How to build a growth mindset for entrepreneurial performance

Originally published on June 7, 2023

A growth mindset for entrepreneurial performance starts with how you learn, hire, recover, and respond to feedback. In Episode 225 of the WHOOP Podcast, Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress and CEO of Automattic, explained how those ideas helped him go from a 19-year-old blogger in Houston to leading a company behind a platform that powers more than 40% of the web.

Mullenweg also shared the routines that keep him clear-headed enough to do the job, including exercise, meditation, coaching, and using WHOOP data to spot when sleep, alcohol, or schedule changes are affecting recovery. This article breaks that conversation into five practical lessons.

To listen to Episode 225 of the WHOOP Podcast in full, head to the WHOOP Podcast on Spotify.

How did a single blog comment turn into WordPress?

WordPress started because Mullenweg saw abandoned software, described a better version in public, and got one reply that mattered. In 2003, that single comment from Mike Little created a collaborator before it created a company.

At the time, Mullenweg was 19, living in Houston, earning money by playing saxophone, and building websites for local musicians. His father was a computer programmer, so software already felt accessible. When the blogging system he was using stopped being maintained, he wrote a post about continuing it and combining the best features from the tools already on the market. Little, whom he knew only online, answered in the comments, and WordPress began.

Mullenweg does not frame that moment as luck alone. He links it to the kind of communities he grew up in, including the Catholic Church, Boy Scouts, and school music programs, where results depended on people coordinating around the same work. That background made collaboration feel normal. He was not looking for a huge audience. He was looking for one person who cared enough to build.

He also connects that early instinct to his parents' example. Mullenweg describes his family as lower-middle class, but he watched both parents keep making time to give back. When he later found open source software, the idea of contributing to something shared already matched how he thought about community and responsibility.

In practical terms, this is a useful correction to the usual startup story. Reach matters less than resonance in the beginning. One response from the right person can matter more than thousands of passive impressions.

According to Mullenweg, the signal in that first post was not scale. It was relevance.

"That post that I did on my blog only had a single comment. And it was from Mike, but that was the one that mattered."

What you should take away

• Early traction can come from one high-value response, not a large audience.
• A founder's first strong collaborator can emerge from public work shared before a company exists.
• Community habits formed outside business often shape how leaders build teams and products.
• Product ideas become easier to develop when they start with a problem you are already trying to solve.

If you want to hear Mullenweg unpack how one blog comment turned into WordPress, listen to the full episode on Spotify.

What does open source software actually mean?

That origin story leads to the larger idea underneath WordPress. For Mullenweg, open source is not just a licensing choice. It is a structure that gives people legal freedom to use, inspect, modify, and share software.

In the conversation, he explains open source by contrasting it with the terms of service most people click through without reading. In his view, proprietary software agreements are usually written around restrictions. Open source flips that frame and starts with freedoms. Mullenweg lays out four of them: the freedom to use software for any purpose, the freedom to see how it works, the freedom to modify it, and the freedom to redistribute those modifications.

That framework explains how WordPress itself began. The original code base was built on an earlier open source project called b2. Because the software was open, Mullenweg and Little did not have to start from zero. They could take an existing base, improve it, rename it, and keep building. The same logic later scaled into an ecosystem. WordPress Core stayed open, then plugins and themes made the platform adaptable for different kinds of sites. Mullenweg says there are now more than 55,000 plugins, which turned WordPress into an extensible system rather than a single fixed product.

He also makes a point that matters for anyone romanticizing openness. The philosophy alone was never enough. WordPress had to become better than the closed alternatives people could choose instead. Mullenweg argues that open source wins when the product gets better, not when the values are merely admirable.

His comparison to Wikipedia is useful here. Early Wikipedia was rough, just as early WordPress had weaker user experience in some areas than proprietary tools. But when enough people can improve a shared system over time, quality compounds. That founder logic also connects with other WHOOP conversations about Entrepreneurship, Building WHOOP & Future of Technology, where product quality and conviction have to grow together.

Mullenweg's definition is simple enough to quote directly because it gives the mechanism, not just the philosophy.

"There's 4 freedoms at the core of open source: the freedom to use the software for any purpose, the freedom to see how the software works, the freedom to modify how it works, and the freedom to redistribute your modifications."

What you should take away

• Open source starts with user freedoms, not vendor restrictions.
• The four core freedoms explain why open projects can be inspected, changed, and shared by communities over time.
• WordPress could grow quickly because it was built on prior open source work instead of starting from scratch.
• Open source values only become durable when the product keeps improving for real people.

