Founder Interview
How Yoast Reached EUR 10M Revenue and 200,000 Premium Customers on Zero Marketing Spend (Interview with Founder Joost de Valk)
- Interview Date
- January 16, 2019
- Interviewee
- Joost de ValkFounder and CEO
Company Metrics at Interview Time
Total Revenue (2018)
EUR 10M (about $12M)
Premium Customers (2019)
About 200,000
Year-on-Year Growth (2018)
60%
Team Size (2019)
100
Historical Snapshot
These numbers were reported by Joost de Valk during the interview recorded in January 2019 and are a historical snapshot, not current figures. See Yoast’s current numbers.
Key Takeaways
- 01Yoast did about EUR 10M (Joost's own conversion: about $12M) in total revenue in 2018, and he said the company had grown about 60% year on year for the last five years.
- 02The premium plugin cost $89 a year at the time of the interview.
- 03About 200,000 to 300,000 customers had upgraded to the premium plugin by early 2019, in Joost's estimate.
- 04About nine to 10 million sites were running the free Yoast SEO plugin at the time of the interview.
- 05The company was fully bootstrapped with zero external capital raised.
- 06Asked about CAC, Joost said "Zero. We don't spend money on marketing." New users came through inbound marketing and the wordpress.org plugin repository, and Yoast did not track a fully weighted CAC.
- 07Yoast's first subscription cohort, now over a year in, churned about 15% a year; under the old manual renewals, churn had been about 70%.
- 0880 of the 100 employees were based in Wijchen, The Netherlands, with about 20 in a globally distributed support team.
- 09Yoast was profitable: asked whether 10% or 60% of revenue reached the bottom line, Joost said "More like 25."
- 10Growth came primarily from new users rather than expansion revenue on existing accounts.
Company Metrics at Time of Interview
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Total Revenue (2018) | EUR 10M (about $12M) | Founder interview, Jan 2019 |
| Year-on-Year Growth (2018) | 60% | Founder interview, Jan 2019 |
| Premium Customers (2019) | 200,000 to 300,000 | Founder interview, Jan 2019 |
| Free Plugin Sites (2019) | About 9,000,000 to 10,000,000 | Founder interview, Jan 2019 |
| Premium Price (2019) | $89 per year | Founder interview, Jan 2019 |
| Team Size (2019) | 100 | Founder interview, Jan 2019 |
| Employees in Netherlands (2019) | 80 | Founder interview, Jan 2019 |
| Remote Support Employees (2019) | 20 | Founder interview, Jan 2019 |
| Gross Churn (subscription cohort) (2019) | 15% per year | Founder interview, Jan 2019 |
| CAC (2019) | $0 (no marketing spend; fully weighted CAC not tracked) | Founder interview, Jan 2019 |
| Capital Raised | $0 (bootstrapped) | Founder interview, Jan 2019 |
| Free Users Before Premium Launched | 1,000,000 | Founder interview, Jan 2019 |
| First Plugin Version Released | 2013 | Founder interview, Jan 2019 |
| Year Premium Launched | Around 2014 | Founder interview, Jan 2019 |
Growth Breakdown
Revenue
Joost said Yoast's total revenue for 2018 was about EUR 10M, which he converted himself to about $12M. He described the business as "mostly a freemium model", and Yoast had only recently switched from manual renewals to subscriptions. He said Yoast had grown about 60% year on year for the last five years, mostly from new users rather than expansion on existing accounts, and later added: "Revenue is growing faster."
Customers
At the time of the interview, Joost said a couple of hundred thousand customers, two to three hundred thousand, had upgraded to the premium plugin at $89 a year. About nine to 10 million sites ran the free plugin, and most people stayed on the free version.
Team
Yoast had about 100 people at the time of the interview: 80 around Joost in Wijchen, a relatively small town in the east of the Netherlands, and about 20 spread out across the world because they worked in the support team.
