Shouldered AI / Our story
A Texas family company. Built for everyone.
Six generations in Central Texas. A family business, a church family, and a world-class technologist. This is how Shouldered AI started, what we believe, and how you can carry it with us, even if you don't have a dollar to give.
How it started
Six generations of Texas.
I'm Joshua Johnson. I'm a sixth-generation Texan. I was born in Georgetown, just north of Austin, which not many people can say, and Austin will always be home.
We are a family business family. My great-grandparents started Centex Butane, Centex for Central Texas. My grandmother and my mother are in real estate in Austin today. My father ran vending machines. He was a traditional man, a man's man, who worked hard and kept his word.
Doris Foster, 103 years of Texas.
My great-grandmother, Doris Foster, led our family for as long as any of us can remember. As a girl she picked cotton in the fields of Central Texas. She lived to see her family build a company, raise generations of Texans, and watch the world move from the cotton fields to the age of AI.
Until last year, she and I still did crossword puzzles together in Austin. She never stopped learning. She passed this fall, and everything we build carries her legacy: faith, family and hard work.
The family today
Six generations, still building.
Real estate
My grandmother and my mother, still in real estate in Austin.
Tesla and SpaceX
One brother works at Tesla. Another works at SpaceX.
Builders
One brother started in real estate photography and now owns a production company. Another runs his own app company.
Faith online
My sister lives nearby, supporting her husband, a Christian content creator.
With one brother coming home from California, all five of my brothers and sisters are back in the Austin area. The family is together again, with cousins and kin throughout Texas.
I grew up on the church campus. We were there at least three times a week: Sunday mornings, Wednesday nights, church sports, AWANA (the kids' Bible club) and everything in between. Over the last few years I watched the people I grew up with start to worry. Worry about AI. About their jobs. About what their kids are talking to.
I understood the fear. But AI is not going away. So I wanted to give them something safe. A way to embrace the future instead of being afraid of it, built by a family that shares their values.
That is why Shouldered exists.
Joshua Johnson, founder
Two founders
Kristof builds it. Joshua makes it real.
Kristof De Spiegeleer
The engineer behind the engine.
Kristof has spent more than 30 years building the technology the internet runs on: hosting, backup, cloud and storage. He doesn't just have ideas. He ships them, and the biggest names in tech have bought them. Shouldered runs on his newest work.
- Five companies acquired, by Veritas (Symantec), Terremark (Verizon), Telenet, Sun Microsystems (Oracle) and HGST (Western Digital).
- His teams set world records for web hosting and built some of the first cloud systems.
- Founder of OurWorld, which spent ten years building the technology Shouldered runs on: more than 60 engineers, running in more than 20 countries.
- Engineering degree from Ghent University.
Joshua Johnson
The translator.
Joshua takes groundbreaking technology and turns it into real value for real businesses, and real impact for the Kingdom. If a plumber, a pastor and a grandmother can't understand it, it isn't done yet.
- Sixth-generation Texan from a family business family, raised in Austin and in the church.
- Hosted a tech show on CNBC Africa.
- Runs the company, the sales team and the community, and hosts the weekly show, Shoulder to Shoulder.
The track record behind the tech
Built by a team the biggest names in tech have bought from.
Kristof and the OurWorld team have built some of the world's most advanced cloud technology. Five of their companies were acquired.
DataCenter Technologies
Disk-based backup software that cut storage needs.
Acquired by Veritas, later SymantecDedigate
Managed hosting for complex internet systems.
Acquired by Terremark, later Verizon and EquinixHostbasket
Belgium's largest hosting company.
Acquired by TelenetQ-layer
Automated cloud setup and virtual machines.
Acquired by Sun Microsystems, later OracleAmplidata
Storage for public and private clouds.
Acquired by HGST (Western Digital)Milestones that pushed the internet forward
- 1997 to 2002
World records for web hosting
Kept UEFA, NASA and World Cup websites online through record traffic.
