2024·04·29 · 39:36
WPCoffeeTalk: Joost de Valk
I talk about the transition from running Yoast to investing through Emilia Capital, and what I am building now. I cover how I founded Yoast in 2010 with Marieke and what led us to sell in 2021, what we look for in companies we invest in, and why we want to reinvest back into the WordPress ecosystem specifically. I also discuss my son speaking at WordCamp Europe at 17, why the Dutch WordPress community is larger than people expect, and what the next public project is I am hoping to release soon.
0:02 welcome to WP coffee talk with your podcast Barista Michelle frat where we interview people in the WordPress Community from all over the world every guest is asked the same questions and every guest has wonderful and varied answers about their history and their hopes special thanks to our espresso level sponsors blue host WS form and
0:33 welcome to WP coffee talk I'm your podcast Barista Michelle frette serving up the P the WordPress stories from around the globe and today my guest is the one and only yosa Valk who is the part is a partner the partner one of the partners at Amelia Capital you might recognize his name from other projects too in the past something little but uh we can maybe maybe squeeze that in there somewhere but yes thank you for coming today uh welcome to thank you for having me great to see you again it's good to see you too I feel like we should have
1:04 done this years ago but I'm we should I never get invited to do stuff because people think I've already done it and then I've never done most of these things I mean I did I did have the most important person in your life on my show a few years ago but uh and she was wonderful by the way but you know you can come in second she is my better it's my she's my better half and you you are I won't respond to the coming secondary that is you guys are wonderful I love your family and I've had the occasion to meet
1:36 your son also um your oldest who spoke at word Camp Europe and then we also had him on underrepresented in TCH webinar series about um people under 25 and he is significantly under 25 he is uh 17 yeah so that is slightly under under 25 I eight years is not much anymore when when you're my age Michelle and my kid's 31 but that's a tale for
2:07 another day so for those who may not know who you are why did you tell us about yourself and what you do so uh I'm the founder of a company called yast y the Builds an SEO plugin that you might or might might not have heard of um we I found it out in 2010 and my lovely wife joined me quite soon after and we ran the company together for quite some time with a couple of other very nice people um and then we sold it in 2021 to new full
2:40 digital um after that we started investing well we we started investing a bit before that already but we made we started doing more of it after we sold our company um we do that through a company called Emelia Capital um and uh so yeah I'm one of the two partners at Amelia cap Capital my my wife is also the other partner and so we are Partners in many ways it's a good thing you get along it's a good thing we
3:13 get along yeah absolutely um and uh so we we invest but we're also working on new projects uh actually hoping to release the first bable thing soon uh exciting so yeah no it's um good fun awesome yeah I just yeah nothing but props every time I have conversations with you or Ma I just I leave with my face hurting because I smile too much so go easy on me today I'll try so one of the things I always ask
3:45 people on on the show as people know is to bring a mug um show us your mug tell us the story behind it if there is one and tell us what you're drinking so I'm drinking coffee and okay I'll be known as the person with the smallest mug is what you already told me yes um this is a very simple Nespresso mug because we have very nice Nespresso machines here in the office which we used to have well Yos still has too we are opposite of the street of Yos so um
4:17 I I like to drink coffee I don't do these gigantic mugs because I'm European we have style I'm about to show you my 40 ounce M yeah no we don't do that I it's it's a thing in the US and the funny thing is I like it with my sodas so every time I come back from uh from the US to the neins I mean they sell Coke in 02 liter bottles here so that's like
4:48 it's like what an ounce something like that small very small it's very small it's less than than than a can so so yeah um so then I like it but for my coffee I wouldn't want that much but I also don't drink milk in it I like my coffee strong and unspoiled well I have a large mug because I'm American and my mug is the love wins from the give have a gay day.org come uh
5:19 swag that we filled a couple years ago uh to support that organization and it is like I think it's a 20 oce mug I I don't know 16 oce something like that it's big um and I it's beautiful thank isn't it lovely I do I I did so I'm 55 years old I didn't start drinking coffee till I was 48 years old never liked it and so if you start drinking coffee in your late 40s you better believe you have cream and sugar in there so mine is always sweet and always creamy um which is probably why I also need in a gallon
5:50 siiz thing so it's a little diluted I need a little more of the caffeine I don't know we1 so and I started I I I'm 41 and started drinking coffee at 12 and I've been been addicted probably since 13 that's that's because you live over there and I live here I don't know yeah maybe it's because my father always made instant coffee growing up and that stuff is just nasty think not coffee yeah exactly
