Startup To Watch: Zen Educate

Here at Work In Startups, we’re on a mission to champion the best and most exciting startups in the UK. To support this, we’re starting a new blog series highlighting some of the most innovative and fast-growing startups around. Follow us as we interview startup founders across the country and find out more about their goals and ambitions, what the future holds and (for all you startup jobseekers out there looking for the inside scoop) what they look for in a prospective employee.

This week, we’re interviewing Slava Kremerman, Co-Founder and CEO of Zen Educate – a digital teacher recruitment agency that is revolutionising the way schools find supply teachers. Zen Educate has just raised £5.6m of funding in a round led by ed-tech VC Brighteye Ventures and is growing fast, hiring equally as fast and radically disrupting the education staffing sector.

Hi Slava! What would you say Zen Educate’s mission is?

Our mission is to improve the education system. Zen Educate is an accredited social enterprise, so it’s core to who we are. All schools need teachers and traditionally if a teacher is away, they call a recruitment agent. This is poor value for money and inefficient. We help schools cut out the middleman by providing an online platform for their hiring needs. This helps them save time and money, and it also helps teachers take back control, as they know where and when they can work in advance, and benefit from exceptional support and great rates.

Your growth over the past few years has been pretty astonishing. What does 2020 hold in store for Zen Educate?

As you’ve mentioned, we’ve just raised £5.6m in funding from Brighteye Ventures, an EdTech focused European VC, and this comes off the back of significant business growth. We’re tripling as a business year over year and hiring more people as a result. 6 months ago, we were a team of 20 and now we’re a team of 50 – which is an exciting place to be.

We currently work with over 4,000 teachers in Greater London and Manchester, not to mention numerous schools, and there’s definitely a lot of room to grow in these areas. We’re also launching in Birmingham in Q1 of 2020, which we’re looking forward to. Beyond the UK, inefficiencies in education staffing exist all over the world and few companies are poised to do something about this. A few education staffing platforms are having a lot of success in the US, but this business model has yet to reach continental Europe, Asia and Africa. As such, there are enormous global opportunities for Zen Educate.

What do you look for in an employee?

Value fit is key. Without giving too much away, we’re very deliberate about our hiring process and hire people who closely align with Zen Educate’s values.

We look for three main things:

People that care about what we do – if the mission inspires you, that’s a big reason to join
People that act like owners who thrive on autonomy
People that push themselves to be better by consistently choosing greatness over comfort

Do you have any advice for young people just starting their careers?

Life is short and fleeting, so work on stuff that means something to you. Even if this means changing your career drastically, do it. Life is too short to not be doing work that matters to you.

Do you have any advice for those thinking about founding their own startup but currently unsure?

Do it x1,000,000. You want to tell your grandkids about the person you became, not the person you could have been, so don’t wait! Once you decide to take the leap, speak to people and get advice. Find successful founders and suck up information from them like a sponge. Founders love helping other Founders. This will help you navigate challenges and opportunities that come your way.

On a personal note, before co-founding Zen Educate, I worked at Nutmeg – a very successful startup – for a few years. I went on that journey from the small team to a big team and learnt a lot in the process. Going on a journey with another company in the early stages is a great way to learn what it takes to build a successful company.

And…. Zen Educate is Hiring!

Head of Marketing

Jargon Buster: The Work In Startups “A-Z” of Startup Terminology

Sometimes landing a new startup job in London (or anywhere in the UK) can feel a bit like making some new friends who already have a lottttttt of obnoxious in-jokes and references. Luckily, Work In Startups is here to help bust that jargon today. Have a flick through our quick A-Z so you don’t feel like an outsider at your local Shoreditch flat-white dispensary! […]