Profitability and Funding
Yoast was bootstrapped and profitable. Asked whether 10% or 60% of revenue reached the bottom line, Joost said "More like 25." A lot of the profit was reinvested in growth, in new people and more developers, and a little of it went into real estate: Yoast bought some of its offices. He saw no point in keeping money in the bank with no interest.
Growth Strategy
WordPress Plugin Repository as Primary Distribution
Yoast's main acquisition channel was the wordpress.org plugin repository, where users searching for SEO plugins found Yoast as the highest-rated and most-installed option. Asked what Yoast paid in CAC, Joost said "Zero. We don't spend money on marketing." He did not track a fully weighted CAC.
Word-of-Mouth Through the SEO Speaking Circuit
Joost had spent years as an SEO consultant and conference speaker before launching the plugin, and he credited early growth to telling friends in the industry who then spread the word at conferences. The free plugin had a million users before he decided to start charging for a premium version, and he said that growth came "mostly through word-of-mouth."
Freemium Model with a Clear Feature Split
Yoast kept all features that every site needs in the free plugin and reserved time-saving features such as redirect creation, internal linking suggestions, and social previews for the premium tier. Joost said Yoast did not want to take any features out of the free plugin, and that the split was not designed to make more money: "We're definitely not optimizing for that."
Inbound Content Marketing
Yoast had a blog team, and Joost said that, basically, what it did was inbound marketing, with a lot of new users coming through the wordpress.org plugin repository. From there, he said, "it's just good user experience and people talking to each other."
Transition to Subscription Billing
Yoast had historically relied on manual renewals, which produced very high churn. By moving users to automatic subscriptions, the first cohort, now over a year in, showed churn of only about 15% a year, and Joost identified converting more of the base to subscriptions as a key lever for future scale.
Best Quotes
“We build a software plugin for WordPress that is basically an extension that allows you to optimize your site better. There's a free version of that plugin and a premium version of that plugin. So it's mostly a freemium model.”
“I've been a speaker on the SEO speaking circuit for ages, so I just told my friends and they told all their other friends.”
“Last year we did about €10,000,000, so about $12,000,000 in revenue. There's about a 100 people here. So, yeah, we're doing well.”
“We've grown about 60% year on year for the last five years.”
“So we've only recently switched to subscriptions. It was manual renewal for far too long. So for far too long, our churn was at like 70%.”
“I don't think he can afford us, first of all.”
“We all have Equity. I was the only founder, but people slowly came on. One of those four is my wife who basically runs the company.”
What Happened Next
At the time of this interview in January 2019, Yoast was a bootstrapped, profitable business with about EUR 10M in 2018 revenue, roughly 200,000 premium customers, and a team of about 100 people based primarily in The Netherlands. Joost had just been appointed to a marketing and communications role for WordPress, which he expected to take about eight hours a week alongside his work at Yoast. Visit the Yoast company profile on GetLatka for current figures and any updates since this recording.
View Yoast’s current profile and metricsFull Transcript
Chapters
- 0:00Introduction and What Yoast Does
- 0:29Freemium Model and How Yoast Makes Money
- 1:36Early Growth Through Word-of-Mouth and Conferences
- 3:39Premium Pricing, Features and Paid Upgrades
- 5:55Free vs Premium User Split
- 7:00Bootstrapped, 2018 Revenue and Team Size
- 8:3760% Year-on-Year Growth for Five Years
- 9:08Churn: Manual Renewals vs Subscriptions
- 10:53Zero Marketing Spend and CAC
- 13:27The Acquisition Question: Price and Cultural Fit
- 14:52Board Structure and Joost's New WordPress Role
- 15:44Famous Five: Books, CEOs and Tools
Introduction and What Yoast Does
Nathan Latka
00:00Hello, everyone. My guest today is Joost de Valk. He is the web developer, SEO and open source fanatic from the Netherlands. He's the founder and CEO of Yoast, which provides software and training for website optimization. Yoast SEO,
00:11Yoast's main software product currently runs in over 10,000,000 WordPress websites. Joost, you ready to take us to the top?
