Hugh Viney, Founder @ Minerva's Virtual Academy

Welcome back to The Graduate Guide. Today, joined by Hugh. You're welcome to the podcast, mate.

Hi, nice to be here.

Yeah, and you're the, uh, founder of Minerva's Virtual Academy.

That's right.

Talk to me about what that is and why does it exist.

Minerva's Virtual Academy, or MVA as it's affectionately known by its students and teachers and parents, is a school I launched 4 years ago. It was during the pandemic, and at the time I ran a tutoring business called Minerva Tutors. I still do, it's a separate business. And before COVID we were seeing a rise in homeschooling. As a tutoring business, we were getting more and more requests not for maths tuition after school or 11+ tuition or A-level history. We were, we were still getting those things, but we were getting more and more requests in the build-up to COVID for homeschooling. Families who wanted to get out of mainstream education for a few reasons, which I'll get into, and homeschool. But the problem is when you homeschool with tutors, it's expensive. Okay, so we were turning away a lot of inquiries. Uh, we had great SEO, you know, number one homeschooling on Google and stuff. So people would Google homeschooling, we'd come up top, they'd love what we did. They're really enthusiastic. Wow, look at these cool homeschooling programs. And, you know, they'd call and we'd tell them the price. They'd be like, oh, I can't afford that. It's a lot of money. It's like boarding school fees kind of thing, 20+ grand a year. So, okay, occasionally we got business from it and we had families that could afford it, but it wasn't very scalable. And there was certainly more families we could help. When COVID came along, if you remember, Uh, doing your A-levels at the time? I don't know.

Yeah, joining UCL.

Joining UCL. Okay, so starting your first year at UCL.

Not the best time to start.

No, terrible time for Phil, for you. Um, uh, during that summer of 2020, an awakening happened for families all over the UK and indeed the world. But I guess our story starts with the UK. Parents, mums and dads, were seeing their child happy for the first time in years, right? Most kids were miserable, 100%. The majority of students were miserable being locked up, miserable not going into school, physical school. But a significant minority of kids were the happiest they've been in years. The parents were seeing them happy, not because they were missing school, because they were going to school online. These are kids that have been missing school, right? Not just unhappy in school, kids have been made physically ill by their school experience, kids riddled with anxiety about going into school, kids of neurodiversity where the school could not support them, right? Suddenly going to school online in COVID made them happier, not because they were missing school, I want to reiterate that, but because it was more comfortable for them. So guess what? They're happier. Their well-being shoots up. Guess what? They engage more. Guess what? They learn more. So parents, you might have an older child who was miserable, desperate to get back into their physical school, or— and a youngest child, again miserable, desperate to get back to physical school. But they had a middle, middle child perhaps who was finally happy. So what happens is they said, well, hang on, there's a million families up and down the country hadn't thought about homeschooling ever, and suddenly they were thinking about it for the first time because it would make their child happy. So they're Googling homeschooling, my tutoring business is coming up. Same thing's happening that's been happening for the last 5 years, all the— but, but on like 100x, hundreds of calls a week. Same problem, most people couldn't afford homeschooling with tutors. And also they, they were asking, if I'm going to homeschool, how can I make sure my children still have friends? How can we have a community? So those are 2 big issues. They couldn't afford the homeschooling we provided as a tutoring business, and they wanted to have a community, a sort of friendships and things like that. And I thought, well, hang on, what's the solution for this. For me, that's an online school. So I look up online schools and there's a few out there and some are good, some are average or whatever. And I thought, well, we could start our own online school and let's take the needs of these parents. They want happy children, they want affordability, and they want kids to have friends and have a community. Okay, um, let's take what the other online schools are doing what's good, what's, what's, what I think not as good, and let's do it better. Um, and put the business plan together in October 2020. And here we are in October 2024, 4 years later basically since the business plan. And we open our doors, our virtual doors, in November, like November the 18th, 2020. Um, brand new school, this online school called Minerva's Virtual Academy, uh, where we took the best part of our homeschooling and and tutoring experience and online learning experience and what we thought was the best part of traditional school. And we launched, opened our doors, 4 kids joined. We couldn't believe it. 4 families paid till the end of the year. So till June, and we didn't— we were a brand new thing. A lot of it was because they saw we came from Minerva Tutors. They said there was some history there, some credibility. But yeah, we did a trial for 4 weeks, November to December. 4 kids paid up, 10 kids on trial for free. And by January, um, over Christmas holidays, we'd recruited 14 more students, and we sort of launched properly in January 2021 with 14 kids.

