Joost de Valk is from the Netherlands and is an internet entrepreneur who is renowned for being the founder of the SEO application Yoast. Yoast is a popular WordPress plugin that helps businesses to rank higher on Google and other search engines. The company was sold in 2021 to Newfold Digital.
Now de Valk is using his capital-investment company Emilia Capital to invest in companies involved in the digital space, even if it is a small minority of their business operations. Both his investment company and Yoast have been in collaboration with his wife. His wife was CEO of Yoast until its sale.
De Valk founded Yoast in 2010, after working as a digital marketing consultant. During his time, he has worked on some of the largest SEO projects worldwide, such as the Guardian site migration, where they transferred from .co.uk to .com.
Joost de Valt is known to have contributed to two books: Professional WordPress Plugin Development and EdgeZero: De beste Nederlandse genreverhalen. He has said in interviews that he has not been interested in the publishing world but has contributed. He had previously written and published a CSS newsletter for three years.
However, between 2009 and 2011, he hosted the weekly WordPress Podcast. During the two years it was on the air, it discussed all matters related to WordPress. The content included news, tips, and other information related to themes and plugins.
