>

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AndrewWarner
I'm betting that if I'm not an a-hole entrepreneurs will be more open with me
than they would otherwise.

The live audience heard me tell Adii don't give me a number that will hurt
your business and don't lie about the number you give or the audience will
catch it.

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jasonlbaptiste
I certainly think that's spot on. I knew adii's revs had to be great, but this
is really awesome. Showing the revs are important because it gives a good
actualization of the rest of the process they describe.

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briancary
Andrew Warner is the Charlie Rose of startup founder interviews.

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ryanhuff
I have been trying to think of a slightly different analogy, but it hasn't
come to mind yet. Andrew is certainly a prolific interviewer, but I see him as
more of an explorer looking for the essence of entrepreneurship through
people's stories of success and failure.

Once Andrew finishes his run of interviews (hopefully he has a long way to
go), he will have developed one of the most comprehensive catalogs of tech
entrepreneurship of the web 2.0 era.

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whalesalad
Jesus I knew these guys were doing good, but not THIS good. 2 mil a year on
WordPress themes is absolutely insane!

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dangrossman
There are over 18 million _active_ WordPress blogs at the moment. It's a huge
market. I spent a couple hours building a WordPress plugin and sold $200,000
in licenses for it in a year and a half.

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ericb
Can I ask what it did, and the price?

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patio11
I'm assuming this isn't sensitive since it is listed in his portfolio: it
helps affiliate marketers build review sites on top of Wordpress, and costs
about $100 a license.

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tompic823
This was the first interview I've ever seen on mixergy, and I can proudly say
I'll be coming back. I thought the questions were great and I absolutely
didn't mind that the video went for over an hour. Truly an indept look at
WooThemes and how Adriaan was able to start up his business. Thanks for the
fantastic tips and keep up the great work Andrew. And just in case you're
wondering, I found this intervie from @Woothemes on Twitter (with whom I am a
Standard member and own a theme from).

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raphaelb
I really liked this interview. I esp. liked the little preview of the revenue
question. That could be used to increase the number of people who stick with
the interview if you gave a preview like: I'm going to ask him X, Y, and Z.

I really am interested in how these companies really get off the ground -
going from doing consulting for example to selling a product and making enough
from that they can live off of it - I think an earlier interviewee called it
getting "wife profitable".

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gridspy
Another great interview Andrew.

It would be good to illuminate your face better. The lighting in that room
cast long shadows over your eyes. Perhaps a light facing you to the left of
the computer would help.

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armandososa
Oh and that other themestore is no longer a sponsor of Mixergy, maybe that
sponsorship was holding this interview? I love Mixergy and I can't wait for
the audio to land on my iPod.

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AndrewWarner
Nah. I just didn't realize WooThemes was as big as it was until a few readers
filled me in.

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Swoopey
Excellent interview and inspiring story. Always great hearing about companies
like Woo Themes who have grown organically from self-funding.

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dantheman
Is WooThemes in anyway related WooFu?

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agosnell
No, Wufoo and WooThemes are not related. Other than phonetically, that is.

