The Twenty Minute VCJoost de Valk: How I Founded Yoast; The Ultimate Guide to SEO; The Threat of AI | E1000
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
110 min read · 22,232 words- 0:00 – 0:47
Intro
- JVJoost de Valk
... had a small business plan for it. I was like, "If I'm gonna make 100K with this in the first year, then it's actually worth continuing doing this." And then I made more than 100K in the first month.
- HSHarry Stebbings
(instrumental music) Yoast, I'm so excited for this. I told you, I was literally with Shad last night hearing stories. I've also heard from Brian Hale, from Mullenweg, from Alex Schulze. So thank you so much for joining me today.
- JVJoost de Valk
It's an absolute pleasure to be here. With all the people that have been here before me, it does feel like you're incorporated into this l- this ridiculous group.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Do you know what? I'm very lucky to be ingratiated by such intelligent people. But I wanna start at the beginning. So, you started the Yoast SEO plugin as a hobby. It's now used by 13 million sites, according to the trusty Google. What was the aha moment for, like, "I have to create the Yoast SEO plugin that even we use at 20VC"?
- 0:47 – 2:30
Founding Story of Yoast
- HSHarry Stebbings
- JVJoost de Valk
I started as an SEO consultant having my own website, doing some small things, and I built a couple of different small plugins that did s- various specific SEO things, and I was a quite regular speaker at SEO conferences already by that time, and I... and people kept saying to me, like, "Yeah, well, we, we just want one plugin that does it all." And, um, there was one plugin out there that, that tried to do that but wasn't really good enough yet, so I just combined what I had, the, the different plugins that I had, into one thing, um, and then realized quite quickly that there's basically two sides to SEO, right? You have the technical stuff and you have the content side of things, and the technical stuff is not something that anyone wants to think about. So, I... what I tried to do, and I think we've quite successfully done over the years, is take all the technical stuff away from people and just fix it for them and give them good feedback on their content. I think that that is what, th- well, the s- pretty simple recipe that has actually helped it grow so much.
- HSHarry Stebbings
And I love it. You have the, the, the green, red, orange light system-
- JVJoost de Valk
Yeah.
- HSHarry Stebbings
... which is like, images needed, uh, meta description, uh, whatever, whatever, whatever. Uh, I love it. I d- so I'm totally am not the technical person who loved that. But there's a moment when it changes from, like, a hobby that's kinda cool and kinda working to, like, "Oh, wow, we actually have something." What was that catalyst for "I need to go all in on this," ƒs w- what was side hobby at the time?
- JVJoost de Valk
So I started my own company in 2010, basically doing consulting. I was working for Alex doing consulting
- 2:30 – 7:16
When did I know I could turn Yoast into a business
- JVJoost de Valk
for Facebook and, and, and doing consulting for eBay and companies like that. What happened is that the plugin became really big, so it had, like, a million users. WordPress was growing quite fast, and I suddenly had on this free plugin that I'd built as a hobby a million users, and I was spending way too much time supporting it, and my wife was quite clear. Uh, Marika has been at the co ƒ... well, at the premise of a whole lot of these smart decisions in life. Um, e- she i- she was like, "You... either need to make money doing this or you need to stop doing it."
- HSHarry Stebbings
(laughs)
- JVJoost de Valk
And I'm like, "Yeah, you're probably right." Um, and then I built... I first started with an add-on, so I built a video SEO add-on.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Mm-hmm.
- JVJoost de Valk
Um, s- I had a, a small business plan for it. I was like, "If I'm gonna make 100K with this in the first year, then it's actually worth continuing doing this," because I was making quite a lot of money as an, as a consultant, so it had to actually offset that money, and then I made more than 100K in the first month.
- HSHarry Stebbings
(laughs)
- JVJoost de Valk
And I was like, "Oh, wait, there might be a bit more to this."
- HSHarry Stebbings
I absolutely love that.
- JVJoost de Valk
Yeah.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Um, you have that moment though then, is the next moment. You first have that catalyst for, "Oh shit, this is something that's working and working well." When you're doing 100K in a month pretty quickly... Listen, Shad taught me one thing. Well, he's taught me many things, but he told me, "VC gonna VC." Uh, (laughs) and what he means by that is you can't take the VC out of the VC, and so when you're doing 100K a month, you are having people chase you down to invest. Why did you never take external funding?
- JVJoost de Valk
Why would we? So, the thing is, we were growing quite... So, first of all, uh, don't think that any of this was a plan upfront. I mean, there was no plan to, to sell the company. There was no plan to grow to as big as we w- a- as we became, because it just happened, and we grew along with WordPress and, um, with Matt in many ways, and, and, and we were very lucky in a way that I, I picked the right platform in the beginning and, and built on that. Um, but in the beginning it was very much about turning that hobby into a bit of a lifestyle business. We have four children. I was also spending a lot of time with them. Um, e- and I didn't necessarily want to build a huge business in the beginning, and then later on when we realized that we, uh, that we had, uh, quite a large business in our hands by that time, it really wasn't needed anymore. We were generating enough cash to grow w- in- into what we wanted to do. Um, the funny thing about our sort of business is that you ha- the only cost that you really have is people, uh, so why, why take money?
- HSHarry Stebbings
Is there nothing that you could have done with cash that you c- didn't do? Be it marketing, be it brand, be it R&D, push the boundaries on how fast you're moving? A lot of the times founders will say, "The reason I took funding is because I could, could have done it in 18 months, but with cash I can do it in six."
- JVJoost de Valk
Yeah, so I think I was blissfully unaware of that in the beginning.
- HSHarry Stebbings
(laughs)
- JVJoost de Valk
And I'm very happy that I was. (laughs)
- HSHarry Stebbings
Uh, I, l- I, I think dilution-wise, you're absolutely right. If you could turn the clock back 10 years or to 2010 when you started and incorporated, what would you do differently?
- JVJoost de Valk
The thing is in- with hindsight, it's- it's very easy to say that, right? It's very easy to say, "I w- would have done this or that differently." Had I known in the beginning that we'd be selling the company at some point and- and how this all would go, I might have hired a bit less people and- (stutters) and- but because we... (sighs) A whole lot of the things that we did, we did just because we thought it was fun.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Mm-hmm.
- JVJoost de Valk
And not necessarily because we were thinking about how to, like, make the most money. Um, if you- if I look, you know, at it- back at it, then maybe we hired a bit too much at- at certain points in time. And- and also right now, we- we're really not that big. Yoast as a company is not that big anymore, uh, in terms of- or anymore. It's not- it's- it's 100 people, but if you look at, like, 13 million websites, uh, having 120 or so people is really not all that much people, right?
