Mark ForresterCo-founder of WooThemes. Makers of WooCommerce - acquired by Automattic.
Mark is a husband, dad, early stage investor, photographer, gadget geek and sports fanatic. Proudly based in Cape Town, South Africa.
These critters are evolving MUCH faster than us during this pandemic. FACT.
He got TV + Minecraft banned today (bad behaviour).
So… he calls a school friend on @MicrosoftTeams and gets him to record his TV. Which is playing @Minecraft videos on @YouTube.
👏🏻
5 years ago today, at around this very time, we sat eating Reuben sandwiches for breakfast in a fancy restaurant in Nolita, New York. Hashing out a new commercial agreement with fancy execs of one of the world’s largest online payment systems.
A few hours later, a neighbourhood across, we were in Matt’s apartment with the Automattic team. Laptops on laps, clicking the “publish” button on the news that WooCommerce was being acquired by Automattic.
It was a surreal, life-altering day that will forever be laser-etched in my memory bank.
5 years later I’m in a very different season of life, working with very different businesses. But I still proudly fly the Woo flag – high fiving the small wins and celebrating the big milestones.
Poetically, today WooCommerce is launching – WooCommerce Payments. Built upon a very mature partnership with another leading payments company – Stripe. Deeply integrated for all kinds of benefit to store owners.
A partnership so impressive that “you’ll end up paying the same fees when you use WooCommerce Payments or a custom Stripe integration.”
Moral of the story: Significance takes time to negotiate and is built on many short term successes.
How far WooCommerce has come. Well done to the Automattic team! Onwards and upwards 🚀
Today calls for a tiny celebration. It marks the official end of South Africa’s hard lockdown… We’ve now entered into a “Stage 4” lockdown, which is much the same, except we are now awarded morning exercise hours…
I helped Sentian put together a little light-hearted video showcasing some CCTV family keepsakes of the past 5 weeks, that their customers had sent in. It’s been a memorable chapter for all of us.
These are tough times, much tougher for some than others. South Africa always dishing out a fair share of perspective. Us with CCTV have the privilege of a house that requires protecting.
Jealous of Edward (named by my boys). Lockdown doesn’t apply to spotted eagle owls. Grateful for his extended visit (most of yesterday).
I hope he returns.
Yebo Fresh always felt like it was going to play a significant, socially impactful role providing for the underserved township markets of South Africa.
Last year, no one could have predicted the coronavirus, or South Africa’s crippling lockdown, but Yebo Fresh’s vision has been magnified and its scale fast-tracked to help get grocery deliveries to desperate families.
Super proud of the work this team are doing. I visited them last week at the warehouse to try document a moment in their journey. See the photos on the Yebo Fresh blog.
I’ve recently become a little obsessed over my video conferencing setup and the quality of my streams. I spend quite a bit of my week in online meetings with the various teams I work with – usually on Zoom, Google Hangouts or FaceTime .
I thought a couple of my recent gadgetry additions might be worth sharing…
A hearty congratulations to the Over team on a very newsworthy acquisition. Immensely proud to be a friend of the co-founders Matt Winn and Aaron Marshall and filled with gratitude to have journeyed with them as an angel investor.
An inspiring story of American friends, and a supportive family, that fell in love with Cape Town and took a huge leap of faith building a global business from here.
A recent interview with Disrupt Africa covering:
Last week I sat down with a good friend doing fantastic work in the SME space in South Africa, Marnus Broodryk.
Marnus convinced me to join him on his SME.Africa podcast. 4 years since our acquisition I enjoyed reminiscing over our journey and the learnings, however distant and fuzzy some parts feel. We also spoke about what keeps me busy these days.
Despite having a voice for print I enjoyed the interview.
Listen to “The Founder of WooThemes & WooCommerce [EP10 S2]” on Spreaker.
Last week we got featured on Apple’s official @instagram account! “We” actually referring to my son – I just snapped the photo. He choreographed it.
It’s kind of mind bending to quantify a feature like this. The world’s largest company featuring a photo I took. On a social account they only post one photo a day. To an audience of 13,5 million followers. 🤯
It was a fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpse into how these monster media accounts are managed. And of course the lives of InstaCelebs and social behaviour. So far the photo has had nearly 250k likes.