That's very exciting. And, uh, and it's, it's cool to see change happening in, in the school world, because I think you're right, like, in an age where more people are feeling heard and, and we're catering for different kinds of people, it did feel like school was kind of being left out in that a little bit. Yeah. And I want to know, like, you at school. So when you were studying, uh, whether that's Stowe or going to UCL, what were you thinking your career might pan out to be? What kind of person were you at the time?

Yeah, I mean, I love school, so I was really lucky. I was pretty academic. I got an academic scholarship to my school. It was a private school, as you allude to, then. So wonderful place. Um, couldn't have gone if I hadn't got the scholarship. Got this massive scholarship, went, and, you know, I I had a choice, you know, um, coast along or take it for all it's worth. These are wonderful institutions, these boarding schools, and with wonderful opportunities, and I felt lucky to be there. So I just did everything, had wonderful teachers, did all the music, all the drama, all the sport, uh, and had this wonderful 5 years. So I love my school time, and that's one of the fires, the things that fires me up, one of the reasons I launched my online school in 2020, Minerva's Virtual Academy, was because so many kids don't enjoy school, and I was seeing that firsthand. For many, school is a rough place. For many, school is a miserable place. For many, school makes them ill. So because I love school, I find that desperately unfair. Kids should be able to enjoy school again. So giving kids now this option of an online school versus their traditional school is so key because it makes them happy. Anyway, that was my school experience, and yeah, Um, loved school, always thought I'd be a lawyer, or did think— thought things like going to the Civil Service, Foreign Office. Those are sort of things I thought about. I loved— my favorite subjects were Latin and Greek, ancient Greek, and therefore I chose to study that at UCL, you know, against advice, um, about those subjects. Uh, you know, we're very— because of worried about my career from like certain teachers and stuff, what would you do with that? But we're very lucky in the UK, certainly 14, 15 years ago, you could study a humanities degree and then walk into any career, right? But then if you studied Classics at UCL, the majority of my class became lawyers, consultants and management consulting, went into finance, um, did anything really. So I was never worried about pigeonholing myself with my degree. I thought I'd just do anything afterwards that I could work it out at the time. But I loved Latin and Greek, so why not go to uni and study the subjects you love, which I did. And it's lovely being near UCL today, walking along the Euston Road and getting all these fun memories. But yeah, that was still at uni. I thought, still thinking about law, still thinking about civil service. But then I started playing music, and, um, I was in a band at uni. And for me, then suddenly I was like, well, that's it, I want to be a rock star. So, you know, that was my third year, started the band. A year— then the next year I got a job in food and drink, which opened my eyes up to entrepreneurship. Um, a lot of the food and drink world, you know, uh, we work with products like Vita Coco when it first came to London, that coconut water and stuff, like very entrepreneurial, the people behind all these products. It was my first experience because they, they were a client from this wholesaler I work with um, with Innocent Drinks, you know, going into that incredible place. It was called Fruit Towers, you know. Uh, these are like— they're like the OG of startups, you know, with the exit to match, the $150 million exit to Coke and stuff. Like, this— they were before startups were cool. They were the first, for me, like, the cool startup that did things differently, that was a disruptor to the system. And I saw all that when I worked in food and drink, trying to be a musician on the side. Quit my job to focus on music fully for a year, and, um, we didn't make it. I mean, and I had enough, uh, and I in that year had been tutoring just to make money because I made no money from my music. So I tutored privately, working for a couple of tutoring agencies, mostly in things like maths. I started off tutoring Latin and Greek but didn't get any work, so I switched to tutoring maths and I fell in love with tutoring, fell in love with being able to see results in the kids you tutored one-on-one. I really felt, felt strongly about one-on-one tuition as an effective form to increase outcomes.