If you want to hear Mullenweg go deeper on open source software and why it scales, listen to the full episode on Spotify.

How do you hire for growth mindset in a remote company?

Once WordPress had an operating philosophy, Mullenweg had to turn it into a way of working. His answer was remote collaboration first, then a hiring process built around work samples and traits he believes cannot be taught.

Long before remote work became standard, Automattic was built online. Mullenweg explains that open source developers were already collaborating through version control systems, bug trackers, and text chat, which meant the office itself could exist on the internet. Early on, he was in San Francisco, Little was in the United Kingdom, and other collaborators were spread across Ireland and elsewhere. They wrote code together long before they met face to face.

That operating model shaped how Automattic hired. Mullenweg says the company could not rely on familiar resume filters because it was hiring globally. He gives a blunt example: if you are recruiting in Pakistan or Myanmar, a recruiter in the United States may not know which schools or employers are meaningful signals. So Automattic used paid trial projects instead. Candidates were paid $25 per hour to do a small piece of relevant work, such as answering support tickets or fixing a plugin. The company then judged not just the output, but how the person communicated, documented progress, handled delays, and asked questions.

For the first 1,000 hires, Mullenweg says he personally handled the final interview, usually in text only. Sometimes that conversation took an hour. Sometimes it stretched over a day or two. He liked that format because it reduced pressure on people who were shy, introverted, or speaking English as a second language, while matching the asynchronous reality of the job itself.

The traits he screened for were narrower than many founders expect. Mullenweg says people can learn almost anything, but he does not think work ethic, taste, integrity, and curiosity are easy to teach. He also looked for signs of growth mindset. His example comes from music: if practice sounds polished, you may be rehearsing strengths instead of working on weaknesses. Real development often sounds messy.

That lens fits closely with WHOOP advice on sticking with your goals, where progress depends on repeatable behaviors rather than identity labels.

Mullenweg summarizes his hiring filter in one line that is easy to remember and hard to fake.

"I believe that people can learn pretty much anything, but you can't teach work ethic, taste, integrity, and curiosity."

What you should take away

• Paid trial projects can reveal judgment, communication, and follow-through better than resumes alone.
• Remote hiring works better when the interview format matches the actual work environment.
• Global recruiting gets stronger when it does not depend on narrow school or credential shortcuts.
• Growth mindset shows up in deliberate practice on weak points, not in generic language about improvement.

If you want to hear Mullenweg unpack remote hiring and growth mindset in more detail, listen to the full episode on Spotify.

What habits helped Matt Mullenweg manage stress and think clearly?

Building a company at scale forced Mullenweg to answer a personal question next: what keeps the mind clear enough to lead well? His answer is a mix of movement, meditation, reflection, and very small habits that are hard to skip.

He describes himself as someone drawn to quantified self ideas, but not for appearance. The goal was better cognitive performance. Mullenweg says that as he approached 30, he realized he could no longer treat the body as irrelevant to knowledge work. A turning point came from reading Brain Rules by neuroscientist John Medina, especially the argument that exercise supports brain function. If the brain is the main tool for his job, then physical movement becomes part of the work.

That did not push him toward an elaborate routine. Instead, he looked for the minimum viable version of a behavior. At one point, he set the bar at one pushup per day. The point was not training effect from a single rep. The point was removing excuses and restoring consistency. He describes a similar approach with short workouts, sun salutations, and periods of running, including half marathons, all chosen because they could fit into real life.

Meditation sits higher in his hierarchy. So do therapy and structured inner work. Mullenweg also references the role of psychedelic research as a developing area of mental health science, including work funded at Johns Hopkins University Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research and published research on psilocybin-assisted therapy for major depressive disorder. He discusses those tools carefully, as ways of examining beliefs and patterns that may be limiting performance, not as shortcuts.

That thread is easier to place in context if you know the books he cites, including How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan and The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. WHOOP has explored adjacent mental performance ideas in Advice From the Masters of Mindset and Dr. Mollie Marti on Learning to Thrive.

The most practical part of Mullenweg's approach is still the smallest one. He lowers the activation energy until action becomes harder to avoid than to do.

"There were times when I wasn't exercising and I was like, all right, I'm just gonna do 1 pushup a day."

What you should take away

• Mental clarity often begins with physical habits that are small enough to repeat under pressure.
• A minimum viable habit can restore consistency even when motivation is low.
• Meditation, therapy, and reflection can support leadership by making patterns easier to notice.
• Books and research matter most when they change daily behavior, not when they remain abstract inspiration.

