MarkMaunder dot com

The whining is reaching a crescendo

Exec summary: There is a “burnout” meme that is gaining momentum in the valley. Scroll down for a not-insignificant collection of HN burnout posts. Startup employees choose startups for less job security and harder work because there’s the promise of a future reward. If the risk/reward/security/life balance doesn’t work for you then the Valley is […]

November 29, 2011 | Startups | No comments

The Net will not be bound or gagged

I remember seeing Napster in 2000 when I worked for eToys.com and thinking “This isn’t going away. It has too much momentum and we always move forward.” I was wrong. Today I’m wondering about the free Web and whether it will ever go away. Our intuition tells us we always move forward and things will become […]

November 22, 2011 | Politics, Technology | No comments

Most vendors lie, but not all

I’ve been running a small software company for a while now and we are fastidious about reducing costs on hardware and software and getting the maximum bang for buck out of what we buy. Lets put it this way, Hell for a Dell server is spending eternity in our data center. We work them at […]

November 18, 2011 | Business, Startups | No comments

Does your Representative oppose Job Creation and Support a Warrantless Gag Order? Ask them.

SOPA is a bill (HR 3261) sponsored by Lamar Smith (R-VA), John Conyers (D-MI), Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), Howard Berman (D-CA) and several co-sponsors. The first hearings on this bill will begin in congress tomorrow, November 16th. If SOPA is passed, it will give the US Government control of the Domain Name System in order to […]

November 15, 2011 | Politics | No comments

Can you build a Big Business on Apple's App Store?

A good friend refers to the Apple App Store as the California Lottery. So I thought I’d do some rough numbers on how feasible it is to build a big software business creating apps for iPad and iPhone and selling them in Apple’s App Store. The Apple App Store will still own three quarters of […]

November 13, 2011 | Apple, Economics, Startups | 2 comments

WordPress Security: Have you been hacked?

Big News [April 24th, 2012]: I’ve launched Wordfence to permanently fix your WordPress site’s security issues. Click here to learn more. I’m reposting this again because many of the emails I’m getting say “if you’re still interested”. Please contact me at mmaunder at gmail.com if your wordpress installation has been hacked. I need you to […]

November 10, 2011 | Security, Wordpress | No comments

My name is Mark Maunder. I've been blogging since around 2003 when I started on Movable Type and ended up on WordPress which is what I use to publish today. With my wife Kerry, I'm the co-founder of Wordfence which protects over 5 million WordPress sites from hackers and is run by a talented team of 36 people. I'm an instrument rated pilot and I fly a Cessna 206 along with a 1964 Cessna 172 in the Pacific Northwest and Colorado. I'm originally from Cape Town, South Africa but live in the US these days. I code in a bunch of languages and am quite excited about our emerging AI overlords and how they're going to be putting us to work for them.