This sort of like stage of career where you're working out what you want to do, um, trying out different things, when you were going through it, did you feel lost and confused, or did you feel like, oh yeah, this is just trying things out?

No, never. I've been always been confident. I've had great parents who've always but believed in me. So they've always been like, they didn't despair, you know. Come on, what? I, I'd say they are in the minority of parents that, by the fact they did not despair when after my, my education at private school, after my degree at UCL, I said I want to be a rock star. Most parents' hearts sink. Yeah, most parents say no. My mum and dad were like, awesome, we'll be at every gig. You know, that, like, that's amazing. And my experience as a musician, I failed ultimately, uh, musician, it's almost like my first business failure, right? Because we're in a band with 4 members, we— you run it like you're trying to get a business off the ground. So it was my first taste of entrepreneurship, so it taught me so much. I loved it, I loved every moment until it kind of— until the end. And when I was it was easy to give up music because I loved tutoring too. And I guess my entrepreneur— there's an entrepreneur in me always, I suppose. But that, like, being in a band gives you those— you run it like a business, gives you those entrepreneur skills, entrepreneurial skills. Switched into tutoring, didn't, didn't worry, no, like you're asking. I get why people would, but I love tutoring. It was great, made some good money. But it was only— and it then, after about 6 months of tutoring on my— just, just tutoring and no music, I thought I can't have much of an impact here as a tutor. I need to start a tutoring business because then I can have 50 tutors and have a massive impact on all these kids' lives. And then bang, that's why I launched the business in 2014, Minerva Tutors, basically because I love tuition, but I can only impact 10 kids a year when it's just me. But if I've got 50 tutors, I can have a massive impact on kids' lives. So that was the driver behind that. And I guess I never worried because I always felt confident I'd kind of work it out. And then, then I went, well, I'm, I'm— that's it, I'm gonna, gonna be a business owner. I guess after the band, when people said, look, you've given up on the music dream, you should go get a real job, don't be an entrepreneur, go get a real job. But after being a musician for 3 years, I couldn't go back. No way. I couldn't go back to being— to having a boss.

I couldn't.

So I was, I've got to start a business. Luckily, the tutoring thing was wonderful for me. Just tutoring on my own, converting that into running a tutoring business, and, and away we went. I, you know, ended up building a pretty successful tutoring business, but much before— long before I started the school.

And earlier on, you alluded to like how startups were, you know, they were less sexy, and it's changed a lot since then.

Yeah, I've got to— we've got to credit Innocence Movies. They must be the OG for that, that change.

Yeah. Oh, and as a child, that was, you know, that was what we grew up with.

Yeah, they changed the game with marketing, like, um, like putting fluffy hats on their bottles and stuff, and like the language they would use that was like cute and caring and, and made you feel like, oh, this is nice. It was just no one was doing that. No big FMCG kind of products were doing that. Famously, Coke like asked them when they were about to buy them. I once saw one of their founders like give a lecture. It was like they asked him, what do you do? Like, what is your secret? How do you— how have you grown so quickly? Have you been successful? Like, we just don't get it. And he was like, because we're just nice to people. And I was like, the messaging is just kind and fun and friendly. I mean, I remember that. I think that's brilliant. It was genius.

Similar to like Liquid Death now. I've had the manager on there, and it's like, everyone's like, how'd you do it? Well, I just leaned into myself. Yeah. And, and sometimes I guess this is where I was going, my question on entrepreneurship, um, it's got like this external, you know, oh, you have to have raised this much, or you have to you know, these vanity metrics that are associated with now, it's not like true entrepreneurism. And when you say I had to start a business, I think the way you did it is how it should be, right? Like, you proved you could do something, you know, you saw there was demand for it, so you scaled it, and, and that's kind of how you've led your career. I mean, yeah, definitely. Do you think that—

that—

what do you think was great about that form of entrepreneurism that you'd give back to this age group?

