My main focus has been on GiveWP for the better part of the last 8-years. In that time we have taken the brand from an idea to a multimillion dollar project. I learned a lot throughout that journey and it’s shaped me into the person I am today.
Today I’m excited to announce that I’ll be taking my skillsets to additional brands. My new role is General Manager of Kadence, iThemes, and Iconic.
I’m excited for this opportunity and it has been great to meet and start working with the team. They are a very talented group of individuals.
And I’m not doing it alone…
My right-hand man, Matt Cromwell, will be coming along with me and sharing responsibilities as the head of Marketing, Support, and Operations.
Focusing on product design and development
I’ve always been passionate about product design and development. This will be my primary “nuts-and-bolts” focus for the additional brands. You can expect to see some really cool new updates happening for all of our products including:
- Brand revamps and refreshes
- New user interfaces and experiences
- Optimized code for performance
- Feature improvements and additions
- … and much, much, more!
So what are the products?
The products me and Matt are now leading are a mix of plugins and a top WordPress theme: Kadence. The plugins range from WooCommerce extensions to powerful Gutenberg blocks. It’s a nice mix of solutions that, when combined, can really make WordPress fly.
iThemes
Most folks that have been in WordPress for more than a few years have heard of iThemes. They have a leading security plugin in iThemes Security (1M active installs) and also one of the very first backup plugins in BackupBuddy.
iThemes also has a solution to manage multiple websites, similar to MainWP, called Sync. These 3 products play well with each other and every website can benefit from the foundational solutions they provide: Security, Backups, and Syncing.
Kadence
I’ve been a big fan of Kadence for a while now. So much so that this website is built on Kadence. Practice what you preach, right?
Kadence is extremely fast and light-weight. It approaches page building with Gutenberg as a first-class citizen and includes lots of Starter Templates for all sorts of use cases. The end result is that you can create websites that look and perform great in a shorter amount of time.
The community surrounding Kadence is very involved in the product and Ben Ritner, the founder and leader of the product, is incredibly talented and passionate about the product. I’m excited to work more with him.
The future of Kadence is incredibly bright. We’re working on some really head-turning updates that are due out within the next few weeks.
Iconic
The extensions Iconic builds takes WooCommerce and adds what you need in order to:
- Optimize your checkout flow (Flux)
- Build a powerful online restaurant ordering system (Orderable)
- …and improve the user experience and conversion rate of your store (Woo extensions)
It’s been a while since I’ve done anything with Woo and I’m excited to get back in the mix. Years back I built a product called Quick Checkout that did quite well before we sold it. Flux checkout is a similar, but vastly superior product.
Orderable is also a unique offering for restaurants that, despite being a newer plugin, is incredibly powerful. James Kemp is the leader of this Iconic and he has a lot planned for the entire ecosystem of plugins.
Let’s not forget about GiveWP…
I’m looking forward to continuing to lead at GiveWP despite this new role requiring my attention across several additional brands. We have a lot planned for the product and are currently working on version 3.0!
This next version is going to be our biggest release ever. The main highlight is going to be the ability to build donation forms visually. We are also bringing more CRM features into our donation management admin experience.
Look for more news about this coming soon from the GiveWP blog.
Onwards and upwards 🏔
We have some pretty lofty goals for these brands. In order to meet them we’ll need to be firing on all cylinders. There’s much work to be done and I’m confident in the team we have in place. They are all very talented and I’m excited to be working with them.