- HSHarry Stebbings
Totally.
- JVJoost de Valk
Uh, so, um, I would probably say that I don't have any real big regrets in that regard.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Listen, a life without many regrets is a good life.
- 7:16 – 12:11
Why Open Source & Freemium models are difficult to make?
- HSHarry Stebbings
I- I wanna start on the first major topic though, because when we chatted before, you said, you know, alongside Matt, really it's the first time we've had an open source and kind of freemium, uh, OG on the show. And I wanna start with something you said, which is open source slash freemium models are extremely hard to make work, but when they do, they lead to incredible potential, which VCs are underestimating. Um, let's break that down 'cause I'm simple as a VC. Um-
- JVJoost de Valk
(laughs)
- HSHarry Stebbings
... why are open source and freemium models so hard to make work first?
- JVJoost de Valk
So there's two- two sides to that. On the one hand, freemium is always gonna be hard because you have to decide about, um, what- what to put in free and what to put in premium. Like, how do you attract the most users and at the same time get- have enough in premium to, um, to actually convert them into paying customers? And the add-on thing that's harder when you're in open source is that when people think that you- you've- you've got a good product, but too much of it's premium, is that they might just fork your premium product.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Mm-hmm.
- JVJoost de Valk
Uh, and so- so you have to be extremely good at what you do, and you also have to build, like, a sort of trust relationship with the- with the customer so you have... Um, and- and the user, uh- uh, they need to trust you to be better than the other options that are out there. And what I said, we have relatively few people compared to the number of people using Yoast SEO. So what you- what you get quite quickly with these models is that you have web scale problems and small company income. Uh, I mean, at its peak, Yoast was at 15 million euros a year revenue when we sold. That's not a whole lot of money compared to the, uh, 11 million sites that we were running on at that time. I mean, that is... So you're solving problems for a whole lot of sites with relatively little people. At the same time, the open source community controls a large part of the web. Like, a very, very large part. I think people still underestimate what Matt has done with WordPress and how- I mean, more than 40% of websites on the web are WordPress sites. And companies like Shopify, and I heard your podcast with- uh, with Tobi, which was awesome. But Shopify has like 2%, 3% of- of the market, if that. So WordPress is way, way bigger and- and people underestimate that, and it's underinvested in, I think.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What would you do differently if you were Matt?
- JVJoost de Valk
I wouldn't work so hard. (laughs)
- HSHarry Stebbings
(laughs)
- JVJoost de Valk
No, I- I don't think that's fair. I think... I have a tremendous respect for what Matt has done with Automatic. Um, I think... So for me, WordPress, the project is super important to me as a person, which I think Matt has- has as well. Like, he- he'd be happy doing that until he dies. And for me, it's just like whatever I'll do, I'll be in the WordPress community. And I think that that is something that he's built that- that is so much more powerful than all the other things. It's that community and those people. We- we often say, "Come for the software, stay for the people." Uh, and I think that's very true.
- HSHarry Stebbings
You mentioned there the challenge of putting enough greatness in the free that they convert to the premium, uh, and are then happy with it. When you have founders come to you with this problem, "I don't know what to do. I don't know how much to put in, how much secret sauce," what do you actually advise them? Because I'm sure you see so many.
- JVJoost de Valk
Um, we do see a lot and- and it dif- it really differs. It's- there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Uh, I will say that putting too much in free early on is dangerous because you can't really take it back.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Mm-hmm.
- JVJoost de Valk
And, uh, that- I think that's where open source slightly differs from- from SaaS, because in SaaS you can just take it back.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Mm-hmm.
- JVJoost de Valk
And in open source, as soon as you put it out there, it's out there, and- and someone is gonna fork it if you take it out, and, uh... Yeah, that's gonna be hard.
- HSHarry Stebbings
When you look at freemium and open source today that worked, the best in class, what are the commonalities in those that have worked well that you think are core to their success?
- JVJoost de Valk
So, the biggest underestimated thing in all of open source is branding.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Mm-hmm.
- JVJoost de Valk
Like, actually building a proper brand for your company and- and thinking about, hey, how do we want people to look at us? What are we...... a- a- what are we putting out there, how, h-
- 12:11 – 16:47
Developer-Led Brands
- JVJoost de Valk
how are people perceiving us?
- HSHarry Stebbings
This is the hardest thing though, because you also have to develop a lead brand.
- JVJoost de Valk
Yes.
- HSHarry Stebbings
And that's what's the most challenging, which is like, dude, I'm a branding guy, I can brand all day. Give me a turd and I'll brand it in Gucci. But, um, uh, a developer-led brand, fuck, that's hard. What-
- JVJoost de Valk
It is super hard.
- HSHarry Stebbings
... what makes a great developer-led brand?
- JVJoost de Valk
So, I think, uh, a- what makes a great developer-led brand is why, uh, Marieke is the secret sauce of our company in many ways. I- it's because it's- it's not just developer led. If I were to just do that, if I would, if I'd been the only one building Yoast SEO, then we would have only optimized for SEOs and for, for developers who want very specific niche features all the time to do very specific things. And honestly, nobody cares. So, um, I think you or Brian here mentioned in one of your podcasts at- at some point that- that companies tend to optimize for the power user.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yeah.
- JVJoost de Valk
And I think that's the thing that you don't have to do. That's like the exact opposite of what you should be doing. And it's very hard to do that well, so if you're just a developer leading a, a company like that, then it's really very important that you get someone on board who's not a power user, who can help you, like, "Hey, I'm a normal user of this product." Uh-
- HSHarry Stebbings
When you think about doing (techno music plays) optimize for power users, I'm fascinated there because quite often they're the ones most likely to churn, they're not the real lovers, and actually, I understand optimize for the power user and for the super lover because they're your champion, they're the ones who are gonna espouse it to their friends in the community. Make the ones who love it love it more, and they'll do the rest for you. Why am I wrong?
