Podcasts, interviews, panels and conference talks. If you are a producer or a host looking for a guest, everything you need is on this page: a biography you can copy and paste, the subjects I am actually useful on, and a way to reach me.
One housekeeping note. The word “legend” gets thrown around at conferences and it makes me visibly uncomfortable. For the record, I am at best a leg end.
Biography
Three lengths, written in the third person so you can lift whichever one fits your show notes. No need to ask.
One line
Andrew Palmer is a WordPress and SaaS founder, investor and mergers and acquisitions adviser who has built, scaled and exited five digital businesses.
Short, about fifty words
Andrew Palmer has founded, scaled and successfully exited five digital businesses. He co-founded Bertha.ai, an AI writing assistant built natively into the WordPress editor, and sold Elegant Marketplace, Layouts Cloud and Page Builder Cloud in 2019. He now advises hosting companies, plugin developers and agencies on growth, investment and acquisition.
Full, about a hundred and fifty words
Andrew Palmer has spent more than twenty years in digital, and has founded, scaled and successfully exited five businesses.
He co-founded and fully financed Bertha.ai in 2021, launching an AI writing assistant native to the WordPress editor well ahead of the mainstream generative AI wave. Before that he built, scaled and sold Elegant Marketplace, Layouts Cloud and Page Builder Cloud in a mid six-figure exit in 2019, and founded Somebody’s Hero, a white-label web development agency that managed and transitioned more than five hundred clients.
Most recently he was Hosting and Customer Success Lead at Atarim, where he rearchitected the company’s hosting operations and became its first independent investor.
Today he works independently, consulting and advising on mergers and acquisitions across WordPress and the wider SaaS landscape, with service-based businesses, plugin developers and hosting providers. He is a regular speaker at CloudFest and at WordCamps around the world, where he argues for streamlined client collaboration and agency efficiency. He is also in the middle of launching a new Digital Marketplace with a mixture of products that you can purchase and download and affiliate products that he feels people need to know about.
Podcasts and appearances
I appear regularly on the WP Builds Podcast with the lovely Nathan Wrigley and on the Impressive Hosting Podcast with Jesse Friedman, among others. The recordings below are the ones worth your time.
Impressive Hosting, with Jesse Friedman
What Should Hosting Companies Do to Reduce Customer Churn?
What Role Should Hosts Play in Simplifying the WordPress Experience?
WP Builds Podcast
Conference talks
Talks from CloudFest, WordCamps.
Elsewhere
Pretty much where anyone will have me, I always have something to say if it is in the Digital World.
What I am actually useful on
If you are deciding whether I am right for your show, these are the subjects where I have something to say that is not already being said by everybody else.
- Hosting and churn. Why customers leave hosting companies, what actually keeps them, and the difference between a support team and a retention strategy.
- Buying and selling businesses. Five exits, from a mid six-figure sale to acquisitions on the other side of the table. What founders get wrong about being acquired, and what diligence really looks for.
- AI and WordPress. I shipped an AI writing assistant inside the WordPress editor in 2021, which is long enough ago to have learned what the technology is and is not good for.
- Agencies and efficiency. Client collaboration, scope, and why most agency profitability problems are process problems wearing a pricing costume.
- Site performance. The single most common question I am asked, and why the answer is almost never the plugin people blame.
- Events and community. What the WordPress world gets right about events, and what it could learn by looking outside its own bubble.
Get in touch
Booking a guest, putting together a panel, or chasing a comment on something happening in the industry? Put time in my calendar directly. I am straightforward to work with and I turn up prepared.