This profile has not been claimed and data may not be accurate.
Founder104Current founder
88th percentile
Investor0Not (yet!) an investor
Combined
Oxford philosopher turned founder building the world's first API-based accredited university
Credibility
this founder typical founder (50th pct)
Domain Expertise · 96th percentile
- Google Knowledge Graph entity exists for Joshua D. Broggi — a notability threshold that is hard to manufacture.
- Named inventor on 3 US patents assigned to Woolf Inc., including 'SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR DATA QUALITY AND VALIDITY IMPROVEMENT IN EDUCATION INSTI' — direct technical invention signal.
- Congratulated by Tyler Cowen on Marginal Revolution (November 2021) — a notable public intellectual endorsement and minor prestige signal.
- Held a Humboldt Fellowship at Humboldt University of Berlin — a competitive research fellowship demonstrating deep domain expertise in education and human progress.
- Demonstrates deep domain expertise in higher education, accreditation systems, and global credentialing through detailed public commentary in TechCrunch and Forbes.
- Yespress.io published a dedicated feature profile on Joshua Broggi — 'The Philosopher Building a University by API' — a notable trade/tech outlet profile.
- OxIgnite podcast featured Joshua Broggi in a dedicated episode on Woolf — a notable podcast appearance.
- PhD in Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh and Junior Research Fellow at Oxford — deep academic credentials underpinning his domain expertise in education.
Relationship Matrix
Founder score
- 97%Probability of being accurate (97%)Current founder and CEO of Woolf, which he founded in February 2018 and continues to lead.
- 95%Probability of being accurate (95%)14,306 LinkedIn followers — broad professional reach.
- 95%Probability of being accurate (95%)woolf.university ranks #935,556 on the Majestic Million (global domain prominence).
- 90%Probability of being accurate (90%)PhD in Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh and Junior Research Fellow at Oxford — deep academic credentials underpinning his domain expertise in education.
- 88%Probability of being accurate (88%)Held a Humboldt Fellowship at Humboldt University of Berlin — a competitive research fellowship demonstrating deep domain expertise in education and human progress.
- 85%Probability of being accurate (85%)Multiple TechCrunch articles feature Joshua Broggi and Woolf, including 'Accrediting as a service and the future of alternative degrees' — tier-1 press coverage.
- 85%Probability of being accurate (85%)Identified GitHub account @JoshuaBroggi, confirmed by bio listing him as Founder of Woolf.
- 85%Probability of being accurate (85%)GitHub account is approximately 8 years old (created May 2018), meeting the tenured-account threshold.
- 82%Probability of being accurate (82%)Actively shipping: 6,896 GitHub contributions in the last year, including 6,864 private/restricted contributions — a daily builder in private repos.
- 82%Probability of being accurate (82%)GitHub account shows 6,864 private/restricted contributions in the last year — actively ships code into private repos daily.
- 80%Probability of being accurate (80%)Featured in a dedicated Forbes article 'Imagining A Blockchain University' profiling Joshua Broggi and Woolf — a tier-1 outlet feature.
- 80%Probability of being accurate (80%)Google Knowledge Graph entity exists for Joshua D. Broggi — a notability threshold that is hard to manufacture.
- 80%Probability of being accurate (80%)Demonstrates deep domain expertise in higher education, accreditation systems, and global credentialing through detailed public commentary in TechCrunch and Forbes.
- 78%Probability of being accurate (78%)Named inventor on 3 US patents assigned to Woolf Inc., including 'SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR DATA QUALITY AND VALIDITY IMPROVEMENT IN EDUCATION INSTI' — direct technical invention signal.
- 75%Probability of being accurate (75%)Woolf has 60–70 employees distributed across 19 countries, demonstrating meaningful operator scale for a 2018-founded company.
- 72%Probability of being accurate (72%)Congratulated by Tyler Cowen on Marginal Revolution (November 2021) — a notable public intellectual endorsement and minor prestige signal.
- 72%Probability of being accurate (72%)Connect Ventures published a dedicated investment opinion piece on Woolf, confirming institutional VC backing.
- 72%Probability of being accurate (72%)Emergent Ventures winner (eighth cohort, 2020) — a competitive grant from the Mercatus Center / Tyler Cowen recognizing high-potential innovators.
- 70%Probability of being accurate (70%)OxIgnite podcast featured Joshua Broggi in a dedicated episode on Woolf — a notable podcast appearance.
- 68%Probability of being accurate (68%)Yespress.io published a dedicated feature profile on Joshua Broggi — 'The Philosopher Building a University by API' — a notable trade/tech outlet profile.
- 65%Probability of being accurate (65%)Woolf's founder interview on YouTube has 1,014 views for 'Woolf's Founder on the Future of Degrees, Accreditation, and Global Learning' — modest thought-leadership reach.
- 60%Probability of being accurate (60%)TechCrunch notes Broggi 'raised millions to prove how important accreditation is' — confirming meaningful venture capital raised for Woolf.
- 50%Probability of being accurate (50%)Woolf has co-founders per public sources describing the company as founded by Oxford faculty members collaborating on the platform.
- 45%Probability of being accurate (45%)Woolf is backed by high-profile Silicon Valley investors per OxIgnite coverage, indicating at least some venture capital raised.
What you likely need
You're building a genuinely novel infrastructure layer for higher education — the kind of contrarian, long-horizon bet that resonates with a specific type of mission-driven investor and operator. Your strongest near-term leverage is getting in front of edtech-focused VCs and operators who understand accreditation complexity, and connecting with other founders who've navigated regulated-industry disruption. You'd also benefit from positioning events that help you articulate the 'university by API' thesis to a broader tech audience who may not yet understand the accreditation unlock.
Would you attend these IRL Festival events?
We will tune and customize your Founder Festival experience to make sure you get invited to the events that would be most valuable to you.
- introsAn edtech founder dinner with operators who've scaled accredited or regulated education platforms (e.g., Coursera, Minerva, Lambda School alumni) to share distribution and regulatory playbooks.
- fundraisingA roundtable with mission-driven seed and Series A investors (e.g., Reach Capital, Owl Ventures, Learn Capital) focused on the future of credentialing and alternative higher education.
- introsAn Oxford alumni founder dinner in San Francisco to leverage your academic network for warm intros to UK and European institutional investors and potential Woolf college partners.
- tacticalA workshop with founders who've disrupted regulated industries (fintech, healthcare, legal) to pressure-test Woolf's accreditation-as-a-service go-to-market and regulatory strategy.
- positioningA positioning roundtable with AI-in-education founders and investors to sharpen Woolf's narrative around AI-driven workflow transformation in higher education.
- hiringA technical founder hiring night to recruit senior engineers and product leads who've built compliance-heavy SaaS platforms, given Woolf's 60–70 person distributed team scaling 30% YoY.
- introsAn Emergent Ventures alumni meetup to connect with other unconventional institution-builders and access Tyler Cowen's network of economists, policymakers, and philanthropists.