6:21 exactly so um tell us how did you get started I don't actually know the story so I'm excited to hear it how did you get started with WordPress so I was a uh active in an open source project called webkit which is the core of uh Safari and chrome um I was a Comm a committer on that project and I was doing a lot of CSS testing um and because of that I started a site called css3 doino um which had a lot of like
6:53 previews of what css3 would be at that point and how you could be using it Etc and I built that on WordPress uh the time I was working as an SEO consultant at a at an agency so I did some research and looked at like hey which CMS is the best for this and settled on WordPress because I thought it was easiest to me to SEO relatively well um and that's how I started using Wordpress and then I started building some small plugins for myself to scratch my own SEO
7:29 itches um and those plugins lat later became MOS seos there was six or seven small plugins that it merged into one thing which it was at the time called WordPress SEO and later on WordPress SEO by Yos and even later on Yos SEO I a little plugin I love how you a little plugin a little a little SEO plugin which has turned into like the most downloaded I I don't know I'm making it up maybe but it's got to be at least one of the most downloaded plugins in the rapo if it isn't the I I think it was the at the time that we sold it was
8:01 the most downloaded and most installed plug-in I think uh We've it has since been surpassed by some other things but I'm I'm not I don't know the exact numbers well my plug-in in the repo hello beautiful has 798 downloads so I'm coming at you I'm Sol I love I don't I don't know I have never looked to see like what how the repo works like when it ticks like tips over into different things like a million plus or whatever but mine still says 10 plus active installs H yeah no
8:34 it it so the the the biggest it'll go is 5 million plus which is what it says for yoso I think the reality is for Yos is probably more like 13 million plus right now um let me see the the download numbers I haven't looked at those in a long time because that number is weird but my 10 plus downloads is actually still on par you have also have 10 plus you just yes absolutely now yosio has been downloaded
9:07 622 million times that that is a lot um I don't think my little my little forked version of Hello Dolly is coming at you that fast so I think we're good oh my goodness I love that though and I love that um and you probably I don't know if I've told you this before I know I've talked to ma about this but I ask people in the rapid fire questions the first question I ask is what are two or three must-have plugins that you would recommend to somebody building their own website and by far Yos is the most mentioned plugin on this on this uh
9:38 show as well so it's doing something right I love and I don't know this was probably I don't know I'm not gonna guess I don't know whose decision it was to put the like the stoplight you know the red green and and yellow but that to me was like what I was learning was so brilliant I was like oh it's still yellow what have I have to do to make this green and I was and then there's a list of things you can do to make it better and I'm like this is how is this free like you give away so much have given away so much in the free plugin but we'll talk about that later first I want the next one I want to ask you is
10:11 um when you when you look at websites whether you built them don't look at mine but if you other websites um what do you think is something that we as web Builders developers designers don't focus enough attention on that would user so there's a lots of answers to that and just one and and my biggest problem is that I can't look at a website anymore without thinking this should be better this should be better this should be
10:45 better Etc it's hard um funnily enough I think that most of that could be solved with a simple course in HTML actually knowing which element is supposed to be used for what and then actually use for that that would be like so simple things like if something is a search input field at least make sure that it's also coded as a search input field if if I am if I'm on a checkout
11:16 page and you want me to input my name then make sure that you use the right HTML to tell me that so that my browser can actually fill my name in it and I don't have to type because I'm lazy uh but also that would help with accessibility wouldn't it uh yeah with accessibility and with lots of things so so a lot of is is just knowing a bit better how it all works um at the same time I hope that we'll get to a stage where people don't know how don't have to know how this all works and they can
11:49 just throw some blocks into a page um and have it work as long as you're using the right blocks right like you're saying yeah and and and I hope that we'll actually have all of those things in core and we'll help people make good use of them and we'll make sure that they're accessible Etc in core as well yeah that makes that makes really good sense actually and you're the first person to say it that way so I like that that works for me what's something that you wish you had known earlier in your WordPress Journey that would have made