- 2005
The first backup deduplication system
Cut company backups by up to 100 times, before the idea was mainstream.
- 2008
One of the first cloud systems
Shipped the first virtual private data center.
- 2010
The first multi-site consistent database
Kept every transaction safe when one site went down.
- 2012
The first unbreakable distributed storage
Tamper-proof storage that used 10 times less energy.
- 2017
Probably the first proof of block stake blockchain
Combined staking and settlement in one step, years early.
Milestones as reported by the OurWorld team.
What we make, in plain words
Help that works while you work.
- A Hero
- Any AI helper at Shouldered. You talk or type to it like a person, and it gets work done. It always says it is an AI.
- Your Hero
- Your own personal AI assistant. It handles your email, calendar, messages, to-dos and contacts, and helps when you ask.
- HQ
- Short for headquarters. A team of Heroes that runs the admin of a whole business or church, and starts the work on its own, like a good hire. A person approves anything that counts.
- Simon
- The Hero who runs HQ. You talk to Simon, and he hands the work to the right desk and brings you only the decisions that need a person. He is named for Simon of Cyrene, who carried the cross for Jesus.
- The seven desks
- Seven parts of HQ, each run by a Hero, like the departments of a company.SalesMarketingCustomer serviceFinanceOperationsPeopleLegal
Why Texas
Homegrown in Texas. The best technology in the world.
Austin, Dallas, Houston
We start at home. Dallas and Houston have more churches, and we will be there. Austin is home, and we will give it everything we have.
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is leading the world in AI, and San Francisco has great churches too. We go back and forth, so Texas gets the best AI there is.
The world
Kristof and the OurWorld team bring proven technology from around the world, so a small business in Texas runs on the same kind of engine as the biggest companies.
We are a global company. Our roots are in Texas. That is the story, and we are sticking to it.
Why now
Our kids are already talking to AI.
Source: Common Sense Media, Talk, Trust, and Trade-Offs, a 2025 survey of more than 1,000 US teens.
The church has often picked up new technology ten years late. This time, the church cannot afford to follow. To reach families, loved ones and the lost, we need to understand AI. We make it easy.
Our goal
Make everyone literate in AI.
If you can speak or type, you can do this.
No code. No jargon. You talk to your Hero the way you talk to a person, and it does the work. It should never feel overwhelming.
“If my grandmother can learn, you can learn.”
Everyone has to learn eventually. People do not lose their jobs to AI. They lose them by not understanding how AI works. We help everyone understand it, one step at a time.
What we believe
The Shouldered manifesto.
- AI is already shaping how our children learn, decide and pray. The church cannot afford to follow.
- We will not let strangers build the rooms our children will pray in.
- Work is a gift from God. AI should carry the load, not take the job.
- AI is a tool, never a master. People decide what matters.
- Nobody is too old, too young or too busy to learn. If you can speak or type, you can do this.
Mission, vision and values
Everything that makes us us.
No money? You can still carry this.
Six ways to help, starting today.
You don't need money to be part of this. Getting your church involved is doing a lot. Giving an afternoon is doing a lot. Telling one person is doing a lot.
Get your church involved
This is one of the biggest things you can do. Every business that joins gives Shouldered to a church. Put your church forward.
For churches →TimeGive a Saturday
Post what you can give on the mission board. A city or church lead in Austin, Dallas, Houston or San Francisco puts it to work.
The mission board →ShareShare this story
Send this page or the one-page image to your pastor, your small group or a friend who owns a business.
Get the image →LearnLearn, then teach someone
Read AI Business University. If you can explain it to one person, you have helped.
Start learning →SeatsTake a seat
City, church and schools leads, and national sales leads. See every open seat and apply.
See open seats →TogetherCome to a meetup
Weekly in each city and online. A gathering every November, before the holidays.
Get involved →
Shouldered on one page
Print it. Post it. Pass it on.
Who we are, what we make, where we are going, our values and our roots on a single page. Put it on a church bulletin board, share it in your group chat, or post it with your own words.