- JVJoost de Valk
Well, you're not. That's why it's super hard. So, um, I think the thing that w- the fine line that I've always tried to do with Yoast is that we, we did the things automatically that the lovers and that, like, the really geeky SEOs really liked. So we fixed all the problems automatically and very cleanly. And we tried to keep the interface as simple as possible. And at the same time, we horribly failed at that at times. I mean, it is super hard to keep a settings interface for an SEO plugin simple because there's so many things you can toggle, and switch, and change. And, and the thing is, uh, once you look, uh, start looking at some data, and, and one of the harder parts is that you actually don't have that much data, uh, in, in, in our context, um, is that people don't look at settings. So for an SEO plugin, they turn it on and they expect it to do magic, and that means that your defaults have to be incredibly good, and that every setting you add is basically just more noise. Um, so I, I think that the, uh, n- uh, that the power is to make sure that you keep on doing the right things and, and reacting quickly. So one of the things we always did was whenever Google came out with new stuff is we'd be on that, and we, and we'd have a new release ready a couple days later or even on the day itself to, to release, like, uh, uh, to add the features that were needed. And luckily, Google talked to s- talked to us sometimes and told us. Um-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Can I... Y- y- you mentioned kind of the default there and like settings, people don't go to settings. I think it was Dave Morin who said, uh, on a show, like the devil's in the default when it comes to product and product expectations and actually it just destroys creativity. Do you agree? Or is actually the default is good, it's what we know, and it's what we're comfortable with?
- JVJoost de Valk
I think the default is what 90% of your users will u- will end up using, so it better be damn good. It's actually one of WordPress' core principles in its, i- i- i- in its del- uh, design philosophies, which Matt came up with, uh, I guess so props to him again. Um, decisions not options. And that means we're not gonna add options for stuff where we can decide the right thing for 95, 90% of people. We're not gonna add an option for it. There might be a filter in the code to change it. So if you're a developer, you can change it. But for normal users, adding more options just makes your product harder
- 16:47 – 18:32
Biggest Product Mistake
- JVJoost de Valk
to use.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Can I ask, I think we learn a lot from mistakes. When you look at kind of the product journey of Yoast, what do you think was the single biggest kind of product mistake and what did you learn from it?
- JVJoost de Valk
I think the biggest product mistake is thinking that people were using our features when we didn't know for sure. So we spent a whole lot of time building features that then nobody used, and that's the problem of building a WordPress plugin because you don't have telemetry going back to your systems the whole time. Um, so we literally didn't know. And then we started building tracking to actually g- send some telemetry back and then we realized, "Oh, wait, we're spending a whole lot of our time working on this and nobody's using it." Um, at which point usually Marieke says, "I told you so." And (laughs) -
- HSHarry Stebbings
(laughs)
- JVJoost de Valk
And-
- HSHarry Stebbings
So what do you change then? You spend more time on branding? You spend more time on distribution? You spend-
- JVJoost de Valk
No, you spend more time on the parts of the interface where people actually do interact with your software. So for us that was we started adding features into the editor where you see the green bullets, so we started adding readability features to actually make people write better texts.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Alyson phenomenally helpful for a layman like me. Um, I- I- I do have to also... I'm concerned when we look at the freemium model in particular, especially as we enter a different macro climate because what you see is kind of the removal of the credit card from the ba- from the user and actually it reverting back to the CFO where it traditionally was. And people don't have the same purchasing power on the front
- 18:32 – 24:27
How Freemium is changing
- HSHarry Stebbings
lines. Are you concerned in the same way as I am about that removal of purchasing power and how does freemium look differently over the next few years to how it did over the last few years?
- JVJoost de Valk
I am slightly concerned there. Uh, depends a bit on the market. So I'm not as concerned for Yoast because SEO is g- probably gonna be invested in more instead of less, so in a, in a down market because people look at their AdWords bill and they go like, "Oh, maybe we should do something about that." Um, but yeah. I- I think you're right. And at the same time, most of these freemium models are relatively cheap, so while there's not purchasing power as much anymore on the, on the front end... I mean, Yoast SEO costs like 99 euros a year. A lot of WordPress plug-ins c- have those kinds of price points. Those are not the hardest decisions in the world usually.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yeah. No, I- I totally agree. What worries me also with the freemium models honestly and the kind of the cohort of startups we have today is you have the cost structure of enterprise startups. You have SDRs, you have AE s, you have CS teams, you have this very bloated kind of org structure and then you have the price points of freemium and we have no knowledge that they upsell efficiently, we have no knowledge of like large ACVs at the end of the rainbow. And so you have this inflated cost base and this small ACV with freemium and it just doesn't... doesn't work.
- JVJoost de Valk
No and, uh, and honestly a lot of those companies are also like they're- they're building for skill that they're never gonna reach.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yeah.
- JVJoost de Valk
So, um, I've actually seen this with Shaq together in a company we worked in. Um, uh, but yeah. I think, um, that there's a lot of opportunity to just do scrappy and, and small and also to price reasonably because some of these things just get too expensive and then it's too easy to throw you away. So something like Calendly which I see a lot of people use and love, Google rolls out a new feature and suddenly Calendly's gone. And-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Do you think so? I mean it's a three to five billion dollar company.
- JVJoost de Valk
It is and, uh, yeah but it- but it is... I mean the risk of that is quite big, right? I mean Calendly when I... I don't- I no longer pay for it but when I used to pay for it, it cost me more than my Google Workspace account. And- and I was like why... these pricings don't match.
- HSHarry Stebbings
I don't use Calendly, I find it offensive that I should pick through your calendar to find time. ........................ outrageous.
- JVJoost de Valk
(laughs)
- HSHarry Stebbings
Oh yeah, I'll take my time to spend going through your time, why don't you fucking get an EA? God, unbelievable. Um.
- JVJoost de Valk
(laughs)
- HSHarry Stebbings
Anyway, I always get in trouble for that one. Uh.
- JVJoost de Valk
(laughs)
- HSHarry Stebbings
Uh, I- I just want to ask before we move on from freemium and open source. Again, I am an investor for a living. I... you said before that VCs do not or VCs underestimate these models. Great, how do you look at them? How do you evaluate them? Is it, you know, forks on GitHub? What is the mechanism of determination for quality?
- JVJoost de Valk
So I'm kind of lucky there in that I... in terms of software I can just look at the code. I'm developer enough that I can look at the code and see if it's any good. I'm arrogant enough to say that I think I can- I can actually determine that myself. Um, and then it's just looking at wha- what users are saying and like looking at reviews, looking at how people are talking about it and in- in these communities what you- what you really get is that you have like... the WordPress community is a- is a very... it's a layered thing but the- the inside WordPress community is relatively small group of people that- that goes to WordCamps and that- that goes to these conferences and when I say small that's relative, right? I mean WordCamp Europe will probably be a couple thousand people walking around talking about WordPress for a couple of days. But talking there and- and- and at conferences like that and hearing people talk about software and like "Hey that's cool and this is- this is useful for this and this and we- this solves this problem for me," it's actually very cool to listen to that and figure out like "Hey these are the ones that are really going to make a change." So that's being in that community and actually caring about that community and being aligned with that community.