Yeah, well, firstly it's wonderfully fulfilling being an entrepreneur that is both having an impact, positive impact on people's lives, right? In my case, like, um, the under-18, like, uh, category, school children and stuff, having a positive impact on their education, but also being profitable. And both things are vital. And I think we have got lost in the last 10 years of what people have got lost, confused about what entrepreneurship means. Um, focusing on— it's no one's fault, it's like as much the kind of VCs as anyone else, as any entrepreneur— but focusing on raising, not generating profit for years, um, staff— oh, more staff, the more successful you are. Yeah, this is all just bollocks. Um, and, um, what's important is doing something that positively impacts people's lives that they will pay for. And you make a profit. It's got— it's so crucial that you need to be making a profit. Because not, not to begin with necessarily, I don't mean that, but you've got to be aiming for that because otherwise it's not real. And, um, uh, it's important to be real. And I say that having run, you know, having failed my first business, the band, having run what is essentially a small business, you know, my tutoring business, um, it's still quite small, it's slow growth. Of, you know, 5 employees, um, 80 freelance tutors, slowly growing year on year, but being profitable since almost year 1. And I can say that because now I've got a scale-up, much more kind of exciting. My school and everything else is, you know, much more fastest growing school in the country and all that stuff, and 140 staff on the payroll, employees. Um, so I've got a bit of experience in what it means and to, to run a small, small business that isn't necessarily sexy, as it were. Um, And I think they're just as, just as cool.

100%.

And having a business that makes money, like 4 members of staff, that is so cool. Trust me, those are chilled times. Those are good times. Those are about 5 years of that until we launched this rocket ship we've got right now. But, um, it was good times. It's nice, and you're doing good things. So yeah, there's something to be said for that.

And I want to use this as an opportunity to sort of dig a little bit deeper into, into school and the education system, full stop. Because yeah, a lot of people come on this podcast and, you know, whether it's founders, I think there's a lot of like rebelliousness to the education system.

A lot of the people, most founders say, I hate school, I hated school. Yeah, and I don't, I loved it. But yeah, exactly, it makes me different.

But why, why do you think that is? Do you think like that's just it, school is meant to be this thing that it's either for you or it's not?

Exactly.

Like you where you're trying to tailor it a bit more though, right?

But no, that's the problem. School hasn't changed since Victorian times. The same, same style of building, same style of classroom, same style of teaching. It hasn't changed in, in, in hundreds of years, right? And therefore that's why you get certain people— you allude to entrepreneurs, yeah— who don't suit that model. They don't— not if the model was different, if there were options as to how they could attend school or mediums by which they could go to school, um, I think it'd be different, different story. And what we've shown with, with MVA in the last 4 years, we've like, like I said, when we launched with 4 kids 4 years ago in like 4 weeks, so November 2020, we've got nearly 1,000 students at the school now full-time. They're not— these aren't kids just doing a, doing a maths GCSE or something. These are full-time at the school, nearly 1,000 kids. And going to assembly on Monday morning with the headteacher, um, the principal, studying up to 10 subjects GCSE, so typically 9 perhaps, like a national average, studying 3 A-levels, doing after-school clubs, all those things, and meeting in person 6 times a term, which we do. It's really important. Anyway, my point is we've proven with that model, which is online, that kids who were previously miserable at their traditional school are happier and more engaged in our mode of school, online schooling. Guess what happens if you were happy and more engaged? You make more friends and you do better in your exams.

Facts.

And what I'm trying to say is that's proof that school doesn't— traditional mainstream school does not suit a chunk of kids, many of which do suit online. But what I'm not trying to say is every kid should go to online school. No way. Most kids should not be online school, it's just for a significant minority, I reckon around 20%, it's the perfect school for them, then what I want in the future is kids can go to choice. So parents can choose what's the best type of school for their particular child, and whether that's in person all the time, whether that's online like us, apart from physical meetups for fun, or hybrid, a bit of both. I want parents to have that choice in 10 years' time, and because that'd be the key, because it turns out The traditional model, which has been doing— being the same for over 200 years, doesn't suit a bunch of kids, right? And you know that it doesn't. So you can see entrepreneurs you speak to who are miserable in school.