Jargon Buster: The Work In Startups “A-Z” of Startup Terminology

A	Angel Investor	A private individual who invests capital (usually in the early stages of a startup), generally in exchange for equity. Accelerator – investment-fund program that provide funding and mentorship to budding startups in exchange for a stake
B	Burn Rate	The amount of cash a startup is spending each month Bootstrapping – initial funding stage of a startup deploying only your personal savings or with help from friends and family (rather than angel or seed investment)
C	Cash Flow Positive	(The dream!) When a startup’s cash coming in is greater than its cash going out. Note this is different to being profitable!
D	Disruptive	A product or service that aims / is about to (hopefully) change or revolutionise an existing industry. A buzzword in the startup world!
E	Equity	Several geeky accounting definitions, but generally in startups equity refers to the relative amount (share) someone owns in the company
F	Freemium	When your core produce or service is free, but there are premium / non-free features available which are designed to improve the user experience even further Frontend – the pretty face of software engineering (obviously so much more that). In short: the bit on startup websites that you (the user) see and interact with! It runs in tandem with the Backend which does the heavy lifting behind the scenes
G	Growth Hacking	A startup marketing term focused around experimentation on growth strategy – working out ways to acquire as many users as quickly / cheaply as possible Gamification – implementing elements or features you would find in a game in a non-gaming product GA – (Google Analytics) this is the big boy for tracking just about anything activity-related on a website. Given its heavy use, “GA” is an easier term to spit out!
H	Hockey Stick	A growth curve on a chart – an initial dip (where you’re investing) followed by a strong upward trajectory, leaving the progress line looking a bit like a hockey stick!
I	IPO	An “Initial Public Offering” – the first time a startup (or any company) lists its shares on a public stock market
J	Javascript/Java/JS	One of the most commonly recognised programming languages – generally if you see knowledge of this as a requirement for a startup job and you don’t know what it means, don’t apply for it!
K	KPI	Key Performance Indicators – a measurable value tracked by a startup to gauge progress. When the name of the game is growth, we are slaves to the KPIs!
L	Low-Hanging Fruit	The easiest, quickest wins available in a given project. Essentially the fruit you don’t have to climb too high (or work too hard) to collect Liquidity Event – some form of opportunity for investors to cash in their stake, therefore turning some (or all) of their assets on paper into “liquid” cash Lifetime Value – the prediction of value you expect a customer (or supplier) relationship to generate over the whole of its existence. So hopefully more than just one transaction
M	MVP	Minimum Viable Product – the most basic version of the product that can viably work and be rolled-out, it often gets expanded with new features later on. Minotaur – a startup that has raised $1bn+ from investors (it might not necessarily be worth that much to prospective buyers!)
N	Ninja	A very startuppy title for a supposed expert in a field (e.g. after reading this article , you’ll be a startup lingo ninja!)
O	(Stock/Equity) Options	An agreement giving someone (most likely a startup employee or investor) the option to purchase shares in a company at a given strike price (which you can then hopefully sell later for a profit). You might well get offered these when you join a startup – take them! OKRs – Objectives and Key Results – tangible goal-setting framework. You set your objective and then pick the metrics (key results) that will quantify your progress
P	Pre & Post Money Valuations	Terms referring to the valuation of a startup before investment or financing and then after (after factoring in the new cash). Product Manager – the person responsible for developing the product, owning the business strategy, features and functionality! Pivot – a shift (quite often a significant one) in business model following feedback on / performance of an initial product
Q	QA Testing	Quality Assurance Testing. This is basic testing of the product, usually with an eye on user experience – think beta-tests and bugchecks a-plenty!
R	ROI	Return-on-Investment. At a very high level, and without getting too geeky about it, this is something that investors will monitor to determine the efficiency (usually financial) of a given investment. Bigger ROI generally means a better use of their funds!
S	Seed Round	The first round of external capital funding for a startup. SEM/SEO – Search Engine Marketing/Optimization – two distinct areas, but both relate to promoting a startup’s product by increasing its visibility on search engines. Best ask your marketing team directly if you want to learn more about the nuances (as there are many!)
T	Traction	A sign that all your startups growth efforts are taking effect, and whether people are actually buying or using the product..
U	Unicorn	A term to refer to startups that have been given a $1 billion valuation. Note this doesn’t have to have been realised in cash!
V	VC	Venture Capital. In a nutshell, this is financial investment (or investors) in startups that are looking for high growth opportunities in exchange for equity Silicon Valley – The name given to an area in the southern San Francisco Bay where lots of startups and tech companies are based.
W	Waterfall	The “last in, first out” order that investors often get their money in a liquidity event. Those coming later to the table have often had the opportunity to negotiate better terms for themselves since they can see what others have committed to!
X	Xenopus	A startup that has grown revenue at over 100% a year…. Just kidding (unless it catches on)! It’s actually a weird frog – it’s hard to find an X word for this list!
Y	Y-Combinator	Y-Combinator is a big seed accelerator with many ‘y-backed’ startups in their portfolio… (Cut us some slack, Y is hard too!)
Z	Zebra	A term used to refer to startups focused more on building a sustainable growth business than a “boom or bust” approach

The Worst Offender: Tech Startups

You’d hope that most of these are self-explanatory, but here are a few of the most common tech startup fields / buckets with definitions to help you out:

MedTech (Medical Technology), FinTech (Financial Technology), PropTech (Property Technology), FemTech (Female Technology), EdTech (Education Technology) and InsurTech (Insurance Technology)

We hope to hear you smashing the startup lingo at your next interview. Check out the site for some of the hottest start up jobs (we are the best site to find startup jobs in the UK after all!)

The Worst Offender: Tech Startups

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