- HSHarry Stebbings
How do you tell pre-launch? This is my hard thing. I- I meet many, many in my role.
- JVJoost de Valk
Why would you tell pre-launch? You don't have to.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Well why would you fund pre-launch?
- JVJoost de Valk
No it's... but why would you need... yeah but also why would you want to tell pre-launch? I mean most of these things exist already that's the... So it's a very different building atmosphere, it's very much build out in the open.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yeah not many startups actually take that approach though.
- JVJoost de Valk
No but that's what I'm saying like the whole... this is very uncommon to I think most VCs is that the entire approach is different, it is- it is much more out in the open and- and that also means that the quali- that the output of what it is that you... I mean when you sell Yoast it's what you sell as a brand and- and what you sell is not necessarily just the software because the software everyone could just pick up and copy.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Who do you think is the best VC for understanding the model?
- JVJoost de Valk
Matt.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Matt's not a VC, Matt's a founder.
- JVJoost de Valk
No- no but he also funds a lot of companies.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Oh he does but he has... he has cash.
- JVJoost de Valk
(laughs)
- HSHarry Stebbings
Do you think any VC does it well?
- JVJoost de Valk
So I've spoken to quite a lot of them because they do reach out and
- 24:27 – 28:07
How to Invest in SEO
- HSHarry Stebbings
these days. Um, I- I wanna talk about, um, kind of the highs and lows of SEO. We- we met through Shaq really, uh, and he told me about the instrumental work that you did on CoinDesk. So, before we kind of start on, uh, a lot of the- the dark art, so to speak, um, timing and budgets. What does it mean to invest in SEO? I often hear like, "Oh, we're gonna invest in SEO." What does it mean to invest in SEO?
- JVJoost de Valk
It's a good question that doesn't really have a good answer. I think that every founder should understand the basics of SEO because it's gonna help them in a whole lot of different things. There's a reason that almost every OG growth guy that you've spoken to, or girl, that you've spoken to in the last A- A- and your episodes, uh, so many of them are SEOs by background.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Mm-hmm.
- JVJoost de Valk
Because what you need to do when you do SEO is you need to look at a whole lot of data and you need to think about, what do people search for? How do I describe my product to- in words that people actually use? Um, and when they have a problem, what are they searching for? What are these things- what are the words that people use to describe the problems that they have and how can I tap into that? And I actually think that that's good to think about when you're building a product. So investing in SEO starts there with actually thinking about what are people trying to- what are we su- what are we solving? Which problem of our users are we solving? That's very... So as- that's where SEO is in the beginning and where it's bec- important, I think. And then when you invest in SEO, you need content and you need a good tech platform. And honestly, WordPress is out there, so if you- if you're gonna use another CMS, I think you're pretty stupid because every other CMS is gonna cost you more money. And then, uh, you- you need content, you need to write that content, and in the beginning that's probably you that needs to write that content.
- HSHarry Stebbings
So help me out here. So we have g- "We need content," core pillar. We have 3,000 shows. They are very SEOable and heavy SEOable, I'm told. Um, I kind of run funds, uh, ha, and, you know, a media business. Uh, I'm not an SEO moss. Everyone's like, "You need to turn your transcripts into, like, s- like, s- like, pages, and you'll kill it on SEO." I'm like, "Really? That'll just look really ugly." Like, can you imagine a whole transcript on a website? Like, uf. Am I missing something?
- JVJoost de Valk
Um, yes. Nobody told you that the whole transcript needs to be like the whole page.
- HSHarry Stebbings
So tell me more.
- JVJoost de Valk
Let's say that transcript needs to be on that page, but it- but it can be a scrollable div or whatever on that page where people can go through it, and you can actually make it look nice. But yes, I- the descri- transcript needs to be on a page somewhere, although Google is getting better at actually just listening to the podcast and do- and making the transcript themselves. They've been doing that on YouTube for ages.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Wow.
- JVJoost de Valk
Uh, um, but yet- so you- d- (laughs) in the end, all these search engines, they search through text. And if it searches through YouTube onto a specific minute in a YouTube video, it's searching through the transcript of that YouTube video that it compiled itself before that, because that's what they do. So it needs to be in text on a page somewhere, and then there's some more stuff you could do. You were already doing half of it right. Uh, you're already using Yoast SEO. But yeah, I- I do think that actually you could probably get more traffic through them.
- HSHarry Stebbings
I- I mean, fantastic, 'cause we could absolutely optimize that. If we go back to like the founder hat of like what
- 28:07 – 29:16
When’s the right time to invest in SEO?
- HSHarry Stebbings
it means to invest in SEO, the next question is like, when's the right time? A lot of founders are like, "Harry, I just need to get a couple of customers, I need to build the base, and then I'll think about it." When's the right time to start investing in SEO?
- JVJoost de Valk
So I think the first thing that, uh, i- if you pick the right platform to build your website on and make sure that it's relatively technically SEO friendly already, um, then you're good in the beginning. When- and then as soon as you start doing customer support, you'll get questions that you have more than one- two or three times. Start writing knowledge base articles for those. And it's as simple as that. Just start- the things you're already writing anyway, because you're answering those customers and you're- you're- you're- you're fixing them, reuse that content and put it on your site, and- a- and then just build on that. So I think the right time to start investing in it is fairly early, but that doesn't mean hiring an expensive SEO consultant. It just means actually writing- putting content on your site and making sure that people can find what, uh, well, what you- what you do.
- HSHarry Stebbings
You mentioned hiring an expensive SEO
- 29:16 – 34:05
Biggest Mistakes Founders Make in SEO
- HSHarry Stebbings
consultant. You see so many people attempt SEO. What are the biggest mistakes you see founders make with SEO in the early days?
- JVJoost de Valk
I think the biggest mistake is, one, come up with a brand that is not recognizable. So even in search, if people search through your problem area, they never search once, right? They always have like a search journey where they search for multiple words and- uh, for multiple things, you know, over a period of time. Even if they don't click your result, if they see your brand name a couple of times in that result, you're slowly building up confidence for your brand. So being recognizable in search is super important.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Mm-hmm.
- JVJoost de Valk
And I think that people underestimate how important it actually is to have a brand that people can remember and that doesn't become very vague very quickly. That's one. The other is coming up with terms themselves for their... Say, you think you're very clever and you- and you create your own term for what you're doing.... and nobody else uses that, so don't. Just use the words that everybody else uses.
- HSHarry Stebbings
That's so interesting. So category creation may sound sexy to a VC, but actually whatever the high intellectual word you're using, it doesn't mean shit to anyone. Don't bother.
