This was brought to my attention this morning as I was looking more into the details of DreamPress, which is Dreamhost‘s new WordPress-centric hosting solution to give more power to those WP-centric sites and customers.
Like I’ve mentioned publicly before, I’ve been a long-time customer of Dreamhost for my smaller sites, since 2007, and I’ve been very happy with what I’ve gotten, especially since my expectations of performance and usage were in check.
And at the very same time I’m also a fan of what WP Engine has going on and have some great convos with a number of their staff, so don’t get it twisted – there’s no malicious intent with this post whatsoever.
But here’s something “interesting” – and perhaps I’m missing something obvious, so please tell me that I’m wrong:
Josh Jones is the well-known co-founder and Board Member of DreamHost and at the very same time is an investor in WP Engine. These are facts.
But this is what makes the move of adding DreamPress to the lineup of DreamHost offerings so odd – isn’t that a conflict of interest in some regards? Now that DreamHost is directly playing in the WordPress-centric hosting market where WP Engine sits wouldn’t he naturally have some challenges on advising WP Engine’s strategy and at the same time leading the aggressive growth of a competitor, DreamHost?
And…
Again, I could be way off here so someone correct me, please. I’m not sure I care that much about the issue as a whole but it caused me to go “Hmmm.” this morning as I poured over our daily editorial calendar.
Maybe it’s much ado about nothing as this is what we’ve come to expect and accept “as is” – Automattic has backed a “competitor” WP Engine as an investor and *wait for it*… also ZippyKid, another “competitor” to their hosted solution space (specifically WP.com). Perhaps this is just what the industry is all about? Yes, even Rackspace, the Rackspace co-founder Pat Condon has invested in ZippyKid too.
Thoughts? Maybe Josh can help clear it up a bit. Maybe he doesn’t have to. Maybe this is just how the business of web hosting and the web hosting world works. Go figure.
21 Comments