I am Josh Kohlbach, founder & CEO of Rymera. I grew up bouncing around lots of places in Queensland and northern New South Wales in Australia. I’d consider myself a weird mix of a wild country boy with some beach kid thrown in. These days, I live in the city of Brisbane, which I love.
I’ve always been interested in software development– I started programming in Microsoft Basic at age 12.
In terms of work, after a false start at university, I spent some time as a salesperson for Telstra, the biggest telco here in Australia, selling mobile phones and internet plans just as phones were starting to get cameras and ADSL was starting to get turned on. I ended up as the top ADSL salesperson in Australia at one point.
Ultimately, I went back to Griffith University here in Brisbane to study for a Bachelor of Information Technology majoring in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence. I loved my time at uni, and I was invited to continue my studies and pursue an academic path, but I was excited to start my career.
The Journey Began
During university, I picked up a part-time job during my second year, which turned into a full-time gig during my final semester during my final year. I was working for a corporate making a Customer Relationship Management software. Mostly, it was writing lots of C and sometimes some C++ and Perl.
I really wanted to move my career in the direction of web development as I felt that at the time it was going to be huge. I taught myself a few languages like Coldfusion and PHP. I really enjoyed PHP because it felt “C-like” in structure.
I found WordPress via a job I was doing implementing a customer ticketing system in SugarCRM for a local company that was creating POS software. Their website was implemented in an early version of WordPress and they asked me to take a look.
I’d come across WordPress while freelancing before that as well but this was my first serious exposure to it. It was love at first sight.
I came into WordPress just before version 3, so just before custom post types even made it in. Basically once custom post types were added I knew this was going to be a forward looking software that would be around for the long haul. I decided to go deep on my knowledge of it and never looked back.
The Need for “Rymera”
Rymera Logo
During a few years of freelancing with WordPress I wrote and lauched a few plugins such as ThirstyAffiliates (the affiliate link management plugin), Simple Page Tester, and a few other small ones. I’d also implemented dozens of sites.
I was working for a marketing agency here in Brisbane as their lead programmer, implementing WP sites and building iOS applications, when I felt the itch to start taking my business more seriously. It was a tough decision, but after talking it over with my wife, we decided to take the leap and start Rymera.
Fun fact, it was named after the street we were living on at the time. It was so hard to come up with a good business name!
After a couple of years building websites and handling backend development for a number of agencies I decided to take the company in the direction of products.
We launched Wholesale Suite while building an e-commerce website for a client when we found that the solutions for wholesale in WooCommerce were lacking flexibility and didn’t really understand the business needs of people running wholesale businesses very well. It was an instant hit.
After building that, I figured we’d be able to just repeat the same success and tried to launch “Marketing Suite” for WooCommerce. It flopped. I think because we were too unfocused and just thought we could build a whole bunch of “stuff” not really understanding the needs of our customers.
I learned a lot from that experience, though, and we’ve done better with our other products, including some acquisitions last year.
Currently, our products are:
Myself with my Brilliant Team
Fast forward 10 years and I’m still loving every minute of running Rymera. It’s not without it’s challenges but I wouldn’t trade it for the world. We’ve built an international team and now have people in 6 countries which just blows my mind!
Josh Kohlbach with his team
Advice for Business Owners
In terms of advice for people wanting to start a business. I would suggest finding a pain point, something that people are really struggling with and are interested in solving, then solve it.
And don’t wait until things are perfect, that best feature ideas come from early users as they start exploring what you’ve put together and send you their wish list.
Keep solving problems and repeat.
But, if you want to start something fast, services is probably a better place to start.
In fact, I still believe there’s in most local markets you’ll find a need for highly technical developers that understand WordPress and WooCommerce deeply who can provide development services to design agency owners that normally just focus on design and implementation.
Before products, this is exactly what Rymera specialized in, and we had a great business. I only stopped doing this because our product business was taking off.
WordPress & Beyond
Rymera will continue building great tools that solve e-commerce needs. We love WooCommerce and are dedicated to helping people with this great tool.
Who knows what will happen in the future though, we’re always open to opportunities, but I would say we’re definitely in it for the long haul with WooCommerce.
In terms of where I see WordPress in the next 5 years, I think like any mature product there’s always going to be seasons of growing pains to get through. Right now we’re feeling our way through this “javascript future”, which a lot of people are rightly or wrongly still pushing for. I don’t have strong opinions either way but, personally, I like whatever gets things done fast and fosters innovation. I hope we get back to our scrappy roots and push for that.
In terms of competitors of WordPress, of course there are a lot of competitors! In fact, there’s actually a lot of really great competitors out there. But, rather than focusing on them, I think it’s always good to keep to the mission: how do we get even more adoption of WordPress, WooCommerce, and all our wonderful tools that we’re building as a community. The pie always gets bigger!
Stay in Touch
My Love for the WordPress Community
I’ve only attended a handful of WordCamps because I’m so far away living in Australia. One that really stood out to me was WordCamp Asia in 2023 in Bangkok. It was really great meeting a lot of people for the first time who I’ve spoken to online for nearly a decade!
How I Keep Myself Updated
I keep up with the latest by following newsletters (like theWPWeekly, WPMail.me), speaking with friends in the industry, watching the industry news on X and LinkedIn and just overall living and breathing WordPress and WooCommerce.
I Have a Life Other Than the Work
Outside of WordPress, I’m really interested in ITF Taekwon-do which I started doing a few years ago with my kids. It’s great for fitness and I love martial arts. It’s hard to be stressed out thinking about work when you’re getting punched.
I love travelling both for work and with my family. Some recent places I’ve been include Bali, Turkey, Egypt, Vietnam and I have a couple more destinations on my calendar this year in Asia.
I Reward Myself by
I reward myself for hard work by diving into my passions and doing things like Taekwon-do competitions and seminars. I also really love good food, hanging out with my wonderful family, and exploring new places.
Connect With Me
You can find me on Twitter and LinkedIn
