Hi! I’m Joost de Valk, an internet entrepreneur from the Netherlands.
I’m married to
Marieke; we have four children and live in Wijchen, the Netherlands.
As the founder of
Yoast, I have a long history in digital marketing and WordPress. My wife Marieke was Yoast’s co-founder and CEO (taking over from me) from January 2019 until we sold it to Newfold Digital in 2021.
Marieke and I invest in companies that play at least partly in the digital space (and often in WordPress) through our company
Emilia Capital. Because of that, I’m on the board of companies like
PatchStack and
Atarim. We also run our own projects there; most recently, we’ve been working on
Progress Planner.
I founded Yoast in 2010 after working as a digital marketing consultant in several different companies. I’ve worked on some of the biggest SEO projects in the world, like the
Guardian’s site migration from .co.uk to theguardian.com.
In my spare time, I can often be found coaching kids at soccer at
AWC, of which I’m also a board member. On holidays, Marieke and I love spending time in our
Tuscan vacation home or traveling to other places in the world.
