My story starts with a loan. When I was 12, I borrowed money from my parents to buy a computer, and I was building websites soon after. I began blogging in 2004 and ran css3.info, one of the first sites tracking the CSS3 standard as browsers started to support it. Alongside that, I consulted for companies like eBay, Disney and Meta, and on some of the biggest SEO projects in the world, like the Guardian's site migration from .co.uk to theguardian.com. I founded Yoast as a company in 2010. Its SEO plugin for WordPress now runs on more than 15 million websites.
I wore a few different hats there. For almost 9 years I was the CEO, then I became Chief Product Officer when my wife Marieke took over as CEO. We sold Yoast to Newfold Digital in August of 2021, after which I became Head of WordPress Strategy at Newfold for a while. I then came back for a 6-month stint as Yoast's interim CTO (because they were suddenly without one) in 2022-2023. I finally left the company in April 2023.
Marieke and I started investing in other companies in 2020. In 2023, after we left Yoast, we gave that work a name: Emilia Capital. We invest in companies that play at least partly in the digital space (and often in WordPress). Because of that, I'm on the board of Patchstack and Atarim, I chair the board of Post Status, and I advise WordProof. We also started our own new company, Progress Planner. In June 2026, Progress Planner and our whole team joined Your.Online, a hosting group with strong European roots. I'm now Group Head of AI & Growth there, and Marieke is Group Head of Brand & Community.
In my spare time, I can often be found coaching kids' soccer at AWC, where I'm also a board member. On holidays, Marieke and I love spending time in our holiday home in Tuscany or traveling to other places in the world.
