Mark Davies Joins Automattic as Chief Financial Officer

Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, and various other products, announced earlier today that Mark Davies has joined the team as its Chief Financial Officer (CFO). This news comes fresh off the heels of Automattic’s acquisition of Tumblr in August and a $300 million Series D investment from Salesforce Ventures in September. The investment round gave the company a $3 billion valuation after the funding.

Davies graduated from Western Washington University with a bachelor’s degree in accounting and earned his MBA in finance at Arizona State University. He has since worked for large companies in key roles. Prior to taking the position with Automattic, Davies served as the CFO at Vivint, a North American smart home technology company.

Vivint was founded in 1999 and claims over $1 billion in annual revenue. In 2012, The Blackstone Group purchased the company for over $2 billion. Davies came on board in 2013 and would have played a large role in growing the company’s annual revenue.

Vivint announced on October 15 that Davies was leaving the company. “Mark has created a talented and experienced finance team with a solid track record of growth and financial discipline,” said Todd Pedersen, co-founder and CEO of Vivint Smart Home. “We thank him for his six years with the company and wish him the best in his next role.”

Before joining Vivint, Davies served as president of global business services with Alcoa. He was also a member of the Alcoa Executive Council. Prior to that position, he spent 12 years at Dell Inc. in various roles. His most recent position was as the managing vice president of strategic programs. He earlier served as the CFO of Dell’s Global Consumer Group, which is a $14 billion enterprise with operations across the world. He held positions with Applied Materials and HP earlier in his career.

Davies should play a key role in helping Automattic grow beyond its current levels of revenue. He has the credentials and experience to do so.

“Automattic is creating the operating system for the web, from websites to ecommerce to social networks,” said Matt Mullenweg, founder and CEO of Automattic and co-founder of WordPress. “As we zoom past 1,100 employees in over 70 countries, we wanted a financial leader with experience taking businesses from hundreds of millions in revenue to billions and even tens of billions, as Mark has. I’m excited about working alongside such an experienced leader day-to-day to build one of the defining technology companies of this era.”

Mullenweg if often cited saying that he would like to see WordPress have an 85% share of the web. Currently, WordPress runs over 34% of the top 10 million websites. Automattic would certainly play a role in pushing the platform toward that lofty goal. He and David Heinemeier Hansson discussed the dynamics of power in open source communities and whether such a goal was healthy for the web earlier this month. In the discussion, Mullenweg clarified that 85% was a “trailing indicator” rather than a goal.

Stuart West served as Automattic’s CFO for the last seven years. He will continue working within the company, but there is no word on what that new role is. “I want to thank Stu for his significant contributions to Automattic during his seven and a half years as CFO,” said Mullenweg. “He built a talented finance team during a period of 10x growth in staff and revenue and played an essential role in the success of our company.”