Yeah, I think for me at school it was like, I think I got very good at playing the game that is school, and, and, and I've always craved being older, like the sort of choices you alluded to that, uh, I, I like the idea of refining down the groups of people and the things I worked on and and doing less of the bullshit, really, which it comes with a lot of school. And I think for me, uh, you know, trying to work out, let's say, if, if I would be the right person for a school and system like that.

What are—

what kind of people are you looking to bring in? What kind of traits do you think?

We attract, um, uh, a range of different types of kids, right, and families with different needs. Or personality types or personality traits. Firstly, probably our biggest category of students are children whose mental health was not supported by their previous school, mostly anxiety, but, but other forms of mental health, um, needs, but mostly anxiety. Traditional school was unable to help them, and these kids at school refusing or desperately unhappy at school. Guess what? Making no friends. Guess what? Getting terrible grades. Guess what? Not developing, um, as a person. They find us, they come to us, and through the medium of online schooling, their mental health is transformed. Guess what? They get— make more friends, they get better grades, they have a better time, and often they might return to physical school for sixth form. It's quite a normal trait. They might come to us year 10, 11 GCSEs, or year 9, but year 10, 11 they go to back to physical sixth form feeling a lot better. They go to a different college, probably not the school they used to hate. They go to a college or something, right? They're a big category for us of students. Second is neurodiversity— kids whose neurodiverse needs are not supported by their traditional school. Kids with autism, ADHD, PDA, they thrive in our environment. And parents have worked it out, like, no wonder he wasn't doing or she wasn't doing well in their noisy, busy classroom of 30 kids. They get easily distracted by noise and sounds and smells. Coming to school online, all that goes away and they can focus. Guess what? Better grades. Guess what? Better well-being, pastoral care. So those two are probably our biggest categories of students. The third is elite athletes and performers. So we've got about over 150 elite top-level athletes at our school between the age of 11 and 18. We're talking about, um, champ, national champion tennis players, national, good international champion motor racers, so karting, Formula 4, equestrian, swimming, golf, you name it. We've got a, we've got loads of these elite young athletes who, and this is crucial, like, we've become the number one school for athletes in the country because traditionally, as they got better at their sport or got older, they would probably have to sacrifice either their school or their sport. Some with stricter parents have to give up on the sport. to focus on their studies, and some give— basically give up on a lot of school, miss a lot of school in order to pursue their dreams with their sport. With us, you don't have to sacrifice anything. You, you can take the school with you to your training ground, on your tour, whatever it might be. And if you miss a lesson, you can watch the recordings. So with this perfect solution for elite athletes, and a small group of that elite athlete performers is obviously some actors and musicians and stuff. We've got a few of them. That's the fourth, third category. Fourth is the sort of gifted and talented, hyper-academic kids that might want to do A-levels early. Small, small group, but, but, you know, kids that are like 14 want to do A-levels early. And then the final category is, is our growing one, which was tiny 3 years ago. It's what we call lifestyle families, families whose children don't have any particular need. Um, their families who just think online school is cool and different, and they reject traditional school. It means they can go traveling if they want for a term. Uh, it means they're getting better value for money with private school fees becoming very expensive. Um, it's kind of like forward-thinking families that just think this is potentially the future and my kid could suit this model because of the family situation.

This one's growing for us, this growing I think one of the reasons I was so interested in having this conversation, um, especially when it comes to, you know, graduating from university and that sort of age group, is that a lot of the conversations I'm having, happening with, uh, having with people further on their career is embracing elements of their younger self that kind of got chipped away from, like, the being a sheep and following the, the well-trodden path. Like, it kind of yeah, it carves out, you know, really cool elements of you. And then a lot of your career is actually just harnessing those core elements. Like, for me, for example, I was always that guy that was really, really gave a shit, like, cared too much to the point that maybe I'd cry at school. Or, you know, I was really curious. I would always ask, like, that guy at the end of class that would ask that extra question when everyone wants to go to lunch. And that kind of stuff gets bullied out of you, really.