Joost de Valk
00:18I I always am.
Nathan Latka
00:19Good. Alright. So tell us about the company. We know what's it do? Obviously, SEO is is obvious, but what's it do specifically on WordPress? And then how do you make money? Is it pure play SaaS?
Freemium Model and How Yoast Makes Money
Joost de Valk
00:29No. Not really. So, we build a a software plugin for WordPress that is basically an extension that allows you to optimize your site better. There's a free version of that, plugin and a premium version of that plugin. So it's mostly a freemium model.
00:46Some of it is SaaS now because it connects to a service called MyYoast, which has some added features. But most of it right now is a pure freemium software play.
Nathan Latka
00:56Okay. So let me quickly touch on the freemium, and then I wanna go towards how you introduce the SaaS model. So the freemium kind of plugin, when did you launch the tool right from scratch?
Joost de Valk
01:06So the first version of Yoast SEO was released in 2014, early twenty fourteen... No, 2013, And then the first premium version of Yoast was somewhere around 2014.
Nathan Latka
01:18Okay. And premium version means what? Paid?
Joost de Valk
01:21Paid. Yes. Okay. It started out with a free plugin and had a million users and then decided maybe I should make some money from it.
Nathan Latka
01:27Okay. Yeah. So first year in 2013, you got a million users?
Joost de Valk
01:31Yes. Last last
Nathan Latka
01:33So how'd you do that? I mean, that's impressive.
Early Growth Through Word-of-Mouth and Conferences
Joost de Valk
01:36I've been a speaker on the SEO speaking circuit for ages, so I just told my friends and they told all their other friends, and so people at SEO in... Conferences started talking about it. And at that time, was growing almost just as fast as it was now, and we were one of the better SEO plugins, and that word spread rather quickly, so mostly through word-of-mouth.
Nathan Latka
01:58How did you get on the speaking circuit before you had the tool?
Joost de Valk
02:01I was an SEO consultant and have been SEO consultant for the last decade.
Nathan Latka
02:07But Joost, don't take offense to this, but there are a bunch of really stupid SEO consultants. Right? So, like, how did you have credibility before you had the tool? I know I know you were an SEO consultant, but what what credibility did you have?
Joost de Valk
02:17I was working for some of the biggest brands in the planet. I've done SEO for eBay, The Guardian, Facebook. So I led the migration from guardian.co.uk to theguardian.com. So there was projects I I was also allowed to talk about, which helps a lot at conferences because a lot of SEO work is always hard because you're not allowed to talk about it.
02:44Well, had a lot of friends in that circuit, was thrown into it by a friend of mine when I attended a conference. I started asking questions that were too hard for the speakers, so they basically invited me on stage. Interesting. So
Nathan Latka
02:59you got on stage because you were doing work for these big brands that you were allowed to talk about.
03:03How many then in 2013, how many conferences did you speak at?
Joost de Valk
03:06In 2014, not as much anymore because I was focused on building this business.
Nathan Latka
03:10Okay. But you said that so you
03:12got most of your new users.
Joost de Valk
03:13Yes. I told my friends in the industry and then they started speaking about it more. So I think I did like 10 or 12 in that year, but a lot of other people talked about it as well.
Nathan Latka
03:22You incentivize them at all besides Word-of-mouth? Mean, was there an affiliate program? Nope. Okay. They just shared they just shared it because they liked you. They knew the tool worked for them.
Joost de Valk
03:30It's it's open source. It's... I mean, at that point, it was most of the people... Still most of the people are using the free plugin and they're not using the premium version.
Premium Pricing, Features and Paid Upgrades
Nathan Latka
03:39Yeah. Okay. When people upgrade to premium, what are they paying on average per year per month? Would you say?
Joost de Valk
03:44They're paying $89 a year.
Nathan Latka
03:46Okay. 8 or 9 or 89?
Joost de Valk
03:4989.
Nathan Latka
03:50Okay. $89 per year. Okay. And what do they get for that? What's premium in that they can't get in the free?