12:20 life a whole lot easier sooner oh I should have char started charging for yosio way sooner believe that and uh probably also gave away a bit too much functionality for free in the in the in the beginning which is something that we've never wanted to step back on because that was frowned upon by the community um but when when I began selling yosio premium it was
12:53 still well premium plugins were still something that we had debates about uh and I think that we had those debates a bit too late would have been better if we had them a bit sooner yeah I think that there's there was a lot of conversation early on that open source meant that things should be free for people to use but you can't make a living and feed your family of six or even just one if you're not making money off the work that you're doing so no no it doesn't
13:24 work and it's also like um what people don't realize is that OS the QA team was probably bigger than most other plugins development teams were I mean when you run a plugin that big the amount of testing needed to make sure that stuff keeps on working is ridiculous yeah um so it's just very costly to do so yeah absolutely that would have made made life easier you got to pay people when I worked at give in the customer success the number one question I would get was well can I have
13:56 a discount I'm a I'm a nonprofit I'm like it's give WP you're all non profits like 90% of the customer Bas is not profits so yeah yeah I understand absolutely when you think back over the word camps WordPress events that you've attended uh what are some of your favorite experiences or talks that you've seen maybe it was something that was a pivotal or inspiring moment for you whether it was in a session or just
14:28 track um there's been loads of moments um I to pick what isn't it yeah yeah because there's been so many good experiences at word camps and and I've um I think the one that I still reference almost daily is a talk I gave myself at Work Camp lien uh about uh open source and making money with open
14:59 source um and I I I mean if I could force everyone in the WordPress Community to to watch One Thing by myself it would probably be that one um it's called Uh the victory of the commons H and it's very much about how do we well where do where do you need to make money and where do you why is that important even in open source another Well very proud moment for me was when you mentioned already
15:31 when my son was up on stage presenting this last Work Work Camp Europe I was like okay that's that is a thing yeah um and there's been so many I mean I was lucky enough to be uh at the state of to work this year in uh in Madrid and I was just so happy to see where we are as a community right now and how much is pro it's the software is progressing but also how does Spanish
16:02 community like is like amazing and so and yeah no so it's there's a lot of these experiences and we've had so many fun moments there that it yeah I can't really pick I I would have trouble answering this question for myself as well uh and yet I ask it of other people but it it is difficult when you have become so ingrained in the community to say that there's you know yes there are some absolute highlights right times when but then like we we in a half an hour after we hang up this call you'll
16:33 be like oh and I forgot I should have said that one too right because there's just so many of them for sure yeah there absolutely are and it's like it's also been so long I mean I started contributing to Wordpress in 2006 yeah um so it's it's been a while yeah for sure absolutely absolutely I would say for me um there's like the one that's like the day I signed my contract to work for givewp was really life-changing for me and happened at award Camp us so like I'm probably going to throw that
17:04 one in there for me but there's been so many other amazing conversations yeah yeah yeah well you were very lucky to work matth and Devin I mean they have been been great people in the community as well yeah absolutely yeah and then but then also like there what I forget sometimes is I know so many people on screen right especially like from 20 2020 on when we've been as a community so much online um and then I meet people for the first time in person and I've
17:35 like when I met you and Ma at in in Athens last year I was like oh my gosh right I have never met you in person before like nope but you almost forget that right because you see people and you talk to them and you're hanging out in slack and things like that so well it's a good thing though because I I can I can feel close to a large part of the community and not have fly have to fly to workamp US every year which I is sort of a a drain if if you're in Europe I I'm going to Asia for the second time
18:06 this year so I understand long flights absolutely yeah absolutely well tell me a little bit about Amelia capital and what you've been doing since you really launched and uh I know you've been doing some competitions uh things like that it's exciting yeah we we uh so we did a competition well competition is it may be a big word but we we had people pitch to us at Work Camp Europe in public which was probably scarier for them than it was for us um but it uh that was fun
18:37 we we uh had a couple of companies pitch to us we picked two that we actually decided to invest in and we've also finalized those Investments uh last year um and so we invest in mostly WordPress companies some other stuff too um basically if a does something that we feel makes the world a better place and has a a plan that will actually allow it to make