- JVJoost de Valk
So category creation is, I think, super important but it- it's- it's almost always it's a category that already exists as a problem. So that, the problem that you're fixing for people already has words attached to that. And if you're- if you're going to start using different words for that category, then the people are using to search it for it, then you're gonna have a hard time getting people that search into your website. You can't really create demand with SEO. So that, I mean, that is the thing that, that is very counterintuitive to a lot of people. But, but SEO is very demand driven, just like AdWords is very demand driven. The demand has to be there. You can't create the demand. So that's why the branding is important, and you have to do other things as well. And, and while a holistic view on growth w- should absolutely include SEO, but should also include a whole lot of branding.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Should you have SEO specialists within your growth team, within your marketing team? Is this a meta-skill that everyone should have? How should that be distributed within your team?
- JVJoost de Valk
I think you should have SEO specialists on your team if you're building a larger growth team because it's a pretty specific problem area to keep track of. I mean, it- it- it's quite a bit of time that it takes to just keep track of everything that Google does. And the funny thing, I think as your company gets larger, managing SEO gets a lot harder so you'll probably need an SEO team over time because-
- HSHarry Stebbings
What- what changes with time? Why does it get harder?
- JVJoost de Valk
Uh, it's just you... People, as you move quickly on your site, uh, and all these companies want to ship every day, then it's, it's hard to not make SEO mistakes every day. So you need people that keep track of what you're shipping and that, and say, "Okay, maybe we can change this so that it's actually SEO friendly."
- HSHarry Stebbings
Who, who do the SEO specialists in your team work closest with? Is it with the product team? Is it with the dev team? Is it with... Who are their consiglieres to ensure they have that seamless integration?
- JVJoost de Valk
To, yeah, well, both these actually. I think that they should probably be in that, in that triangle the whole time. Um, and, and the content side of things should probably also talk to your PR and comms team people, et cetera. So, so it is... (laughs) SEO is, has a nasty habit of being in so many different places at the same time. Like, so many different things are important to SEO.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Uh, y- you mentioned kind of the centrality of content there. I think one of the things I always say with content, you know, having done it for eight years, is the reason most people fail is because they give up. Like, it just takes a long time to fucking work. When you think about how long it takes for, to see the gains of SEO, how long does it take to see SEO really come into fruition?
- JVJoost de Valk
This depends a bit on where you are in your journey. But if you're starting as a new company then it, then it's gonna take, um, quite a bit of time because nobody's heard of you. And you're not gonna get, like, a whole lot of clicks automatically suddenly because you've launched a new website. Um, at the same time, if you were a bigger company and you've not invested in SEO but you do already have a brand, then you could see results very quickly as soon as you start actually putting decent, well-optimized content
- 34:05 – 36:29
Budgeting for SEO
- JVJoost de Valk
on your site.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Can I ask a bit of a weird one? If you are a CEO or a CFO of a series B company and you haven't optimized for it already, how do you allocate budget for SEO? Do I take it from marketing? Do I take it from product engineering? Is it a new budget? How much should it cost? If I was literally in an angel investment of your series B, what would you advise me in terms of asset allocation towards SEO?
- JVJoost de Valk
So if you're already doing CPC-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yeah.
- JVJoost de Valk
... I'd take 10% of your CPC budget and allocate it to SEO.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Okay.
- JVJoost de Valk
And, and then start from there and see what happens.
- HSHarry Stebbings
So you mentioned CBC. I, I did want to get to this, but in fact we mentioned, like, it takes a decent amount of time, especially if you're early. How do you measure along the way the effectiveness and success of your SEO strategy in those early days? How do you advise me on that?
- JVJoost de Valk
Well, not just early days. Measuring the success of SEO is hard because Google has very, very, very successfully, and I'm gonna get shit for this, uh, Google has very successfully made it impossible for people to track the effect of anything but CPC. So they, every company out there either uses last click attribution or something, or an attribution system where the last click is important. And the last click is, in most cases, gonna be a brand search because you've convinced someone to buy somewhere in the process. Um, we don't know which keywords people searched for anymore when they get to a site because Google hides those. And as, like, so it's actually quite hard to say, "Hey, how well does SEO work for us in our business?" The same way that it's hard to tell the results of a TV ad. But that doesn't mean that TV advertising doesn't work, nor does it mean that SEO doesn't work. It, it really is a, something that's gonna blow up the rest of your, uh, um, results. And, and it might be hard to attribute. So I think actually that's one of the falsities that we have in the, in the whole growth world, is that we can measure everything. I don't think you can.
- HSHarry Stebbings
(laughs)
- JVJoost de Valk
(laughs)
- HSHarry Stebbings
That, that was challenging for a VC underwriting
- 36:29 – 40:13
What do the Best and Worst SEO teams do?
- HSHarry Stebbings
a large check to get used ...
- JVJoost de Valk
(laughs)
- HSHarry Stebbings
... um, when you go inside companies today, you're investing, you're advising, what are the best SEO individuals and teams have and do, and what do the worst have and do?
- JVJoost de Valk
So, I, I think the worst start looking at a very long list of technical things to fix and go from top to bottom a- and just spend months and months and months fixing things that really don't matter because the overall story is bad. Uh, the best go in and look at, okay, so what is our brand story? What is the, what is the thing that we're selling? Um, and they fix the biggest technical problems and then go into, okay, so how do we create a story around this and how do we create, like, how do we, together with comms and others, make sure that people that land on our site do the right things and, and find the content that actually addresses their needs?
- HSHarry Stebbings
So, you said about brand story, we're gonna do this in real time because there's gonna be a load of founders that listen to this and go, "Oh, like, great. I get it, I get it, but like what, how, what does that actually mean for us?" So Yoast, Yoast SEO for everyone, that i- is that your brand story? Just so I understand, like, is that what you want everyone-
- JVJoost de Valk
So to... This is where it always gets because I think Yoast as a company, uh, can still do this better than we probably do. Um, and I still say we even though I'm not officially there for a bit now. Um, yes, it is like, I, I do think that SEO for everyone, is the thing that Yoast does. It is as literally making SEO accessible to everyone. But the things that people search for are terms like WordPress SEO, and if you search for WordPress SEO, you'll either end up on our plug-in page or on an article page that gives you a very long things, list of things to do for SEO, and it gives you, it explains to you how SEO works. So-
- HSHarry Stebbings
You know what you get, you get three ads. (laughs)
- JVJoost de Valk
Yeah, that, yeah. Well, you would.
- HSHarry Stebbings
WP Engine, Yellow Bull SEO Agency, uh, and WP Beginner.
- JVJoost de Valk
Yeah.
