Welcome to the official website of Jesse Friedman—the innovator, not that Jesse Friedman.
For over 26 years, I’ve been a contributing citizen of the internet: inventor, innovator, author, speaker, and writer. I’ve had a lot to say over the years, but I’ve never done a proper exercise to clearly define what I want this blog to be.
Until now.
Today, I’m clearing the deck and starting fresh with a simple idea: Stories.
There’s no shortage of writing about why humans tell stories—entertainment, education, tradition, even survival. For me, stories are how we share pieces of ourselves. They’re how we pass along knowledge, experience, and ideas in a way that leaves the world better than we found it.
That’s what I’ll be doing here.
If you’re curious to learn more about who I am, read on.
My Story
I’ve been an innovator for most of my life. I authored Web Designer’s Guide to WordPress, was part of the New Riders “Voices That Matter” series, and have written for publications like Smashing Magazine, CreativeBloq, Search Engine Journal, Jetpack, and others.
Over the years, I’ve written multiple books, taught hundreds of students as a professor at two universities, and organized dozens of local meetups—along with several WordCamp conferences. I’ve spoken at events around the world and consulted for companies ranging from small agencies to billion-dollar international organizations.
Digging into My Past
I grew up in Queens, NY—718. My father was a master plumber and often took me on jobs with him. I learned to thread pipe and solder copper in the basements of some of New York’s most iconic buildings.
When I was a teenager, my parents moved us to Cape Cod. I spent nearly all my free time on the water.
That mix of city grit and saltwater life gave me a unique worldview. I put myself through college building websites during the school year and fishing during the summers.
After graduating, I was invited back to Johnson & Wales University as an adjunct professor. Later, I also taught at the University of Rhode Island. For more than seven years, I taught everything from JavaScript and WordPress to commerce and marketing strategy.
Building and Scaling
After stints at production houses, advertising firms, and marketing companies, I co-founded BruteProtect—a cloud-powered brute-force protection service. We went from a few lines of code in January 2014, to thousands of customers in a matter of months, to being acquired by Automattic in August of the same year.
Everything came together fast, and it was a wild, unforgettable ride.
Today, I’m the Head of WP Cloud at Automattic, focused on making WordPress-as-a-Service accessible to everyone—on the fastest, and only, WordPress-first cloud platform. I’m incredibly proud to be part of Automattic and to help advance our mission of democratizing publishing, commerce, security, and performance.
Looking forward to hearing from y’all.
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