Why we partnered with Zen Educate

Zen Educate is quietly transforming how schools find teachers—and doing it in a way that works better for everyone involved. At Oleka, we believe this change is long overdue in the educational staffing industry, largely untouched by technology. That’s why we’ve invested in Zen Educate’s Series B extension and are supporting their continued growth in the UK and expansion in the US.

This is a rare opportunity: a proven business model, tech-first platform, operating in a massive, underserved market with proven product-market fit and a team that has built scale before.

A Simple Problem with a Broken Solution

Across the UK and US, schools rely heavily on temporary educators but the staffing infrastructure is decades out of date. The industry is fragmented (hundreds of small agencies), expensive (35%+ average margins), and inefficient (most bookings still made over the phone).

Zen Educate fixes this by cutting out the agency layer and using software to connect schools directly with teachers. On the platform, schools can instantly book educators, manage compliance, and handle payroll. Teachers, in turn, see roles that match their skills and location—and they earn more per day.

The result: lower cost for schools, higher pay for teachers, and a better match for students. It’s a fundamentally better system for all participants.

A Large, Proven Market with Room to Grow

The scale of the opportunity is hard to overstate. Over £3.5 billion is spent on school staffing in the UK each year—and more than $16 billion in the US. Zen Educate’s traction so far captures just a sliver of this market.

In the UK, Zen is well past the product-market fit stage. It now serves thousands of schools, is live in 16 regions, and proved its profitable business model. Schools are highly engaged and retention is strong. Across eight years of customer cohorts, net revenue per school has grown year-on-year.

On the supply side, the cost of acquiring a teacher has dropped by nearly 80%, thanks to improved automation and scale. This has led to exceptional unit economics.

A Fast-Scaling US Business with Even Better Early Economics

While the UK is focused on efficient growth, the US is in hypergrowth. After just over two years in the market, Zen’s US business is over 2.5x larger than the UK was at the same point. Net revenue is growing more than 3x year-over-year, and early district partners are already renewing at higher margins.

Unlike the UK, where schools are acquired one-by-one, US contracts are typically signed at the district level—allowing Zen to onboard dozens of schools at once. That structural advantage creates a step-change in efficiency and speed of scale.

Zen is already live in six US cities, with nine more launches in the pipeline. Additional capital will help accelerate three key growth levers: entering new cities faster, reactivating the charter school sales channel, and winning exclusive contracts with large districts.

Experienced Founders Who’ve Scaled Before

Zen Educate’s leadership isn’t learning how to scale on the job—they’ve done it before.

Co-founder and CEO Slava Kremerman was on the leadership team at Nutmeg, the fintech platform acquired by JP Morgan. His experience spans financial modeling, platform economics, and operational scale. Co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer Oren Cohen launched and scaled Optimizely in the UK, a product-led SaaS business backed by a16z, GV, and Index Ventures.

Together, they bring the operational discipline and international growth mindset required to build a global platform. They’ve also assembled a seasoned leadership team from McKinsey, Intercom, Barclays, and Bench Accounting, with deep functional expertise across sales, product, engineering, and marketing.

A Category Leader in the Making

Zen Educate is already the leading digital-first platform in UK education staffing. In the US, it is on the path to replicate that leadership with better early unit economics and faster cohort ramp-ups.

This isn’t a story of disrupting a sleepy industry for the sake of disruption. It’s a pragmatic solution to a large-scale, real-world problem with a strong business model, growing margins, and mission-driven execution.

Our capital supports the next phase of that journey: faster city launches, deeper US penetration, and scalable infrastructure to become the go-to platform for education staffing across two of the largest education systems in the world.