Summary
AI Hope
Adam Silver is in the midst of a significant professional transition after nearly two decades in technology and more than 15 years with WordPress. After running an agency for almost a decade and leaving it following what he calls a “pseudo-acquisition,” he is no longer actively pursuing new WordPress clients, although he continues to maintain a small group of existing clients and remains interested in using WordPress. Rather than describing himself as having completely left WordPress, Silver sees his career as evolving toward his other interests, particularly running, health, fitness, entrepreneurship, and content creation.
Running has become Silver’s primary passion and potentially the foundation of his next business chapter. He began running seriously only about four years ago but has already completed nine ultramarathons and is training for his tenth. His main running site, RunAdam.run, chronicles his experiences, and he has acquired several other running-related domains and started projects such as NeedAPacer.com, intended to connect ultrarunners with pacers for 100-mile and longer races. Although these ventures are not yet generating meaningful income, Silver is actively building content and experimenting with ways to turn his enthusiasm for running into businesses. He is also working toward certification as an ultrarunning coach and emphasizes a simple philosophy for people returning to exercise: start slowly, move every day, and don’t compare yourself with anyone else.
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Silver’s path to WordPress was anything but direct. Raised in Southern California, he earned a theater degree from San Diego State University and originally planned to become an actor. The 1994 Northridge earthquake severely damaged his family’s home and helped prompt a move to San Francisco, where he worked in jobs ranging from an immunology and virology institute to helping UCSF’s Synapse newspaper get online. He later returned to Los Angeles, married the woman he had met through community theater, raised three children, lived for a period in Colorado, and eventually settled in Cary, North Carolina. Photography and video initially became his professional focus, but by 2009 he had begun using WordPress, and around 2010 web work became a major part of his business.
Discovering the WordPress community around 2013 profoundly changed Silver’s professional and personal life. After finding WordPress podcasts, he discovered local meetups and attended his first WordCamp in Orange County. He eventually created his own South Bay meetup, volunteered at WordCamp Los Angeles, and led the event in 2016 and 2017 before becoming involved with the Raleigh WordPress community after moving to North Carolina. More important than the business opportunities were the friendships: people he initially met through WordPress became close friends with whom he has traveled, vacationed, and shared major family milestones. That community became especially meaningful after his son Parker lost a leg in a motorcycle accident in December 2024. Parker’s younger brother created a GoFundMe, and Silver says much of the financial support came from members of the WordPress community.
Today, Silver’s outlook combines entrepreneurship, curiosity, humor, and a refusal to think of retirement as simply stopping work. He defines retirement as being able to do what he wants, when and where he wants, with the people he chooses — an outlook reflected in his constant stream of projects and ideas. He identifies one of his “superpowers” as being able to read a room: recognizing when someone is confused or afraid to ask a question and stepping in to ask it for them. He also sees humor as central to his teaching and communication style. Although his relationship with WordPress is changing, Silver is not abandoning the community or technology. Instead, he appears to be redirecting the skills, relationships, and entrepreneurial instincts he developed there toward running, coaching, content creation, and whatever new idea comes next.
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