Meet the Founders - Zen Educate

An AI driven EdTech platform that streamlines the recruitment process for supply teachers.

Supply teaching is an essential component of most education systems but did you know in the UK alone, schools spend £1.3bn on agency fees to recruit temporary teachers? The current system is plagued by conflicts of interest between agencies and schools, and archaic recruitment processes. Agency recruiters are primarily driven by high-margins, whilst layers of hidden costs and unregulated agencies make the search for supply teachers inherently inefficient and subject to unsavoury business practises. This isn’t common knowledge though and co-founders, Slava Kremerman and Oren Cohen, only realised the sheer need for change following a conversation with a family member who worked as a supply teacher. As experienced technology entrepreneurs, they pooled together their ideas to bring this system into the digital age and…voilà! Zen Educate was born. Backed by data analytics and AI, Zen is a disruptive platform that is revolutionising supply teaching recruitment, putting quality education and schools first. Read on to learn how Slava and Oren navigated the pandemic and provided quality education solutions during a time of such uncertainty.

1. Describe your startup in two sentences.

Slava Kremerman (L), Oren Cohen (R)

Zen is an online platform for schools to find supply teachers when they have to cover staff absence. We disrupt traditional analogue recruitment agencies with technology that leads schools to saving money and supply teachers earning more.

2. What gave you the inspiration?

A family member worked as a supply teacher and I thought the process was archaic – all telephone call and paper-base with no consideration of basic criteria like availability, proximity, skillset, or previous feedback when matching teachers with open roles. Coming from the world of technology startups, we knew we could build a better system.

3. How did you meet?

We were the same cohort at INSEAD. After INSEAD, we stayed in touch as Oren led Optimizely’s UK operations, a B2B SaaS tool that Slava’s business was a heavy user of.

4. What has been your greatest success to date? And your greatest challenge?

Our greatest success has been supporting the educators on our platform through Covid while continuing to grow (more than doubling each school year of Covid despite each school year having an entire term wiped out due to lockdowns).

Our greatest challenge is that we’re a business that’s been hit with significant headwinds from the pandemic and have had to be nimble on our feet in response.

5. How has Covid affected your business?

There have been 2 entire terms lost due to national lockdowns over the last 2 years. This has of course impacted not only our trading for those periods but led to headwind in subsequent periods.

Screenshot of the Zen Educate mobile platform.

However, a lot of the headwinds are now becoming significant tailwinds for us as schools are increasingly relying on temporary staff both for keeping a school open on a day-to-day basis (now that there’s no longer a requirement to send “bubbles” home) and for the supplementary education needed for Covid lost learning recovery.

6. What kind of impact is your business having and how do you measure it?

Every day booked with us is £30 put back into the education system that otherwise would have been wasted on agency fees. To date, we’ve saved schools over £3.3m. That’s money going back to what it was intended for – supporting children’s education.

We’re also an approved Tuition Partner to the National Tuition Programme and shortly will be publishing our impact on lost learning recovery for disadvantaged pupils.

7. When you were little what did you want to be when you grew up?

Slava:  An Astronaut (still working on this)

Oren: An NBA player (also still working on this)

8. If you weren’t doing this, what would be your plan B?

Start another business that does some good in the world. We’re startup guys through and through!

9. What would you save in a fire?

My indoor plants! (assuming all the people are out safely!)

10. Who is your role model/ greatest influence? And why?

A bit cliché but Elon Musk. Hard not to be in awe of what he has accomplished and continues to accomplish in changing the world!

11. What is your happy track?

Dance Monkey by Tones & I (my son loves this during bath time)

12. What’s your motto?

We have an unfair advantage. We care more.

13. What are you most looking forward to in 2021?

The return of the human connection that comes from in-person events!