Joost de Valk
03:55A couple of features, redirect creation, easy easy social previews, good internal linking suggestions, a couple of things like that, and access to our support team.
04:11That's it. There's more coming, but that's what we're building on the SaaS side. So we're slowly transitioning a bit into SaaS because more and more of the services that we need to provide require us to have a connection to the site and then connect from our platform to the other platforms that we need to connect to.
Nathan Latka
04:29So, Joost, if you look between kind of twenty thirteen, actually 2014 when you introduced premium and today four, you know, five years later, how many people have upgraded to premium?
Joost de Valk
04:39Hundreds of thousands.
Nathan Latka
04:40Okay. So can... I mean, can we say like 200, 300,000 or is it closer to 800 or 900?
Joost de Valk
04:45No. It's closer to two, three hundred.
Nathan Latka
04:47Okay. Two or three hundred thousand. That's great. So... And then where are you introducing... You know, a lot of people struggle that are on these freemium plans. We've had, like, Typeform on and a lot of other people that kind of fit this same kind of mold in terms of price point and number of free users, and they always are testing where to actually put up the paywall. Like, what is the limit? How did you decide that,
05:05and how do you test that every month?
Joost de Valk
05:09I would wish to say that that was a really conscious decision on all sides, but we basically just decided to introduce freemium. We didn't want to take any features out of the free plugin, so we added some features that we thought were useful. But we have a pretty strict rule within the company on everything that we think every site on the planet needs to do the basic works, we put into our free plugin. And then
05:35stuff that saves you time, we put into the premium plugin. So that is basically how we go by choosing what goes in where it's not necessarily optimizing for making more money, even though we're doing pretty well in that regard.
Nathan Latka
05:48Yeah.
Joost de Valk
05:50We're we're definitely not optimizing for that.
Nathan Latka
05:52So how many on the free plan today?
Free vs Premium User Split
Joost de Valk
05:55There's about nine to 10,000,000 sites.
Nathan Latka
05:57Okay.
Joost de Valk
05:58And there's a couple 100,000 on the paid one. So there's a... Well, that's it.
Nathan Latka
06:04Yeah. So when you say 10,000,000 free users or free sites, is it... Is your ratio about one to one in terms of actual person to the site?
Joost de Valk
06:13We don't have real numbers on that. I wish we did. It's hard for wordpress.org to track all that.
06:23But the difference probably... It's probably more like two to three users on average because there's a lot of sites that have like 30 or 40 users. I mean, are sites like thenextweb.com or microsoft.com that run our software where there's hundreds of people working on that site and it's only one site. And then there's also a lot of sites that are single blogs by single people.
Nathan Latka
06:46Yep.
Joost de Valk
06:47And even some affiliates that have a 100 sites and and use our plugin on all of them, but it's only one person. So it's probably about two x what we have in sites, but it's a... That's still a guesstimation.
Bootstrapped, 2018 Revenue and Team Size
Nathan Latka
07:00And then capital wise, mean, you bootstrapped the company or did you decide to raise?
Joost de Valk
07:04No. We've bootstrapped.
Nathan Latka
07:05Bootstrapped. I love that. It's great.
Joost de Valk
07:07We're now at... Last year we did about €10,000,000, so about $12,000,000 in revenue. There's about a 100 people here. So, yeah, we're doing well.
Nathan Latka
07:17Yep. A 100 people. And then look, you told me earlier you had about 200,000 customers, 89 a year would be $7 a month. That would put you at about 1,400,000 a month today. Is that a little high?
Joost de Valk
07:28So it's somewhere around there. Yeah.
Nathan Latka
07:30Okay. And and what would you say? You said you finished last year at a 10,000,000 run rate?
Joost de Valk
07:35Yeah. So, yeah, we... Our total revenue was about €10,000,000, so that's real money.
Nathan Latka
07:41Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Why do you say that's real money?
Joost de Valk
07:46Oh, it's not dollars.
Nathan Latka
07:49Well, I... You think the euro is stronger than the dollar right now?
