About Us
Headquartered in beautiful downtown Austin, Texas — the same state where WordPress was born.
We proudly host 0.0006% of the 50 million WordPress blogs on Earth, and more every day.
When you host with WP Engine, you’re betting on us, personally. So here’s who we are.
Were you looking for careers and culture? We got that too.
Jason Cohen
Co-Founder, CEO
Jason previously founded Smart Bear Software and co-founded ITWatchdogs, both of which were bootstrapped to profitability, grew to millions in revenue, and were sold.
Jason is a mentor at Capital Factory (like TechStars or Y-Combinator in Austin) and the co-host of OnStartups Answers along with Dharmesh Shah.
Jason writes and podcasts about startups and marketing on http://blog.asmartbear.com and can be found on Twitter as @asmartbear.
Mark Kelnar
The IT and PHP Guy
Mark has been developing software as a full time employee and as an independent consultant in Austin since 2000. He has done work for a collection of companies and projects, including work on the website for Hoover’s Inc and Dun and Bradstreet.
His role at WP Engine is to make sure the servers and your site are up and running as expected. If they are not, there’s a good chance that he is already working on resolving the issue.
Mark lives near Austin with his wife and two sons. You might spot him out at a WordPress Austin Meetup. To unplug from the network, he’ll escape to the mountains in Colorado for a few days of backcountry hiking and camping.
Mark will make occasional noise on Twitter at @renderandserve.
Chris Lauzon
Head of Customer Happiness
Chris is an expert in the field of ecommerce consulting and technical support, helping 1000s of clients and businesses since 2002. He has done work for several web hosting and ecommerce companies, as well as teaching different web technologies to the Austin Community.
Chris’s role in WP Engine is to be the “Head of Customer Happiness,” by communicating directly with the WP Engine community and providing support. Chris is extremely excited to be working with the members of the WordPress community and is looking forward to work closely with the WP Engine community.
Chris is very pro active in the austin tech community, and is a fitness enthusiast. He is currently training to partake in triathlons and the warrior dash. He is also a giant video game nerd. Chris can currently be followed on twitter at @squirex2.
Jason Cosper
WordPress and PHP Genius
As WP Engine’s “other Jason”, Cosper is a WordPress specialist and support wunderkind. He’s been tirelessly debugging his xorg.conf file since installing Slackware in 1996 and has been working with WordPress since 2004.In his spare time, Cosper enjoys spending time with his wife and very tiny dog, sampling assorted beers, being NSFW on Twitter, eating burgers, and cursing more than a grown-ass man should.
Trafton Esler
Lead Developer Champion
Despite a decade of computer engineering experience, from hardware (chip design at Intel and Robotics Fairs) to enterprise software (SAP), Trafton specializes in translating developer speak into plain English. He uses this superpower to solve technology problems with the WordPress developers that build amazing sites and host them on WP Engine.
Outside the office, Trafton is always organizing communities, including Burger Thursday, a 4 year quest to find the best burger in Austin, Texas. He is also an avid mountain biker, a certified Emergency First Responder and a Rescue Diver. He recently got into the Twitterverse, and you can follow him via @traftonesler.
Ben Metcalfe
Advisor
Ben can track his involvement with the WordPress community way back before it was even WordPress (B2 was the name of the former project that was forked and became WordPress). Ben helped build the BBC News Website, where he also rolled out the BBC’s blogging platform (sadly not WordPress) and its developer platform.
Since moving State-side, Ben has worked as a technologist and strategist – launching the MySpace Platform and advising numerous startups in his portfolio – including Seesmic, Apture (acquired by Google), News Basis and NutShell Mail (acquired by Constant Contact). Ben has blogged since 2004 on all manner of technology topics at http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/, which was previously one of the top 50 blogs in the UK.
Aaron Brazell
Advisor
Aaron Brazell is the author of the WordPress Bible (Wiley), and is most known for his blog,Technosailor.com. He has worked on a variety of entrepreneurial endeavors including several startups since 2005. He has been an active member of the WordPress community since 2004 as a core contributor, developer, user and consultant.
Aaron is a frequent public speaker, engaging with the WordPress community at WordCamps around the United States, as well as marketing, social media, and other industry events. He started and organized WordCamp Mid-Atlantic in 2009 and 2010, a WordPress community conference catering to the Baltimore/Washington region, including Maryland, D.C., Delaware and Northern Virginia.
He has worked a variety of companies including blog network b5media where he worked as the Director of Technology from 2006-2008.
Aaron currently resides in Austin, Texas, where he ensures his dog is well-fed, his bike still has wheels and his craft beer selections are tasty and cold. He maintains a photoblog at http://photos.aaronbrazell.com and helps keep the Twitter servers in check as @technosailor.
Eric Ries
Investor
Eric is an entrepreneur and the author of the NYT bestseller, The Lean Startup. In addition to serving on the advisory board of WP Engine, he is a consultant for several venture capital firms, an Angel Investor, and was also named Entrepreneur in Residence at Harvard Business School in 2010.
Previously, Eric was founder and CTO of IMVU, his third startup, after notching a few failures along the way. His blog, Startup Lessons Learned, is a popular resource for growing tech startups who use his Lean Startup methodology to generate market traction and solve world-changing problems. He lives in San Francisco, and is at least as big of a nerd as you hope he is.