- HSHarry Stebbings
You're the first non-SEO ad.
- JVJoost de Valk
No, the first non-ad where the-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Non-ad.
- JVJoost de Valk
Yeah, yeah. We, we would be, yeah. I think we... So that's one of the funny things when you start selling your company, people start asking for things like your cost of acquisition per customer. And we were like, "We never spent any ads. So it, how, how would you calculate this?" (laughs)
- HSHarry Stebbings
That's so funny. I think a final thing on this, which I do have to touch on, it's really hard though when you have a horizontal tool. Say you have a Notion, say you have an Airtable, so you have any of these kind of collaboration tools which are applicable across many different verticals. How do you think about an effective brand story that hits those very different use cases in-
- JVJoost de Valk
So-
- HSHarry Stebbings
... one short tagline?
- JVJoost de Valk
A- at that point you, you're going to want to start optimizing the use cases. So, so you, you'll have a ton of use cases, you want to tell that story. You want to tell the stories of how your customers are using it and, and writing that down and, and all the different ways in which they are using it and all the different verticals that you're thinking of where people could be using your product. You want to be creating pages for that and, and actually telling people those stories.
- HSHarry Stebbings
I totally agree. Should you do that from day one or should it be integrated over time?
- JVJoost de Valk
If you can do that from day one, it's absolutely
- 40:13 – 46:38
How does AI change the way businesses create content?
- JVJoost de Valk
awesome.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yeah. No, I agree. You mentioned the centrality of content again. We're seeing, um, OpenAI, uh, change a lot about life, but also change a lot about kind of low level content creation. How does AI impact search and SEO do you think most significantly in the next couple of years?
- JVJoost de Valk
So I think AI for content generation is still problematic because it hallucinates too much. So there's too much things that it, that are in there that, that are just not true.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Why is that?
- JVJoost de Valk
All right, well, it's pretty much down to like how transformer models work. I mean, it, it predicts the next word, but it doesn't mean that the next word has to be true. Um, so, but at, at the same time, I think AI can be tremendously useful in content generation. It can, it can help you create outlines, it can help you create, uh, excerpts of longer articles very quickly. It can actually, it can help you distill your research very quickly because you can say, "Hey, so I've got these 30 articles on this topic," and you can use something like OpenAI to make excerpts of those and summaries and, and use that to write your own content very quickly. But I do think that writing your own content and adding something unique is gonna be more important over time. And with a lot of these changes happening, search engines are bound to focus more on the author of the content than they have done for a while, because it's actually important for them to make sure that what's on that page is, is true and it's good. So they want to make sure that they can actually trust the author. So I think the author of, of an article is gonna be more important over the next few years than it has been in the past few years.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Does the price of content not go down? If you think about what this does to a demand and supply chart, this is a supply shock at creating excess supply or a massive increase in supply, which will inevitably increase the price by which demand is willing to pay. Do you not worry about that?
- JVJoost de Valk
Well, no, I don't worry about that at all. I, in terms of like more content being created, yes, there will be loads more content being created at probably very, very low prices. The thing is that most of that content will be not good.So, the content that will rank in search engines will very quickly be the content that is actually unique and a- and actually has value in it that is not given by a, uh, by an AI, uh, solution.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Do you feel we lose creativity in our content teams? And what I mean by that is, you mentioned like the outlines there that can generate, um, and a lot of the kind of low-hanging fruit that it can take away. Is there a loss of creativity with not having to do this? It's like, you know, our arithmetic skills went down dramatically when calculators were introduced. Do we lose that?
- JVJoost de Valk
Um, I, some companies might lose that. I think the winners will not lose that. I think creativity is still what's gonna make content truly good and truly unique and shareable. And the- the thing is that SEO doesn't exist in a vacuum. So if you land on a page that was written purely for SEO purposes and it doesn't have any value, you're not gonna share that page with your friends. And at the same time, the thing that you want for pages to- that rank in search and for them to be successful is that people will share them with their friends and will r- revisit them. So, we have to make better web pages. We- I- w- and Google has been saying for years, "You need to make websites for users, not for search engines." And I think they're absolutely right in that, like, if you're- if that page that you land up on from search that you build for SEO is not something that I want to share with my friends, then that page is not worth its money.
- HSHarry Stebbings
I get you. But then like I use Yoast as a plug-in and it's like, Hey, you need to use your keyword more times throughout the para- throughout the text. And I'm like, well, it looks really weird to say Joost de Valk. Uh, a- and, uh, it- it's just like ridiculous when you put that four times throughout. It's like, it only works in the title.
- JVJoost de Valk
Yeah. So this is where building a simplistic model like we have done with the gr- uh, the green, orange, red bullets is always gonna bite you because it's never gonna be perfect. I think that we do a pretty good way, uh, uh, of saying the overall score of a page when that turns green. Stop looking at the individual bullets at that point, uh, because that'll lead you to over-optimization. It- it's- the problem is that it's actually hard to write good content. And I don't think that that skill is going away. And yes, AI will help in some of that. And some of the things that AI can do are very useful, right? So you can be writing your very, uh, nice posh English summary of wha- what you think, uh, something is, and then you can throw it into OpenAI and say, "M- say, make this readable for people that, uh, that have a reading grade of X." And then it'll do that for you. And it can actually help you do that very, very well to, well, to make it simpler and to make it, um, easier for more people to read. Um, so I think there's a lot of value in stuff like that.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Y- you said about kind of, you know, not many people do it well, but the importance of quality of content. I agree. But what concerns me is when you increase supply, you have discoverability challenge now where there's just fucking harder to find that great quality content 'cause it's in a sea of rubbish content. That's what concerns me. Does that-
- JVJoost de Valk
I think that, that, that concerns me and- and I think that concerns search engines even more. Uh, I- I think that that is one of the things that Google is panicking about. Like, this is gonna create a wave of very, very bad content on the web, and how are we gonna surface the really good content. Uh, and- and that's why I expect them to be doubling down on things like the EA team, the things which they've had, expertise, authority, trust. They- they've already talked to that about- eh, eh, a- a- about that in
- 46:38 – 49:40
The Problems with AI
- JVJoost de Valk
quite a number of occasions. And I think they'll double down on that.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What elements of AI over the next few years concern you that you don't think enough people are spending time on or thinking about?
- JVJoost de Valk
I think the biggest problem, and this is where it shows that I'm very European, um, is that we don't know what's in those large language models and though we a- and we really should. Uh, and- and we, uh, uh, sort of have a right to know as well, like, what did you train your model on? What can I... Based on that, I can make a decision on whether I want to use it for a specific use case. Um, and I would be very much in favor of some regulation there to actually say, "Hey, you- you need to disclose these things about your large language model," um, in order to be able to- to al- allow the general public to use it because then they can know.