19:10 money that's important well yeah yeah because to be sustainable you need to make money I mean that that is just the reality of running a business otherwise you're running a charity and that's a different thing um so uh well we've invested in quite a few of those um it's it's been interesting we've learned a that uh where we thought that a whole
19:42 lot of the things that we did at at Jo and the the success we had with Jo was purely luck uh I now look at it slightly differently so we've also learned okay there's a couple of things that maybe we are very good at and we actually need to help our portfolio companies with which is very fun to do um we have we've hired a couple of people around us which we're very happy with so um uh we have a finance manager who's worked with us at yast for years and and now works with us
20:14 here and helps us to review the books of all those companies and that's fun and we have um Ari who uh was leading the WordPress core Team U at Y and is now working with with me on core work but also so on uh helping our portfolio companies and on building our own stuff so that's good fun yeah we're just having fun I love it yeah if when you can enjoy the work that you're doing and have fun with it that's absolutely the
20:46 best it is yeah I agree yeah for sure I umum I was thinking back to interviewing you for post status last year before I can't remember which one was it Europe yeah it was before Europe when you were doing the and I I like non Shark Tank you guys are not like sinking your teeth and and it's not like that but but it had a shark tank like feel to the the pitches and things like that and making decisions like that day it wasn't like well we'll get back to you in a month like no but to be fair we we did
21:18 make them send in something before so we so we did know some things but um no I think the one of the things that Ma and I are pretty good at is is not uh waiting too long on things just just making decisions are moving fast yeah which is important if you because if you're running a company you have to run so many decisions and if you are going to take long and and think a lot a lot about all of them sometimes you have to think longer that's fine but but you
21:50 have to also be be capable of making decisions yeah absolutely absolutely and uh it's what it's interesting too to like follow along everybody was so excited the people who you invested with were so excited and the people that you chose not to invest with also were saying what a great opportunity it had been and how much they learned and grew through through it and I think you even were advising some of those people even if you were investing with them we I mean I'm pretty much always happy to help people if I can I have to admit
22:22 that that becomes harder over time because more people ask you and you have less time for sure but uh yeah I mean this whole Community is is helping each other right it is it's it's helping everybody Thrive because that makes the community as a whole better and that helps us all again so it is very much that um that type of thinking that I think well we we want to be like what are what are you hoping over
22:53 the next year with Amelia what what can we expect to see from what you're working on um so we're going to launch our first product in the next few weeks um I'm actually we have a bigger product in the works that I I'm not sure what or where we'll be but I would be very disappointed if I didn't get the first version of that released before the summer as well um so we have our a couple of our own products we have a couple of our portfolio companies that are doing
23:25 really cool stuff so personalized WP just launched uh which would actually pitched to us at word Camp Europe oh nice uh so that's really cool to see and uh um there's quite a few companies doing doing well and doing fun stuff so yeah just helping them maybe making a couple more investments will probably not go as fast as we did last year because that's a lot of work um and I like investing I don't
23:56 necessarily like the paperwork involved with investing I believe and yeah so maybe don't do too too much of that um but yeah there is H and I've been Consulting for automatic a bit which is also a good fun helping out the Tumblr team with SEO and some and some other things so it's just working on things that that I find fun to do maik working on things that she enjoys that that's you know what's most important absolutely I couldn't I couldn't agree
24:28 more um and it's been fun to watch you guys have fun with the things that you're doing so that that's that's what makes a difference as well right so it's got you've got a great reputation out there for not only for helping people but for enjoying the work that you do so yeah well if we didn't we'd we'd go nuts exactly exactly all right let me move into the rapid fire questions which of course they're not really rapid they they come as as quickly as they come and you can take the time you need to answer them but it's fun to call them the rapid fire questions I don't know why anyway
24:59 what are two or three most have plugins that you would recommend to somebody website well first of all yio which is no surprise I I was expecting that yes yes uh second depends a bit on what you're doing I um for most sites you'll need something to do forums um there's a lot of good fors plugins out there I bought my first commercial plug plugin license