And I think Sadly, it does. It's some schools. Yeah.

And I think it's nice to, to hear about basically a school approach that like allows you to harness like your truest self and never lose it going in. And I'm really excited to see and curious what you think this will do for like them post-school. Yeah, yeah.

No, it's amazing. Um, the, the, the, the— firstly, it's quite contentious this when people like— when I say it, but in many ways our type of school I remember I said really clearly, our model doesn't suit most kids, but it's just perfect for some. Our type of school sets them up for life in a different sort of way. It teaches them self-discipline. Like, we operate a flipped learning model, which means 60% of their learning, 60% of their GCSEs, let's say, is done without a teacher on a virtual platform using tech in their own time. You know, like, flexible. Some can race ahead a bit, some can, you know, go a bit slower. 60% of learning is done there on the platform. So when they learn a topic for the first time, they go on there, learn that topic. It could be in half an hour, it could be an hour. Then they have a lesson with their teacher with a maximum of 20 kids in the class, and they already know a bit of the subject already. So they come to that lesson with questions. They come to that lesson ready to debate, and the lessons are discursive and interactive, which is a whole different way of like, uh, schooling in itself. Forget being online, it just is a way, a way of different way of learning. It's called flipped learning. Then After the lesson with their teacher, they go back on the platform to consolidate their knowledge, quiz, move on to the next topic, right? That, that method of learning gives you so many skills for life. Um, uh, secondly, you know, in the, in the modern remote world, you know, I run a— before COVID I had a business which was office only. You weren't allowed to work from home. And now I run a business with over 140 staff where it's fully remote, you know. Staff live in different parts of the world. An online school helps you with that, sets you up for that. Secondly— thirdly, sorry— think of the global connections these guys are getting. 20% of our students are abroad. Think of the national friends they're making from different parts of the UK. That's pretty cool and gives you a wider vision culturally of the UK and the world. So those are kind of some awesome aspects to online schooling which are setting these kids up for the modern world. Cool. Um, there's many more, but I won't go into them. Secondly was, like, to your question, was more about we not, um, this, this type of school, how does it get the best out of these kids and, and, um, and not get certain aspects of their personality and curiosities bullied out of them by the traditional school? Yeah, totally. Our kids thrive. Bear in mind, a lot of them come from a horrible experience, and so when they join our school, there's all these new guys they meet and everyone's like, I see you, I was you. And there's this like shared anti-bullying vibe with them all. They're some of the kindest, most generous kids you'll ever meet, and they're so good to each other and so understanding and tolerant of kids with differences. And yeah, they don't, you know, look, I— that makes it sound like an absolute dream. Like, of course there's kids being disruptive sometimes, and of course there's like— every child isn't having the perfect experience in my school. I don't mean that, but this style of schooling is intended and often works to make children feel great about themselves, where unlike how you experience sometimes at school, and many millions of kids do, you know, they feel ashamed to ask a question and think things like that. You know, this type of schooling is, is a better environment for allowing children to be curious in that way.

It's, uh, It's kind of fascinating to me that this hasn't happened before with like having gone to university, um, that you're explaining university like—

yeah, it's uni style of uni, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Sorry, like you could have been point number 4 why it's good for them. It preps them for uni.

Yeah, but I mean, why is there such a— like, because you go— one of the most manic-depressive things in your career and education I found was going from complete accountability, like you have to be in this class at this time, and then this teacher is going to tell you whether you did well or you didn't. Like, do you know where all of that's gone?

Yeah, it's all up to you.

Like, and it's like, how is that? You've got such a stark contrast. And most people just have to go there, they spend the first 2 years fucking around, and then they have 1 year to like, to like get out the bag. Yeah, and then find out what they want to do at the same time. So it's like, I'm not trying to like, you know, blow smoke up your ass too much, but I think it's important, right?