Bill Boebel
Investor
Bill is an engineer and an entrepreneur. He is an investor and advisor with a dozen really cool tech companies, helping them with product and technology design. In his spare time, he mentors world-changing entrepreneurs at Capital Factory, 500 Startups, and TechStars.
Previously, Bill was the founder and CTO of Webmail.us, which Rackspace acquired in 2007. Bill stayed at Rackspace until 2011, scaling Webmail, and then working with Rackspace partnership and M&A. Recently, he stepped back into the role of entrepreneur to begin a project that remains in the super secret phase. Bill gives talks on tech and entrepreneurship, and loves talking with entrepreneurs who are trying to change the world.
Josh Jones
Investor
Josh is a serial entrepreneur and engineer, and is founder and CEO of Dreamhost. In addition to investing in WP Engine, Josh is running ePub Bud, a non profit he founded to promote the open publishing, creation, and sharing of books, with an emphasis on books for children.
Kip McClanahan
Investor
Kip is a venture partner at Silverton Partners, and for the past 20 years he has worked in IT security, networking, media communications and software industries. He served as both CEO and board member to both public and private companies. He has founded or held leadership roles in companies including BroadJump (acquired by Motive), TippingPoint (IPO, acquired by 3Com) and NetSpeed (acquired by Cisco).
As an operator, Kip has raised over $100M in capital and his companies have returned nearly $800M in realized gains. Kip graduated from the University of Texas with a BS in Electrical Engineering. Kip sits on the boards of CopperEgg, Socialware, Sparefoot, and WPEngine.
Toni Schneider
Investor
Toni is the CEO of Automattic, the company behind WordPress, and a venture partner at True Ventures. His startup, Oddpost, was acquired by Yahoo! and formed the base of the new Yahoo! Mail, used by more than 250 million people worldwide. After Oddpost, Toni went on to co-found Sphere (acquired by AOL) with Tony Conrad.
Toni was voted CEO of the year at the 2007 Crunchies, and when he’s not running one company or advising another, you can find him with his family crossing the US in their VW van, or adding to his noteworthy collections of cars. Toni grew up in Switzerland and studied computer science at Stanford.
Dharmesh Shah
Investor
Dharmesh is a software entrepreneur and current founder and CTO of HubSpot, his third startup, as well a writer for the popular startup resource, OnStartups.com. He also founded Pyramid, three-time recipient of the Inc. 500 Award. After the sale of Pyramid, Dharmesh became a member of CommonAngels and earned his M.S. from the M.I.T. Sloan Fellows Program in Innovation and Global Leadership.
Dharmesh stays in touch with his core identity as a software developer and writes code to ship, something he greatly enjoys.
Joshua Baer
Investor
Joshua is an email marketing pioneer, the founder of OtherInbox, and a serial entrepreneur and Angel Investor. He is the organizing vision that brought the first 20 mentors together to form Capital Factory, the early stage accelerator that brings new tech startups to Austin, Texas for mentorship and investment.
Joshua founded his first company, SKYLIST, out of his dorm room in 1996, and went on to create UnsubCentral to help email marketers comply with regulatory requirements for email. He is an advocate for the current entrepreneurial exodus into Austin, Texas where he lives with his wife and children.
Loic Le Meur
Investor
Loic is a serial entrepreneur, founder of Seesmic, and creator of LeWeb, the #1 European tech conference. He is a sometimes angel investor in tech companies, WP Engine, being a notable example. The Wall Street Journal has named him one of Europe’s Top 25, Business Week says he is one of 25 Most Influential People on the web, and the World Economic Forum calls Loic a Young Global Leader for his work to select the next generation of Tech Pioneers.
Loic lives in San Francisco with his wife and 3 boys, and is an avid kite surfer and runner. He is proud to have finished the New York Marathon in 3 hours and 53 minutes.
Rob Walling
Investor
Rob is a self-funded serial entrepreneur running HitTail, DotNetInvoice, WeddingToolbox, and a few others. He co-hosts the podcast, Startups for the Rest of Us, and wrote the book for developers starting a company, The Developers Guide to Launching a Startup. His blog, Software by Rob, is read by more than 15,000 web entrepreneurs worldwide.
Rob is also the founder of the Micropreneur Academy, and the SEO Keyword tool, Hit Trail.
Morgan Flager
Investor
Morgan has been a partner with Silverton Partners since 2006. Before that, Morgan worked with growth investments in technology and financial services with FTV Capital in San Francisco. Morgan has previously held executive positions at Ingrian Networks (Acquired by SafeNet), and Kintana (Acquired by Mercury Interactive Corp.). He currently sits on the boards of several startups, and lives in Austin, Texas with his family.
Jeremy Bencken
Investor
Jeremy co-founded and sold ApartmentRatings.com, which he grew into the leading global source for ratings and reviews of apartments before selling it, along with ThatRentalSite.com and TenantMarket, to Internet Brands in 2007. Jeremy also runs BuzzStream, the leading service for SEO and PR teams to manage their online outreach campaigns.
Currently, Jeremy runs Wordloop, a performance-based content marketing company in Austin, Texas. Jeremy also serves as an advisor to Sparefoot.com, is developing Alviso Media and When to Buy, and is a mentor at Capital Factory.