25:32 was gravity firms so I use that everywhere um but well there's basically quite a few good fors plugins out there so pick one um and then it really depends on what you're doing um there's a to name one that a lot of people might not know but if you do something with comments on your blog and I really want to urge everyone to start commenting on each other's blogs more again because that's so much more fun than Twitter um then uh my own tax plugin is something that you'll that you might enjoy it it
26:04 has a lot of different features to help you clean up the processor and comments which is which I think is good fun absolutely well I'm gonna have to look at that one now because I wasn't aware of that one so um maybe you could send me a link later and I includ in I'll include it in the show notes for sure so people can find it uh at any point in your WordPress Journey have you had a mentor whether it was an official Mentor or coach or somebody that you either just kind of like tried to emulate or maybe they took you under their wing but it wasn't an official um official
26:35 experience or whatever and who so who was it that's what I want so there there's there are two people that have been incredibly important in my uh WordPress development in in different ways the first is obviously my wife uh I was hoping because um oh she's just PR me from doing so many stupid things and and has of very often also
27:08 helped me see people things more from a nor I want to say normal it's not that but from from the perspective of a non-developer um which is which has been very very helpful um the other one is another lady called Juliet who is a developer from the Netherlands who is probably the best PHP developer I know and um she's just been amazing in helping in very many different ways so she helped on
27:41 yosio uh she later on built the WordPress coding standards and we she did a lot of that work for yast and now I use all that still still to review every plug-in that we look at um and it always feels a bit like shulan swiching over my shoulder and telling me what I'm doing wrong which I kind of like no she's been amazing what would Juliet Do Well yeah if when you're cing that is probably a good thing to think for yourself absolutely yeah so no I think
28:12 both both of them have been have been uh very important and might not both either both know it well I think my wife knows she she and Juliet if she listens to the show she'll know now as well I'll I'll tell her that I spoke nicely about her we'll send her a link to to the episode okay now the next question you cannot answer with either your wife or Juliet so you need to think of somebody different but who is somebody that you admire in the WordPress community and
28:43 why oh there are so many political answers I could give here uh go with your gut I don't ask the easy questions yes I only ask the hard ones no so I'm I'm gonna go with Matt and not and not for not because he founded the project but because he's still like doing it and he makes mistakes and he's
29:14 human but he he does so much still and sometimes I go like I'm I disagree entirely with what you're saying and then four years later I'm like maybe he was right which is annoying um but it is um no I I I think to a degree we're very lucky that we have someone who's willing to take that position of leading this project because it's incredibly
29:45 hard um because you get so much for it as well yeah um so I admire that yeah yeah that's a good answer you're not the first person to say him but that's the first reasoning first one to have that reasoning what's something that you would like to learn in WordPress but that you haven't tackled yet or is there anything that you haven't tackled yet well yes so I'm I'm a pretty old school WordPress guy and I'm still not very good at blocks I like working with blocks but I'm not
30:17 good at building them myself yet and I want to be but I'm just not very good at that yet and I really want to be so it's that is one of the things I wish to learn this year there you go you it here first we're going to hold you to it no I'm just kidding there will be no quiz at the end of the year what's one of the biggest mistakes that you've made with WordPress or in it I've made so many
30:50 mistakes we all mean the the one I often mention is is we did a release at some point in yo where we changed how we dealt with attachment urals which we disabled by default and then we didn't disable by default for a whole bunch of sites and they actually suffered from it a lot um and that was
31:22 because well basically everything that Google was saying about how they were dealing with those things was wrong turned out and and Google was actually well sites were hurting because they had those pages so in the in the end I got to fix that by in the last release of Wordpress actually taking attachment materials out of Wordpress core which is which was something I was very happy to to be doing toh to Wordpress um but yeah what you learned from that
31:55 is probably just testing more and longer and at the same time you can't always I think the the is always You're it's also you're going to make mistakes M uh own up to them fix them and move forward absolutely and that's the biggest thing I think is learning from them we can make mistakes but if we just continue to make them without learning how to correct of course correct as we go that's the that's the hard part for sure I i' and I've discovered that a lot with social media managing social for different accounts and things like that is social is very forgiving like you can
