Imagine Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke appearing on the ‘Howard Stern’ show.
Add martinis and beer, throw in a healthy dose of expletives and you have a recipe for red-faced embarrassment for Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg. In Philadelphia to pick up a business school award, Mullenweg stopped by the studios for a video panel show at “The Best Damn Tech Show.”
You know there could be a problem when sites linking to the video, warn about the content.
Appearing out-of-place, Mullenweg shrank into the corner while co-hosts drank on-screen beers and audience members made sexual references about their preferences for Microsoft Windows, Apple’s Macintosh or the open-source Linux. “I tend to go both ways,” wagged Mullenweg.
Trying to fit in, Mullenweg mentioned getting “drunk calls” from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. “I have to admit it happened just once, but it was awesome,” he said.
As it went, Mullenweg’s appearance was rather benign. However, it highlights the conflict tech-heads turned business people encounter. While spur-of-the-moment decisions were great when your’s was the only reputation at stake, the stakes get higher when you have staff, funding and not-so-broad-minded investors.
Mullenweg did not immediately respond to our request for comment.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
We are a “show”. And with a show comes a certain amount of acting. We’ve been doing it for 3 years. Such guests include Tim Westergren of Pandora and Micki Krimmel, formerly of Revver.
We respect our guests. They respect us.
Thank you for watching!
I personally would love to hear Ben Bernanke on Stern. It could be quite interesting.
Matt was a cool guy to party with anyways, even if he had to drink his martini out of a Chimay glass.
Leave a Comment