- HSHarry Stebbings
I'm just playing devil's advocate. Do- do we have a right? Like when you go into a restaurant, do you have a right to know where every single ingredient is from? You know, you could argue, "Hey, no you don't. If you don't like it, go to the other sandwich shop."
- JVJoost de Valk
I think every M- Michelin restaurant that you go to will very happily tell you where they sourced their beef because they're proud of it. And- and- a- and a lot of other things. So- so yeah, I do think we have a right.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Well, maybe Michelin restaurants (laughs) .
- JVJoost de Valk
(laughs) No. Yeah, and- and everyone else, I mean, th- so... So yeah, I do think we have a right, especially because a lot of those large language models are trained on content that they don't necessarily own, uh, whi- which is a whole, like, big debate in itself. I- I've had the- the pleasure of, uh, working with the team at The Guardian for a- a couple of years, uh, about a decade ago, um.
- HSHarry Stebbings
So they should pay for access to that content, which then enables them to provide their service better.
- JVJoost de Valk
Yeah.
- HSHarry Stebbings
They're leveraging other people's work to make money off it. For p-
- JVJoost de Valk
Yes. Yeah.
- HSHarry Stebbings
How does that work? Hey, what if-
- JVJoost de Valk
It's- that is hard, and I don't have the answer. And- and part of that is gonna be licensing. Um-... but, uh, but part of that's actually also gonna be SEO. Like, how do we create robots or TXT rules for this, this sort of stuff that, that, like, allow w- where you can say, "I wanna be in, in this type of large language model, but not in that." Th- it's gonna be super hard. I don't think we have any s- good solutions to that yet.
- HSHarry Stebbings
How do content teams and the structure of them change with AI playing a much more central role in the creation and planning of their content that they do today?
- JVJoost de Valk
I hope it speeds them up. So if they use it well, it speeds them up, and you might need actually a few less people to do the same amount of work.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Mm-hmm.
- JVJoost de Valk
I, I think there's a- there's very many ways in which AI can speed up not just content, but f- development too. I mean, there's, there's so many... It, it, i- if it doesn't mean a step change in your productivity, then you're
- 49:40 – 55:40
AI Will Incrase Wealth Inequality
- JVJoost de Valk
using it wrong.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Uh, what worries me is actually, like, the everyone agrees that it's gonna create many billion-dollar companies with 10 or 20 employees, largely engineers. What that does to wealth inequality is terrible, even worse-
- JVJoost de Valk
Yes.
- HSHarry Stebbings
... than what we have today. Do you not worry that we just usher in a new phase of income inequality and wealth inequality that we've never seen before?
- JVJoost de Valk
Um, well, yes. Um, I... So this is where I admit that I'm pretty much a socialist, which I know is a bad word to, to most Americans. Um, no, yeah, I, I do worry about that. I do worry about the fact that, uh, that we, that the wealth inequality we create is not something that's gonna be able to, we're gonna be able to sustain. Um, so we need better systems for that. And I also worry about, like, how, uh, how do we even make this understandable to politicians (laughs) at some point. Like, they, they, uh, are they gonna be too late at the, the point where they start regulating this where we've already gone past everything that they could fix?
- HSHarry Stebbings
What is that point of being too late when it's already in the hands of consumers and, bluntly, there's riots on the streets when you take it out?
- JVJoost de Valk
That's a good question.
- HSHarry Stebbings
(laughs)
- JVJoost de Valk
And I don't have the answer.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yeah.
- JVJoost de Valk
I think we... I think right now-
- HSHarry Stebbings
I thought about it a lot with crypto, which is like, you can't just put crypto back in a bottle. If you could offer it to politicians at the start to put it back in, I'm sure they would take that.
- JVJoost de Valk
Yes. Um, I do think this is different from crypto, to be honest. I think this, uh, big words, I think this has a bigger impact on society than, than crypto will, um, because this will have a, a, uh, a bigger... Uh, this has the, the type of impact that, uh, uh, that electricity and, and, and the steam engine had in terms of productivity changes.
- HSHarry Stebbings
So you don't... So that's, uh, fascinating. So you don't think that, bluntly, the funding hype is overhyped? You think this is justified. You think this is a fundamental platform shift like mobile was and all the-
- JVJoost de Valk
Of cour- yeah, of course, the funding hype is overhyped. I, I mean, but that's... It always is. But it, it's also because a, a lot of money has to go into it, and we have to try a lot of different things to figure out which ones work. I... So I do really think that e- that AI can make a very, very different... Uh, well, can, can, can change where we go in terms of how big companies need to be to do things and how many things we can do on a day. I think, uh, using machine learning to, to do so much of the work that people are doing on a day-to-day basis could be very powerful, but we need to get better at actually understanding what is machine learn. So we need explainable AI in a way. We need to actually understand what it's doing. So, uh, we can train a model to say, "Hey, you are getting credit. You are not getting credit." But in the end, we actually have to be able to explain why, why it's making that decision.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Do we also need to train ourselves on, like, efficient prompting? Like we, I think we take for granted that we are actually relatively good Google prompters. Do you know what I mean? Um-
- JVJoost de Valk
Yes.
- HSHarry Stebbings
... but that's learned over, you know, however many years of using Google. We need to become more efficient, like, AI prompters, I feel.
- JVJoost de Valk
Oh yeah, absolutely. Um, and prompting in itself is already quite a, like... It's, it's a thing that's hard, right? So it's, it's funny that in the Midjourney world, you see all these people share prompts and, and, and do that. I, I think that that's e- uh, something that we need to do everywhere a whole lot more to make sure one of the next, uh, places where open source and, uh, uh, and open models like that can actually help. Um, and you need to give it a lot of context. You need to really be aware of what you want it to do. It, it needs a bit of a developer mindset, but you don't necessarily have to be a developer for it.
- HSHarry Stebbings
You mentioned how it changes development cycles. Currently, I think it was GitHub posted that 41% of codes today is AI-generated. Five years time, Joost, how much is then?
- JVJoost de Valk
60 to 80.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Wow.
- JVJoost de Valk
I, I... The thing is, it allows you to focus on business logic a lot, a whole lot more. It-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Uh, unpack that. What does that mean?
