I remember as a kid, the biggest deal was turning ten. We made a big fuss out of turning double digits. I remember being a little alarmed that while I would definitely eventually turn 10, I would not necessarily make it to triple digits (no one I knew had).

Automattic has turned 10, and it’s sort of an amazing thing. Matt writes a really lovely post here about it. Donncha, employee #1!, posted briefly here about his leap into the unknown (keep an eye on Donncha’s blog for gorgeous photos, by the way).

I have only been with Automattic for two and a half years, and it feels like a blink of an eye. WordPress has a mission to democratize publishing, and that is truly a powerful thing. It can sound sort of like a nickel slogan, but you have to realize: we mean it. We want to make it easy and fast for someone (anyone) to get a site (whether a blog or a static site) set up and publishing. WordPress (the open source project, related to WordPress.com, but not “owned” by Automattic as WP.com is) is incredibly powerful and has a prismatic community that drives it, including folks from Automattic.

This is included in Matt’s post, but it is worth repeating over and over again; the Automattic Creed:

I will never stop learning. I won’t just work on things that are assigned to me. I know there’s no such thing as a status quo. I will build our business sustainably through passionate and loyal customers. I will never pass up an opportunity to help out a colleague, and I’ll remember the days before I knew everything. I am more motivated by impact than money, and I know that Open Source is one of the most powerful ideas of our generation. I will communicate as much as possible, because it’s the oxygen of a distributed company. I am in a marathon, not a sprint, and no matter how far away the goal is, the only way to get there is by putting one foot in front of another every day. Given time, there is no problem that’s insurmountable.

See more about Automattic here.