Crowd Favorite has appointed Chris Lema as the company’s new CTO. Alex King, the current CTO, will move into the Chief Software Architect role, allowing him to focus his expertise in product development and deep-level technical leadership with the company’s teams. Lema will begin in mid-September and use his product development experience to help bring the WordPress platform and WordPress products into Fortune 500 enterprises.
How Chris Lema Quickly Became A Leading Figure In The WordPress Community
PostStat.us has a great article covering the move, including a special one hour interview with Lema. I’ve jokingly said that Lema has come out of nowhere. Although I still hold to that notion, he explains in the interview, the circumstances that have helped him be successful in the WordPress community.
Lema has years of experience starting, managing, and selling startups especially within the Software as a Service market. With 20 years of experience under his belt, he decided to help others in the WordPress community by sharing stories of the lessons he’s learned from the mistakes he’s made using his blog.
Since the SaSS and product market in WordPress is so young, his voice and blog quickly became a leading authority. A combination of luck, experience, passion, personality, and timing helped him become an authority in the product space. Writing about the business of WordPress from a perspective not many people have is also a contributing factor.
A Few Predictions
Near the end of the interview, Lema makes a few predictions, all of which make sense to me. The first is that WordPress is growing on the edge. These are the people who have heard of WordPress and want to start a website but have no idea where to start. Lema predicts more out of the box solutions for these users. Evermore, Rain Maker, and Obox Instant are just some of the platforms already catering to that segment of the market.
The second is that WordPress businesses will continue to consolidate. Last but not least, product vendors will need to up their game to remain competitive. An example is WordPress hosting. What was once a wow feature two years ago is now a standard feature across most of the basic plans.
The Voice Of Crowd Favorite
With Lema’s ability to inspire crowds and motivate people with his speaking engagements, I can see him becoming the voice of Crowd Favorite. The announcement post mentions this possibility as well.
You will continue to hear from us through Chris with his valuable online presence. As a popular speaker at conferences and work with our sales and marketing teams, we know his voice will be a great addition to the Crowd Favorite brand.
I’ve had the pleasure to speak with Lema at various WordCamps and I can’t think of a better person to be the voice of a company.
That is huge. Congrats!