If you want to hear Mullenweg go deeper on exercise, meditation, and self-observation, listen to the full episode on Spotify.

How does WHOOP fit into an executive performance routine?

Those habits set up the final piece of Mullenweg's system: measurement. WHOOP became useful to him because it turned body signals into a daily picture he could act on, especially when work stress, early meetings, or late nights were changing recovery.

Mullenweg says his path to WHOOP came through coaching. Wanting to improve as a leader, he worked with executive coach Joe Hudson and joined a CEO group that included Jamie Waydo, now Chief Technology Officer at WHOOP. Through that relationship, he agreed to try WHOOP and initially expected to give product feedback for a couple of weeks. Instead, he found that the combination of Recovery, HRV, resting heart rate, sleep, and day to day behavior gave him a clearer read on body state than he was getting elsewhere.

What changed was not perfection. It was awareness. Mullenweg says WHOOP made familiar patterns easier to see, including the effect of an extra glass of wine, a later bedtime, or an alarm set for a 6 a.m. meeting because Automattic operates internationally. He does not describe Recovery as a command. He describes it as context. A low score means he should interpret the day differently, perhaps with more caution, more activation, or fewer assumptions about capacity.

That logic fits the way WHOOP is designed. The WHOOP app helps people compare behaviors with changes in Sleep, Recovery, and other trends instead of guessing what helped or hurt. For a broader primer on those signals, see What is WHOOP?.

Mullenweg also pairs measurement with coaching. He argues that athletes, musicians, and executives all benefit from someone who can reflect patterns back to them, challenge repetition, and help convert vague ambition into practice. He applies the same idea to his own schedule. At this phase of running Automattic, he says he keeps almost no standing meetings so he can work on what matters most that day. Different seasons demand different levels of structure, but measurement makes those choices more grounded.

The quote that best captures his use of WHOOP is intentionally modest. He is not asking the data to run his day. He is asking it to keep him honest about the day he has.

"If I'm starting a day at like 20%, I just want to be aware of that."

What you should take away

• WHOOP becomes more useful when Recovery changes how you pace work instead of becoming a score you merely check.
• Sleep, alcohol, and schedule changes are easier to manage when they are visible against your baseline.
• Coaching and measurement work well together because both turn patterns into decisions.
• Flexible routines still benefit from clear daily signals about readiness and strain.

The bottom line

• A growth mindset becomes real when leaders treat skills, routines, and communication as trainable rather than fixed.
• One strong collaborator can create more momentum than a large but passive audience.
• Open source succeeds when shared principles are matched by a product people actually prefer to use.
• Paid trial work can reveal work ethic, judgment, curiosity, and communication better than a polished resume.
• Minimum viable habits can keep exercise and recovery practices alive during high-pressure periods.
• Meditation and reflective work can support leadership when they help people notice beliefs and behavior patterns more clearly.
• WHOOP is most useful when Recovery, HRV, sleep, and daily habits change what you do next.

Frequently asked questions about things discussed in this episode

How does WHOOP help show whether alcohol affected recovery?

• WHOOP can make the effect of alcohol visible by showing how late drinks line up with changes in Sleep, overnight HRV, resting heart rate, and next-day Recovery compared with your baseline.

What does WHOOP measure to create Recovery?

• WHOOP uses signals such as HRV, resting heart rate, sleep performance, and baseline trends to create a daily Recovery view that helps people pace workload and strain.

How does WHOOP support a growth mindset?

• WHOOP supports a growth mindset by turning habits into feedback, so people can test bedtime, exercise, travel, and alcohol choices against measurable results instead of assumptions.

What does WHOOP do for people with irregular schedules?

• WHOOP helps people with irregular schedules by showing when early meetings, travel, or late nights are pushing recovery down, which can guide decisions about effort, caffeine timing, or extra rest.

How does WHOOP fit with executive coaching?

• WHOOP fits with executive coaching by giving coaches and leaders a shared record of behavior and body response, which makes discussions about energy, sleep, and consistency more specific.

What does WHOOP show about small habits like short workouts or meditation?

• WHOOP can show whether small habits are helping by letting people log behaviors in the WHOOP Journal and compare them with trends in Sleep, Recovery, and other metrics over time.

How does WHOOP use HRV in a daily routine?

• WHOOP uses HRV as one input in Recovery, so people can see when sleep loss, stress, alcohol, or workload may be changing how prepared they are for the day.

For people building companies and leading teams, WHOOP gives daily body-state context that can keep growth mindset grounded in sleep, recovery, and behavior rather than guesswork.