Nathan Wrigley interviews Matt Cromwell about Matt’s transition from co-founding GiveWP and working on the StellarWP leadership team to launching Roots & Fruit, a fractional chief growth officer agency aimed at helping WordPress product businesses grow.
Background and new venture
Matt co-founded GiveWP, helped scale it, and sold it to Liquid Web in 2021. After working across multiple products at StellarWP, he exited in late 2025 and launched Roots & Fruit to focus on helping WordPress product teams and solo founders refine growth, product experience, and prioritization. Roots & Fruit positions itself as an agency and mentoring practice that moves product makers from a code-first mentality to a product- and customer-first approach.
Outlook on WordPress and AI
Matt remains optimistic about WordPress’s future, while acknowledging important caveats. He notes that WordPress’s extensive open-source documentation and codebase make it particularly suitable for AI tooling: AI systems can learn WordPress well, and WordPress Core’s embrace of AI can help the platform remain relevant. He also points out that the broader web ecosystem continues to create successful companies, showing demand for web-focused solutions remains strong.
Why building alone isn’t enough anymore
Matt argues that the old “build it and they will come” assumption no longer holds the way it used to. Historically, wordpress.org offered significant discoverability, making it easier for new plugins and themes to gain traction. With vastly more plugins and themes now available, and with customers choosing solutions regardless of whether they’re plugins, SaaS, or platforms, competition is stronger and discoverability harder.
The key shift: product versus code
A central theme is the difference between a code-first business and a product-first business. Developers often focus on building features and code, assuming the product will sell itself. Matt emphasizes that customers don’t evaluate code; they evaluate the entire experience: trust on the website, clarity of messaging, checkout confidence, and the onboarding and user experience that delivers the promised outcome. Successful product businesses prioritize the whole customer journey — discovery, purchase, adoption — not just the underlying code.
Practical advice for founders and teams
– Focus on the customer lens: design your website, marketing, and onboarding around the real problems customers want solved, not internal technical achievements.
– Move from a code mindset to a product business mindset: invest in branding, marketing, and user experience as much as in engineering.
– Prioritize ruthlessly: avoid the “scattergun” approach of chasing every possible growth channel. Many founders dabble in numerous tactics (Reddit, LinkedIn, email, ads) without focus. Matt advocates picking fewer, high-impact initiatives and doing them well.
– Process and diligence over playbooks: there are no silver bullets. Consistent processes and disciplined prioritization beat trying a new tactic every week.
– For solo founders: enforce structure and accountability to carry out marketing and growth activities you might otherwise defer. Solos tend to be developer-oriented and procrastinate on non-code growth work.
– For small teams: founders often wear too many hats and become exhausted. A fractional growth leader can help the team focus on sustainable growth while founders concentrate on product and strategy.
Roots & Fruit positioning
Matt aims Roots & Fruit at two audiences: small-to-medium product teams that need a fractional CGO to lead growth efforts, and solo founders who benefit from coaching and group support to establish repeatable growth habits. His service emphasizes helping clients choose the right priorities, adopt disciplined processes, and focus on customer outcomes.
Experience and credibility
Matt draws on having launched, scaled, and sold GiveWP and then applied those learnings across multiple products at StellarWP. He acknowledges failures and learning moments but believes his experience is broadly applicable. That track record gives him confidence in advising other WordPress product-makers.
Final notes and how to connect
Matt invites product entrepreneurs to think beyond code and to build better product experiences that customers can discover and trust. He’s active on LinkedIn (Matt Cromwell) and X (@learnwithmattc), and his agency site is rootsandfruit.com.