Joost de Valk
07:52At the moment, it seems to be, which is not necessarily good for us, by the way, because a lot of it is... So our... We we have a couple of currencies that people pay us in. Yeah. And a strong dollar is usually better for our bottom line than a strong euro. So...
Nathan Latka
08:07Yep. No. That makes sense. Good. Alright. So good. So you're doing about 1,000,000 a month then in terms of in terms of euros, obviously scaling that nicely. Team of a 100 people. Where are they all based?
Joost de Valk
08:1680 of them are around me here in Wijchen, The Netherlands, which is a relatively small town in the East Of The Netherlands. And then about 20 are spread out across the world because they're in our support team and they're hired in part based on time.
Nathan Latka
08:30And help me understand how effective you've been with this team. So if you're doing 1,000,000 a month today, do you remember what you're doing exactly a year ago?
60% Year-on-Year Growth for Five Years
Joost de Valk
08:37We've grown about 60% year on year for the last five years.
Nathan Latka
08:41Okay. That's pretty good. So about $700,000 a month a year ago, something like that. Yeah. That's nice. And is most of that growth coming from getting expansion revenue on accounts or actually adding totally new users?
Joost de Valk
08:52Most of that growth is in users
08:56and we're slowly getting better at expanding it, but most of it's growth on new users.
Nathan Latka
09:01Yeah. Churn's critical at this kind of price point with SMBs. What's your churn today and how do make sure to keep it low from a product perspective?
Churn: Manual Renewals vs Subscriptions
Joost de Valk
09:08We're... We suck at keeping it low, which is one of our focuses. So we've only recently switched to subscriptions. It was manual renewal for far too long. So
09:23for far too long, our churn was at like 70%.
Nathan Latka
09:27We're Manually?
Joost de Valk
09:29Yeah.
09:30But at the same time, we were... We're now seeing that for people who have subscriptions, we... The first bunch of people that signed up to a subscription are now over a year in. And for them, we only have, like, 15%. And if I... If we can get it to that, then at that point, we're... I mean, then that's where you really become big.
Nathan Latka
09:52Yeah. So it's like 15% logo churn per year.
Joost de Valk
09:55Yeah.
Nathan Latka
09:56And when you say manual upgrades on the cohort that hasn't hasn't switched to SaaS, what do you mean manual upgrades? Like, you wouldn't automatically rebill them, you'd have to email them and get them to put in their credit card again or something?
Joost de Valk
10:06I see. Well, that...
Nathan Latka
10:07There's just friction there. Right? That makes it more difficult.
Joost de Valk
10:10It's... There's far too much friction there.
Nathan Latka
10:12Yeah. Yeah. You can't just automatically switch everyone over to a recurring thing?
Joost de Valk
10:17No. Because Europe and a lot of privacy laws and a lot of things that we have to, keep in mind in terms of what we can store. So it took a while for us to settle that up in a proper way.
10:31And also we were too lazy for too long. And so what you get when you have a fast growing company, you have to focus your efforts somewhere and then and then you figure out, oh, shit. We should have done this a long time ago.
Nathan Latka
10:42Yeah. I know. That's fine. That's fine. So where are you where are you getting new free users and customers today? And what... I mean, what are you paying fully weighted CAC to get a new $90 a year customer?
Zero Marketing Spend and CAC
Joost de Valk
10:53Zero. We don't spend money on marketing. So we... What what we do because we have a blog team and we we... So we do a lot of... Basically, of what we do is inbound marketing, and a lot of our getting new users is based on our wordpress.org, the WordPress plugin repository where people start searching for SEO plugins and then they find us and we're the highest rated, most used SEO plugin and they install it and go
11:25from there. Then it's just good user experience and people talking to each other.
Nathan Latka
11:30Yep. So what what what... I mean, when you do the fully weighted, so include your content team, your marketing team, your sales team. I mean, do do you even look at that number?
Joost de Valk
11:38No.
Nathan Latka
11:38Okay. Just...
