Yoast joins Newfold

Today we announced that Yoast will join Newfold Digital. Marieke and myself, as well as Omar, Chaya and Thijs have sold our shares. We will, however, all remain in our current roles, as will all of team Yoast.

Why this step?

Well, honestly, this was a combination of a couple of things. First of all, “it’s the season”. We’re in a time of mergers and acquisitions in the WordPress world, a time of consolidation in what is still one of the most rapidly growing parts of the web. Yoast had always been bootstrapped, it was only our own money in this business, and we’d grown to 140+ employees. This was and is something we’re super proud of, but it was also causing stress. From COVID to euro/dollar exchange rates to the always existing, nagging fear of “what if they just all stop buying tomorrow” and more. We felt now was a good time for us to get away from that stress and find a company that could provide the backing we needed.

Another part is more personal: I was a bit bored. I wanted to go faster, do more, do new stuff, but couldn’t anymore. I was trapped in our success. So I look forward to not being responsible for finance and that part of running a business and leave that to the much more capable people that Newfold will bring in to help our finance team and hope to find new things on my path to do within the Newfold family of brands.

Why Newfold Digital?

When you’re talking to companies in the WordPress community, you quickly find out that they’re not all alike. The team at Newfold stood out. Sharon is a very inspiring leader and the rest of their team just oozes enthusiasm. All of our conversations with them left us with more energy than we started them with, something that I can honestly tell you has not been common in a lot of these conversations.

What will change now?

Not all that much for now, as we work on getting Yoast integrated into the wider Newfold family first. I look forward to collaborating with the other WordPress core teams (notably the Bluehost team) and see if together we can be even more successful in helping WordPress grow. And after that…. Well you’ll see soon enough!

But first: champagne! 🥂

In many ways this does feel like we’ve finished the game. And immediately we’re starting it again, now at the next level of difficulty, but with the new-found confidence of having partners that’ll be with us on the ride. But before we do that, I’m going to pop open a bottle of champagne 😃