Om Malik died Wednesday at Stanford Hospital. He was 59. His family said he had been on a long health journey with his heart.
For anyone who runs a WordPress site, Malik’s story is worth knowing. He was one of the first people to use WordPress, and he played a direct role in connecting Matt Mullenweg to the people who built Automattic.
He connected the founders
In the summer of 2004, Malik was interviewing Toni Schneider, who was then at Yahoo, and mentioned he ran his blog on WordPress. He offered to introduce Schneider to Mullenweg. The two met, spent hours talking about building a software movement that could last for decades, and when Mullenweg started Automattic in late 2005, Schneider became its founding CEO.
Malik also introduced Mullenweg to early Automattic investors Phil Black and Tony Conrad.
At WordCamp Europe 2014, Mullenweg put it plainly: “When I moved to San Francisco, he was the guy who connected me to everyone who I still work with to this day. We say all roads lead to Om.”
A lifelong WordPress user
Malik held WordPress.com user ID 719, joined in 2005. His personal site, om.co, has always run on WordPress, hosted by Pressable. He was also one of just eight people at the first WordPress meetup in San Francisco in 2005.
In a tribute published Thursday, Mullenweg called him “my best friend and brother from another mother.” He plans to hold a celebration of life in San Francisco on September 29, what would have been Malik’s 60th birthday. The event is called OmFest.
Beyond WordPress
Malik founded GigaOm in 2001, one of the most influential technology blogs of its era. He spent 18 years as a partner at True Ventures. He was also a dedicated photographer with more than 100,000 Instagram followers.
In an October 2025 post reflecting on what he had learned from fellow photographers, he wrote: “Share your knowledge and don’t be so precious. You live forever by sharing.”
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