11:38You just you
11:39just know it's working, so it's not something you track?
Joost de Valk
11:42No. But it's also... We're not necessarily running it just to make money. I mean, it's making good money. We've got decent revenue and decent profits, but they... This company uses for more reasons than just to just to make money. It's a... We have a mission where we want to give everyone the SEO tools to
Nathan Latka
11:59Yeah. Look, Joost, by the way, I totally believe that. But this... In the same breath, your ability to pursue that mission, the more... If you're able to generate revenue, you can per... Pursue that mission way more aggressively. Right? And so CAC's important piece I of
Joost de Valk
12:12don't disagree with that. Yeah. I mean... But we are growing... As I said, we're growing 60% year on year. Revenue is growing faster. So it's it's going pretty well.
Nathan Latka
12:23You said profitable. Mean, are we talking 10% to the bottom line or, like, 60% to the bottom line?
Joost de Valk
12:28More like 25.
Nathan Latka
12:2925. Okay. That's pretty healthy for... Especially for a SaaS company. So you just let that...
Joost de Valk
12:33Go ahead. Yeah. This probably could be way higher if we actually optimize for it.
Nathan Latka
12:37Yeah. Do you just let that kind of sit in the bank because you're not quite sure where to invest it or or how do you handle extra cash?
Joost de Valk
12:43Well, so far, it's... A lot of it's been invested... Reinvested into growth, into new people, more developers, etcetera. Yep. Yep. So...
12:55No. And we're we're diverting a little bit of it to to,
13:00how do you call it, real estate. We bought some of our offices, stuff like that.
13:08Putting in the bank is really pretty useless right now.
13:13So I don't really like giving a lot of money in the bank because, well, there's no interest whatsoever. So
Nathan Latka
13:19Yeah. Yep. No. These are all good these are good points. What... So why hasn't Matt acquired you guys yet?
The Acquisition Question: Price and Cultural Fit
Joost de Valk
13:27Why would he? I don't think he can afford us, first of all.
Nathan Latka
13:30No. Come on. He can afford you guys. Come on. If you're doing $12,000,000 a year in revenue and he paid you something astronomical like 10 x, he could he could easily write a $120,000,000 check.
Joost de Valk
13:39I don't think he can.
Nathan Latka
13:41And I mean, we just had
13:43him on the show the other day, and he he broke down his run rate for me. He has plenty of capital. I don't think a 120 would be I...
Joost de Valk
13:50Yeah. Well, no. I've... I talked to Matt on a regular basis. I don't know if you've seen yesterday that he just appointed me lead marketing and and communication boards.
Nathan Latka
13:59Yeah. But I mean, does he share does he share his financials with you?
Joost de Valk
14:02We we talk about a lot of things. We... We've invested in companies together. I mean, there's... We talk a lot.
Nathan Latka
14:09Okay. So, yeah, this... My question is even more more relevant then. Why hasn't he acquired you?
Joost de Valk
14:13Yeah. I don't think he can. And, honestly, I don't think we're a good fit either because he's a very... He's a completely remote company, and we're a very local company. So we wouldn't fit. There's culturally... I mean, we like each other and the com... People within the companies definitely like each other, but there's absolutely no cultural fit between the companies in in how we operate.
Nathan Latka
14:33Yep. Yep. No. I think that makes sense. Does does the WordPress plugin repository, they don't take commission. They don't take like 10, 20% cut, do they?
Joost de Valk
14:40No. There's no financial model there. So all that has to go through yoast.com.
Nathan Latka
14:45Yep. Tell me about this new role he's appointed to you. How does that affect your your CEO role at Yoast?
Board Structure and Joost's New WordPress Role
Joost de Valk
14:52Well, it takes a bit of time... My time out, of course, and it'll probably mean me doing some some less work here. The the good thing is we're a board of four people here at Yoast, so we run it together with the four of us, and we're basically peers.
Nathan Latka
15:06You're all co founders, you all have Equity?