No, look, it's this amazing training for university and life. Like, for the reasons I said, for jobs, future work. And the reason this has happened, what you just described, is because school— unis have changed, unis have got better and adapted and whatnot. Schools just haven't changed. Schools have not changed. And, and it's tough for change, um, to happen, I guess, for many reasons. Teachers in there stuck in their ways, curriculum, you know, My model proves that with these groups of kids, type of kids, you only need 40% of the teachers. Tell that to mainstream education, they'll, they'll strike. They'll be like, this is awful. At the end of, you know, their hours will be cut, you know. So they're worried about things like that in innovation. So they're not— a lot of power, um, with teacher unions on these kind of things. And like, my model's scary for that reason. But, but think about it, there's a massive teacher exodus happening in the country. Teachers are leaving the profession in their droves. My model proves Well, that's cool. We don't need to hire as many to replace them because we're showing that if you use tech in the right way, kids don't need as many teachers, don't need as many lessons.

Which teachers are you hiring?

Um, teachers leaving the profession of teaching. They think online is cool. Think about it. Um, we're getting great teachers in the private and state sector because after COVID they got work-life balance envy with all their friends who are not teachers. Who now get to work from home and who get to have 3-day weeks or 4-day weeks. That kind of thing that's been normalised in all these other industries didn't get normalised in teaching. Teachers still have to work these long hours, just still have to work, uh, in person. So a lot of teachers are coming to us, um, and applying to work for us because they want that work-life balance which all their mates have in different industries, which is quite interesting.

Why do you think people are fearful of this innovation? Because I feel like It's, it's the case in other industries, but like, ultimately, if you are— yes, it's like with AI, some jobs might be lost at one point, and you kind of have to accept that might happen. But, but it will allow for, like, you know, a back-against-the-wall kind of feeling to, to birth, you know, better, like, more, more innovation within the school sector. Those teachers can go on to do more of, like, have more impact on the education system than they are right now.

Definitely less paperwork. It's so true, but it's really hard to fathom.

Yeah.

The— before AI, just with tech— what— AI is a really good example. At the very base level, you could eliminate boring marking and paperwork.

Sure.

Machines should be doing that so the teachers could be doing more teaching.

Yeah.

The teachers can be doing more mentoring and, and being more creative in their role. There's so much debate around this stuff, but it's just so obvious. The, the tech isn't the enemy. Tech is meant to help us enable in the modern world to have a— to be better at the job we're meant to do originally. A lot of teachers complain about marking and paperwork, and, and there are solutions for this now, for example. And look, um, you made a point about what— why hasn't this existed before, right? It's a really good point. There have been online schools before, um, but not many, not many. And they existed in a kind of niche, uh, and did well. Great, great innovators. But COVID came along and there was this awakening to, as you've experienced in many other industries, uh, to remote work, for example, or, um, people much more interested in work-life balance, etc. And I guess online schools in America have been very established and very successful for a long time. They're about— I was normally— America's 10 years ahead of us with online schooling. America's about 20 years ahead of us in places like Florida, you know, over 10% of kids are online schools and stuff, right? They have state online schools, free online schools, right? So the markets have been out there in the world. Just the UK was slow, and to be honest, America's really advanced and the rest is probably pretty slow. But COVID gave this awakening to us all with these kind of things, right? And that's the reason it's been able to accelerate. That's the reason we've been able to, um, have a successful business and school. But yeah, it's a really interesting point because it's obvious, right?

And I think that one thing that I, you know, to play devil's advocate, uh, that I would be conscious of, like, say, for my kid or any of my family Um, is social media. You can't escape. Uh, so say the school you're at before or whatever, like, you know, you can detach yourself, but then you're still like, you know, battling that, like somewhat staying attached, or like, you know, or maybe not being able to— I imagine basically what I'm saying is I think there needs to be quite a lot of hand-holding in that transition, right? Because it's a completely different way of life to take on at that age. So what would you say to someone who is maybe like thinking this sounds like them or this sounds like their kid, but, but they're like, okay, this just sounds like it's not, you know, like, I don't know how weird.

