Helping your company build, position, and grow inside the WordPress ecosystem.
Independent consultancy and long-term advisory for companies building serious things on, with, and in WordPress.
Remkus de Vries
Northbound within WordPress
WordPress is not just a platform. Northbound exists for companies that already see WordPress as strategically important, but want deeper understanding of how products, partnerships, visibility, and decisions actually play out within the ecosystem over time.
Northbound is not about execution or deliverables. It is about proximity, perspective, and informed decision-making in an interconnected system.
What Northbound gives you access to
Perspective, proximity, and leverage inside WordPress.
Ecosystem-level perspective
Understanding WordPress as a market, not just a platform. How products succeed, where incentives align, and why certain approaches consistently fail, even when execution is strong.
Product and positioning judgment
Clarity on how your product fits the WordPress landscape, what to emphasize, what to avoid, and how to position without fighting the ecosystem you depend on.
Technical and commercial reality checks
Deep understanding of WordPress products, infrastructure, performance, and constraints, combined with market and go-to-market awareness. Decisions are grounded in how things actually work.
Partnerships and introductions that make sense
Access to the right companies and people when alignment exists. Introductions are made intentionally, with context, timing, and long-term value in mind.
Visibility and narrative leverage
Strategic use of content (including video), presence, and conversation. Proximity to channels and discussions that shape how WordPress products are perceived.
Decision-making under real constraints
Helping founders and leadership teams make better decisions when trade-offs are unavoidable. This includes organizational dynamics, incentives, timing, and the human side of building products and companies inside an ecosystem.
Hi, I’m Remkus de Vries, founder of Truer than North, and I have been part of WordPress for over two decades.
I initiated WordCamp Europe and WordPress Netherlands, work closely with WordPress leadership across the ecosystem, and am actively involved in product, infrastructure, and community discussions that shape where WordPress is going.
That long-term involvement gives me a perspective most companies do not have: what strategies work, how products fit together, where leverage exists, and which collaborations actually make sense.
Long-term involvement gives me a perspective most companies only encounter once. Northbound applies that perspective continuously, while decisions are still cheap to change.
NAVIGATING THE WORDPRESS ECOSYSTEM
Turning WordPress ecosystem complexity into strategic advantage
WordPress is not just software. It is a dense ecosystem of products, companies, incentives, and long-term trade-offs. Navigating it well requires context that rarely exists inside a single team or roadmap.
Understanding where your product truly fits
Many products are built on WordPress without understanding how they fit within the ecosystem. Northbound helps clarify positioning, adjacency, and overlap, so products reinforce the ecosystem instead of fighting it.
Finding the right counterparts to build with
Not every partnership creates leverage. Timing, intent, and incentive alignment matter. Northbound focuses on understanding which companies should work together, and which relationships are worth pursuing at all.
Avoiding misalignment before it compounds
Small decisions can have long-term consequences in an interconnected ecosystem. Northbound exists to surface second-order effects early, before misalignment becomes expensive or irreversible.
Bringing long-term perspective to short-term decisions
After more than two decades inside WordPress, patterns become visible. Northbound applies that perspective to help companies make decisions with the full system in view, not just the next milestone.
Pricing
Pathfinder
Starting at
€2000
Per Month
For companies finding direction in the WordPress ecosystem.
Pathfinder is the entry point into Northbound. It helps companies get clear on where they fit, which relationships matter, and which paths are worth pursuing early on.
What this includes
Ongoing strategic sparring focused on direction and positioning
Ecosystem context around products, partnerships, and incentives
Introductions when clear mutual value exists
Guardrails to avoid misalignment and wasted effort
Quarterly planning and advisory call
Waymark
Starting at
€4500
Per Month
For companies navigating growth, partnerships, and product decisions in the WordPress ecosystem.
Waymark supports companies already in motion and needing ongoing strategic alignment as partnerships, product decisions, and market conditions evolve.
What this includes
Ongoing strategic alignment across product, partnerships, and positioning
Long-term guidance through changing ecosystem conditions
Ongoing alignment of partnerships, integrations, and positioning
Context-aware introductions where mutual value is clear
Early insight into ecosystem shifts and second-order effects
Monthy planning and advisory call
Northstar
Starting at
€8500
Per Month
For enterprise organizations companies navigating complex WordPress decisions.
Northstar is built for organizations with multiple stakeholders, multiple properties, and competing platforms across the business. It helps leadership teams make better decisions about where WordPress can reduce complexity, improve alignment, and serve as a stronger digital foundation.
What this includes
Strategic WordPress portfolio alignment across business units and digital properties
Strategic guidance for enterprise WordPress decisions
Portfolio and platform alignment across teams and properties
Governance, partner, and stakeholder advisory
Senior-level input on long-term WordPress direction
Early insight into ecosystem shifts and second-order effects
Weekly strategy and advisory call
Every engagement begins with a short discovery phase to confirm fit, define scope, and determine the right level of involvement.
★★★★★
“Incredibly valuable sparring partner”
Even before we officially started working with Remkus, he was always there to support us with advice and assistance. What I appreciated about Remkus back then was that he’s a no-nonsense guy. He has a clear understanding of technology and the industry and is exceptionally well-connected within it.
To me, Remkus is an incredibly valuable sparring partner. I share my assessments and ideas with him, and he gives me clear feedback. This is how we defined our niche in the market and clearly aligned GREYD’s roadmap and future architecture with it. We’re already seeing the first signs of success and are looking forward to the future together with excitement.
I highly recommend working with Remkus to anyone who can handle honest feedback. If you’re looking for the easy way out, you’re in the wrong place.
CEO GREYD
★★★★★
“Remkus provided strategic product direction and input as we planned the next generation of NitroPack”
Remkus’ consultancy brought valuable market insights and performance expertise, helping us to sharpen our priorities and better understand where NitroPack could create more value inside the WordPress ecosystem. What stood out was not just that Remkus knows WordPress deeply, but that he brought the voice, expectations, and practical reality of the ecosystem into our product conversations.
He validated some of our existing thinking, challenged other assumptions, and helped surface concrete opportunities around product direction, positioning, onboarding, plugin-specific improvements, WordPress.org strategy, page builder compatibility, and more granular performance controls. His perspective gave us a clearer understanding of how advanced WordPress users evaluate NitroPack compared to our competitors in real-world workflows.
The work gave our team both actionable ideas and a stronger strategic foundation. We are further along in our thinking because of Remkus, and better equipped to keep innovating from here.
VP of Product at WP Engine/NitroPack