Joost de Valk
15:08We all have Equity. I was the only founder, but people slowly came on. One of those four is my wife who basically runs the company.
Nathan Latka
15:19Oh, great.
Joost de Valk
15:21And this is smartest of the two of us, so the house.
15:25No. So it'll impact my time here a bit, but it's not a full time role. I'll be spending about eight hours a week on it.
15:35But it's... I mean, leading marketing for WordPress is is
15:40a lot of work, but it doesn't have to be all my work. So that's probably good.
Famous Five: Books, CEOs and Tools
Nathan Latka
15:44Very good. Alright. Joost, let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite business book?
Joost de Valk
15:50That's a good question. I... I'm not really into business books. I like novels.
Nathan Latka
15:54Okay. What's your last novel you read?
Joost de Valk
15:56I actually reread Lord of the Rings.
Nathan Latka
15:58Good. Okay. Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying right now?
Joost de Valk
16:03There's a couple I I follow deeply, Elon Musk, but that's probably the most mentioned one.
Nathan Latka
16:08Name name like an under the radar one, maybe in The Netherlands that people may not have heard of.
Joost de Valk
16:14Well, funny. There's actually a local guy here who runs a 300 person company, but he's done so well in in making themselves controlling teams within that company. That is really impressive, and I talked to him about that relative... Relatively often.
Nathan Latka
16:28Oh, yeah. So what's the company? What's his name?
Joost de Valk
16:30The the company is called, which you wouldn't know. It's like a really local, like, in... Industrial company.
Nathan Latka
16:36Okay. What's his name?
Joost de Valk
16:38His...
16:41And I'm just looking on his his last name.
Nathan Latka
16:45Or spell the company name just so we can look it up.
Joost de Valk
16:48The the company name is m o d d e r k o l k.
Nathan Latka
16:53Okay. Perfect. We'll look it up. CEO of... How do you say that? Motorkulk?
Joost de Valk
16:57Yeah. It's very... It's it's it's a good example of how a a relatively local company can build something, well, really useful and have, small teams that steer themselves on a briskly self self controlling units entirely. I I really like seeing that.
Nathan Latka
17:13Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building your company?
Joost de Valk
17:17My brain.
Nathan Latka
17:18Beside... Besides your brain, like name... Like, obviously, besides WordPress or your own tool.
Joost de Valk
17:24So a lot of it... I mean, I'm I'm an SEO guy, so I'm gonna say google.com and actually searching for stuff and and looking at what's there and what's missing and what people are searching for and and are missing.
Nathan Latka
17:36You said just google.com?
Joost de Valk
17:37Yep. Yep.
Nathan Latka
17:38Alright. Number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night?
Joost de Valk
17:41Sorry. Again?
Nathan Latka
17:42How many hours of sleep?
Joost de Valk
17:44Seven.
Nathan Latka
17:45And you said married. Any kids? Four. Four. Holy mackerel. Okay. How old are you?
Joost de Valk
17:51I'm 36.
Nathan Latka
17:5236.
17:53Last question, Joost. What do you wish your 20 year old self knew?
Joost de Valk
17:58My 20 year old self should probably start a company sooner.
Nathan Latka
18:02When did you launch? How old were you when you launched your first company?
Joost de Valk
18:06Twenty ten. So 28.
Nathan Latka
18:0928. Very good. Guys, there you have it. He will launch his company sooner. Joost again launched his SEO tool on WordPress back in 2013. Now over 200,000 customers paying $7 a month doing about $12,000,000 in terms of run rate today. That's up 60% year over year, so that's healthy. 25% EBITDA margin. So that's about 3,000,000 a year in free cash flow that he reinvests in real estate for the company or other things. A 100 people in
18:29The Netherlands totally bootstrapped, which I love. 15% logo churn per year on their subscription cohort. They're moving more of their users into that subscription cohort as they look to scale and grow. Again, doesn't track CAC or payback period just because a lot of his growth comes from the wordpress.org plugin repository, and it's working nicely today. So, Joost, thank you so much for taking us to the top.