In a conversation with Nathan Wrigley, Zach Stepek reflects on how trust, long-term thinking, and thoughtful partnerships sustain the interconnected WordPress ecosystem.
Zach’s path through technology has been varied: starting as a ColdFusion and Flash developer, moving into training as an Adobe Certified Instructor, and then pivoting when Flash faded. Work supporting enterprise systems eventually led him to WordPress and WooCommerce through hands-on projects — building a digital music store, rescuing a WooCommerce site for a nonprofit after a viral TV moment, and speaking at WordCamps. Those real-world problems and community exposure turned into ongoing collaborations with WooCommerce and later roles in agencies and hosting. Today he focuses on partnerships and fractional consultancy, helping companies bridge product, build, and infrastructure needs.
Three interdependent layers
Zach frames the WordPress world as three interwoven layers rather than a strict hierarchy:
– Agencies and builders: freelancers, studios, and agencies who design and construct sites.
– Product companies: theme and plugin vendors, SaaS offerings, and other tools that extend WordPress.
– Hosting and infrastructure: providers that deliver reliability, scale, and the technical foundation.
These parts act like a braided network — each side influences and depends on the others. Agencies rely on solid products; product companies depend on hosts to deliver a fast, stable environment; hosts benefit when agencies and vendors succeed because that drives demand for higher-quality infrastructure. Zach compares hosting to retail real estate: the right location handles traffic and conversions, while bad hosting can break sales and user experiences. For e-commerce, uptime and scale are directly tied to revenue — every visitor could be a purchase, and downtime is costly.
Partnerships built on values
Zach argues that the strongest relationships are values-driven and long-term, not purely transactional. Revenue is important, but it should be the outcome of shared goals and mutual investment, not the sole motivator. He highlights examples of companies contributing back — open sourcing internal tools or creating solutions to persistent client problems (like tools that ease migration to block themes or improve search). Agencies often become product companies when they turn recurring client work into products; that stewardship benefits the whole community.
The risk of short-term thinking
The interview explores how short-term, ROI-only decisions can undermine the ecosystem. Economic pressure, investor demands, or private equity involvement can push companies toward immediate returns at the expense of community stewardship. That behaviour can erode trust and reputation: the WordPress community notices when organisations take more than they give, and long-term brand equity is damaged by extractive approaches. By contrast, patient, values-aligned partnerships build relationship equity that compounds over time.
Economic and infrastructure pressures
Since the pandemic, many companies have tightened budgets: fewer event sponsorships, reduced travel, and cuts to discretionary spend. At the same time, demand for hardware — especially GPUs and other components for AI workloads — has pushed infrastructure costs up and strained capacity planning. Hosting models that relied on very cheap margins face stress when raw component and operational costs rise. These pressures make fear and short-term cuts more likely, but Zach urges that even in hard times, treating partners as people and investing in relationships pays off in the long term.
Measuring partnership health beyond revenue
Revenue is the easiest metric, but not the only meaningful one. Zach recommends tracking softer signals that indicate partnership health:
– Trust and the frequency of proactive collaboration between partners.
– Improved customer outcomes that result from partner coordination.
– Relationship equity that leads to future, compounding benefits in revenue and reputation.
He compares partnerships to gardening: they require ongoing attention and patience. The first thing companies often cut in downturns is patience, but relationships that survive hard times emerge stronger.
Recognising community contribution
Nathan and Zach note that philanthropic activities — open-source work, sponsoring events, contributor hours — are often invisible in conventional ROI calculations. Without visible recognition, finance teams may deprioritise these investments. Emerging approaches to track and recognise contributor time, badges, or public records of contribution can make community work more tangible and defensible internally, preserving incentives to support the ecosystem.
A call to stewardship
Both agree the ecosystem is at an inflection point. Slow erosion from repeated short-term decisions could weaken the foundations built over decades. Companies that maintain values-driven partnerships, invest in stewardship, and build relationship equity will likely be more resilient. Trust is a durable, compounding asset; brief revenue spikes don’t substitute for reputation and mutual success.
Find Zach
Zach’s eCommerce consultancy and fractional partnership work: mightyswarm.com
Personal site and contact: zachstepek.com
Social handle: @zstepek
Episode details and links are available in the show notes on wptavern.com/podcast.