12 years ago when I announced @Ghost, I got the most criticism for this line of my original blog post: "No corporate arm of the law. Ghost would be free as in Mozilla, not as in Automattic ... Every decision made would be about improving the software, not the bottom line." Maybe now you can see why I wrote it. Ghost was very deliberately set up as a single-entity non-profit foundation: - No investors. - No commercial entity wheeling and dealing in the background with shady tactics. - No conflicts of interest around ownership of trademarks & domains. I don't personally own anything to do with Ghost. The Foundation owns everything, and it has no share capital, so I own zero shares. If anyone is considering starting a new CMS project and would like any advice, let me know. I'm happy to share the many mistakes we made, and the things I think we got right. The web needs more independent organisations, and it needs more diversity. 40% of the web and 80% of the CMS market should not be controlled by any one individual. If you don't like the way things are working, make something new and show the world how much better things can be by setting an example of how they can be done differently. You don't need permission. Share your ideas, and see where they take you.

We recently passed $7M ARR with @Ghost — No growth hacks, no funding, no sales. Just steady iteration and improvement on what we do, over a long period of time. It's not a startup speed-run, it's a different game altogether.