32:28 put out a meme that's hysterical and you're the only one laughing at it and it's like well that didn't go over very well let's try something different tomorrow right but yeah we we learn and moment oh there's quite a few of those I I think selling Yost to a large degree was was one of our proudest my proudest moments because it sort of felt like finishing the game uh like you you've you've beaten
32:59 the end [Laughter] boss um but another one is probably seeing uh my son on stage or my wife on stage or being being on stage together with my wife a couple of times also amazing to do so there's there's been quite a few I I'm I I I've always been very happy in this community so yeah that's wonderful if you weren't working in at all what's another career that you might
33:31 like to try politics but probably not like political enough for that I say what I think too often and that'll get you in trouble unless you're in American politics in which case whatever it's a problem here times are changing and and that and you might I might get away with that a bit more but at the same time I don't necessarily think that that's a good thing Maybe not maybe not you need your own spin doctor for
34:04 that what's something on your bucket list I want to travel more see more of the world um I have this amazing app which which lists the uh world heritage sites uh and you can cross off the ones that where you've been and then you realize that you've seen like a lot and it's 6% of the entire so there's a lot left to do that's wonderful I think experiences like that really do make a difference in
34:35 our world but last year was the first year that I traveled to Asia last year was the first time I was ever in Europe and so like in one year to have broaden my horizons like that makes a big difference it it does and it's I I tell my European friends all the time when they go to the US for the first time is I tell them like you'll probably realize that uh Europe and Italy and the Netherlands might seem very different but at some point you'll realize that Italians are closer to you than the US that the cultural difference
35:06 is actually quite big um and it's not bad it's just it's good to realize that that the culture is so different and that that really makes a difference in in how people deal with a lot of things makes a lot of sense yeah we all are dealt Something Different by where we live I'm under snow today so yeah well so show us or tell us about a hidden talent that you have that the WordPress
35:37 Community might not be aware of well I don't know if this is a talent okay but I am a football coach or sucker as you're American with americ yeah yeah I don't know why we we we call the football one the one that you're not allowed to touch with your feet yeah and where the ball is actually an egg so um yeah what can I say um yeah so I I do that um two evenings a week and on Saturday morning we coach a game uh and
36:09 I'm actually I'm a board member at the football club so I'm pretty active there do a lot of uh stuff there it's it's good fun um that's cool it's it's funny because it's also a volunteer community and you you'd be surprised how many volunteers it takes to run a football club um because well there's tons of teams and and you need a field and you need all these things to to be able to to play that game and to and to teach
36:40 kids that game every every week so um no I'm I I really enjoy that and it's uh it's with our youngest son who's nine now uh eight sorry but they're in the under nine category and so it's like eight boys of eight years old that you're teaching how to well mostly which direction to to go that's our goal today I'm I'm not very good at football myself so I'm I'm I'm very happy to teach the younger ones where I'm where I can still actually say
37:11 them things tell them things that are meaningful at some point becomes a bit more problematic but um yeah I don't think the work press Community knows knows me as such and and and has seen me do that so yeah that's probably new that was new to me so and I'm in the community so there you go for sure is it is there anything I didn't ask you about today that you want to share with our our audience aha you didn't see that c coming did you ah there loads of things
37:44 no I I I think um if you're in the worpress community just be be happy and keep keep on uh working on the stuff that you enjoy uh and and keep on being nice to each other because that's what makes this community so special I agree absolutely so how do people get in touch with you if they're interested in following up on Amelia if they want to talk to you about any of the various things that you're involved in um well I'm on post status which we didn't talk about but we have also
38:17 invested in uh I'm on the WordPress slack I'm on Twitter as y j devel jde v k um I'm like that on multiple n works but I'm honestly not very good at keeping up with all of them so Twitter um and my blog is y. blog um it has a contact form feel free to use it very good if you are listening to this episode and you want any of those and you didn't write them down just go to WP cofy talk.com find Yos episode and we
38:48 will have all of those links along with a transcript of today's episode in the show notes well thank you so much for taking time out of your day to answer my questions and whether they were wrapping otherwise but I thought they were pretty rapid I tried to do rapid thank you for having me was it's been a pleasure it's always fun to talk to you I appreciate you so much and for everybody else we'll see you on the next episode of WP coffee talk we hope you enjoyed this episode of WP coffee talk
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