- JVJoost de Valk
So the hardest part right now of building software is often like, uh, at least the kind of software I've been building over the y- over the last decade, is thinking about the UX and, and then fixing the business logic. But the business logic is almo- almost always, like, only 10% of the time you spend on this whole thing. Everything else is all the other stuff. And all the other stuff is relatively basic, but it just costs a lot of time. But the relatively basic stuff AI can do fairly quickly. So you need to under- you need to create the processes. You need to think. You need to create the logic because the AI is not gonna do that for you entirely. And, and tha- and that's where you need to be-... but at the same time, the- writing the- the s- the individual functions is gonna be easier and easier. I already have, like, I'm a big fan of Cloudflare. If I, uh, i- if I describe to OpenAI, like, "I need a CloudFl- Flare worker that does this, this, and this," it'll just give me the code. I don't have to code anything anymore. It'll just give me a working worker. I've done this twice in the last few weeks where it just did exactly what I needed it to do, and I didn't even have to write a single w- bit of code. And I think that's gonna be a lot more common. And I, uh, eh, think of an OpenAI interface on top of no-code interfaces, et cetera. Connecting a- a- APIs together is gonna be tremendously powerful, and it's gonna save
- 55:40 – 57:45
Angel Investing
- JVJoost de Valk
a whole lot of time coding things.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Can I ask final one before we do a quick-fire? 'Cause I could talk to you all day. Um, when you decide, "Hey, I'm gonna angel invest," do you set aside a budget? Do you decide, "I'm gonna write 25K checks, 50K checks, I'm always gonna write the same check"? When you moved into angel investing more and advising more, how did you think about the strategy there?
- JVJoost de Valk
Not enough. (laughs)
- HSHarry Stebbings
(laughs)
- JVJoost de Valk
Um, I tend to write slightly bigger checks. So the thing is, I want a company to be able to be self-sustaining as fast as possible, so I really don't... I, if- if people send me decks with like, "Yeah, we- we're doing an angel round now, and then we're gonna do an A- A-round in a year, a- a year from now." And then the- and- and then they've already planned, like, when they'll do their rounds, but they have not planned when they'll build the product, um, eh, I- I sorta glance and go like, "No, I'm not interested."
- HSHarry Stebbings
So you like to write, like, two 50K checks?
- JVJoost de Valk
200... Yeah, 100, 200K is usually 10%, yeah.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Okay, how many do you wanna do?
- JVJoost de Valk
Uh, probably another 20 to 40 in the next five years.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yeah. That's a good cadence. How involved are you? Like, is this-
- JVJoost de Valk
Very. So we have a Slack- a shared Slack channel with e- each and every one of them, and I talk to almost every one of them on a, uh... Well, not always daily, but most of them on a weekly basis.
- HSHarry Stebbings
I- I love that. Do you love angel investing?
- JVJoost de Valk
I really, really love, uh, uh, working with founders and seeing their energy and- and being able to, well, help them grow.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Do you mind where you invest? Does it have to be pre-seed? Can it be a series A, B round?
- JVJoost de Valk
I like... I think we are- m- both Marieke and I are better into pre-seed, seed stage than- than much later on, um, because if you're getting too later on, then w- then most of the value that we can probably give you has already been- had been happening.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Do you find most of your deals are in Europe?
- JVJoost de Valk
No.
- HSHarry Stebbings
US?
- JVJoost de Valk
Well, both, but I
- 57:45 – 1:02:00
Quick Fire Round
- JVJoost de Valk
don't care.
- HSHarry Stebbings
(laughs)
- JVJoost de Valk
(laughs)
- HSHarry Stebbings
I- I wanna move into a quick-fire, Joost. So I say a short statement, you give me your thoughts. Does that sound okay? (laughs)
- JVJoost de Valk
Yes, absolutely.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Okay. So what did you believe about growth five years ago that you no longer believe?
- JVJoost de Valk
That it was easy, which honestly was probably, uh, also a bit of an underestimation of what Marieke and I could do together.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Always need a great partner.
- JVJoost de Valk
(laughs)
- HSHarry Stebbings
Tell me, work-life balance, uh, what do you advise me, Joost? We spoke about it before.
- JVJoost de Valk
Um, move out of London. Uh, (laughs) don't... And so I think work-life balance is absolutely achievable, um, but, uh, I- I don't think it als- also don't think it means what people think it means. I mean, if it's- if it's good for you, then it works, right? Um, I will say that not being in a big city and ha- and having to go to a fancy dinner three times a week does really help.
- HSHarry Stebbings
That changes everything. Um, can a startup be built on free traffic as such in 2023?
- JVJoost de Valk
Yes.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Single biggest mistake people make when starting SEO strategies today.
- JVJoost de Valk
Not considering branding from the get there- go in their entire strategy, and not considering what per- words people use to describe their problems.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What would you most like to change about the world of growth?
- JVJoost de Valk
I would want people to stop thinking they can measure everything. And that's mostly stolen from my wife, who's a Ph- PhD in sociology and just says, "People think that they can explain behavior way too much, and you can't."
- HSHarry Stebbings
(laughs) Uh, you are great at X, name that X, and why are other people failing at X?
- JVJoost de Valk
Um, I think I'm pretty good at product and at tech. Um, why are other- other people failing at it? I don't know.
- HSHarry Stebbings
S-
- JVJoost de Valk
That's up to other people. (laughs)
- HSHarry Stebbings
(laughs) Uh, final one. What one company growth strategy have you really been impressed by recently and why?
- JVJoost de Valk
So, the obligatory answer here right now is OpenAI and Microsoft, right? I mean, that's what everybody is- has been saying for the last few- (laughs) few episodes. But, um, I think that, um, what Microsoft's doing with Bing right now is absolutely brilliant. I really love it. So Bing Chat is- is like... It's very fun that what- what they're doing there. It's also like it's- it's a bit cheeky because it doesn't really work yet, but it's making everybody at Google so very, like, conscious of what they don't have. So I- I really like that. But in terms of other companies that- and that I really like, I'm always impressed when companies do marketing towards developers very well and grow on top of that. Because I do think that that's, uh, still an underappreciated way of going, uh, at the market. So companies like Algolia.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yup.
- JVJoost de Valk
And, um, eh, well, a lot of them liked it, that actually do great developer outreach, get- uh, provide absolutely awesome docs on how to work with their software and how to solve your problems with it.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What makes awesome docs?
- JVJoost de Valk
Well, just good documentation of everything you can do with- with your software, and also copy-paste examples that actually work.
- HSHarry Stebbings
(laughs) Uh, we mentioned great tech platforms earlier. Webflow, good, not good?
- JVJoost de Valk
It competes directly with WordPress, so I'm always gonna say not good.
- HSHarry Stebbings
But like, on a scale of like one to 10?
Episode duration: 1:02:00
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