S5 E19: Joshua Wohle, Mindstone

Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Episode • Oct 19, 2021 • 39m

Joshua Whole was born in the Netherlands. Before he was 13, he actually went to 5 different schools. Afterwards, he moved to Switzerland and went into the public school system - which was all in French (which he didn't speak). In his younger years, he started building websites and ultimately started a company, with 35 other high school students building these sites.

Eventually, he moved to London, initially to shape up his computer science background, given he was a self taught developer. He attended a 3 year Computer Science program at King's College, and the last year of University, he attempted to try to start another business. He and his co-founders declined an investment, and never got another one... so the business was out.

After University, he started a company called SuperAwesome - providing tools for safe digital engagement to almost half a billion kids every month, while also ensuring that parental consent was baked in. Seven years after starting the company, he eventually sold this to Epic games, the makers of Fortnite, and at the time of acquisition, the company was 170 people with offices all over the world.

For fun he is a whiskey lover, and has been collecting them for over 10 years now. In fact, once a week, he does a (fully remote) whisky tasting with a friend of his. His favorite is The Ileach, with his backup being a 10 year Laphroaig.

After many self learning adventures in his life, Joshua set out to create a product that would allow people to go through self directed learning online, but in specific learning pathways... and allow them to learn faster in the process. Self taught developer? Be able to prove you went through the appropriate material that you acquired the skills necessary.

This is the creation story of Mindstone.

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