Yeah, it's, yeah, I mean, it's a really fair point. When we launched 4 years ago, in people in education and like money investor type people were like, this is a fad, like COVID's giving you demand right now but that will go away after COVID when everything returns to normal. And we've seen the opposite. The more people hear about us, the more inquiries are going up. We'll be growing 100% year on year for our first 3 years. We're going to grow about 130% in our 4th year. So the growth is accelerating, right? Because the demand is there and, and the need is there. More importantly, parents need us, uh, and, and other schools in our industry. We're not the only one. And so what would I say to parents who are rightly worried, skeptical about this choice, is, uh, you've got to think about your child's happiness, because when they're happy, they're gonna be developing better as human beings. They are. Uh, I mean, obviously stress and pain are important in life, but on the whole, if they're happier in school, they're going to be developing and, and be on their way for a much more happier, fulfilled life. And if some parents care, getting better grades. So, and then go back to like a typical question which is related to yours that we often get asked is, what about socializing? And well, they socialize online like most kids do. We have social rooms and they hang out and they, they use various like chat softwares to hang and stuff, as you'd expect. But we really big on this with our school there's these physical meetups every term. And like I said, we had 150 kids. I popped around to see one of our school trips in the summer term and there was 150 kids in Hyde Park. It was amazing from all over the UK and Europe. One of, you know, we had kids there from Spain, Italy. They've flown over meeting their— they call them their best friends. These are real friendships. I was with the Year 7 and 8 and they're just playing football, running around, having a laugh. All, all— they've all come to our school for different needs and different reasons. Um, but they've essentially come so they can be happy. And they were just like any other 11, 12, 13-year-old. Then I saw like the year 10 girls and boys who were just like any year 10 boys and girls, like in there, you know. And they all went off to like Wagga Mummas afterwards, as like kids do when they're mid-teens. They're just normal kids. They're just— previously school hasn't been good for them, and now they're happy again. And, uh, this is really extraordinary. Um, but one girl flew over from Taiwan. Most of our kids are near the UK time zone, or for obvious reasons, but we do attract kids from all like Far East and stuff. And this girl from Taiwan have flown over and she's like, she's, she was in Yatan, she'd been with us 2 years, she's like, these are my best friends, um, I've just never met them in person.

So yeah, yeah, it's, uh, it is a crazy world, but I feel like we kind of have to accept, to embrace it, right? And I think just one last thing that I, I'm sure other people listening are thinking, like, what are the parents during the day? What are they, you know?

Really, really good question. There is a bit more buy-in from the parent. The parent's got to be— well, if they're younger, maybe, um, your parent has got to be supervising them, right? I mean, unless the kid's happy to be supervised. What I mean is we rightly get asked, well, what if we're working parents and we're in the office? Yeah, you're right, it's hard. Um, if that happens, we know kids going to the office with their parents and just logging in from a quiet room or something. Um, in the modern world, lots of parents working from home.

Yeah.

And they're keeping an eye on their kid. Also, don't forget, our types of kids don't need much supervision. They're quite happy to be learning on their own. I'm not saying all, so they're just a bit of a trade-off with the parents. There is, yeah, because we like, we're not watching them in the playground like a normal traditional school. We're not watching them in the lunch queue like a traditional school. I know it's a trade-off, it's a kind of payoff. And we do, we do a lot of this coaching with the new parents when they joined, you know, when they're joining, we, we talk them through all this. And there's an amazing parent support network now because we've got nearly 1,000 kids, we've got nearly 2,000 parents now. And they will connect on this app called Classlist where they can all see on a map the dots, like where they live near each other. And we've got the Kent community building, the Scotland community building, the Cornish one, the Dorset one. It's amazing. And it's real parent power. We're not getting involved, the parents are doing it. And so they will welcome new parents and give them some advice and guidance on these things. But you're right, it is, it is not flawless. That is a flaw in our model, this kind of parent supervision thing. So what we're gonna do in the next 3 years. We want to create hubs which are going to be like places you can drop your kid off. It's definitely not school, it's not called a school, it's a really cool like center. Sorry, don't call it center, that's not awful. It's a hub where the kids can turn up with their computers, go to our school, but also hang out with some— with some, uh, adult supervision. That's the dream. And there's online schools around the world that do that. They're not many, none in the UK that do that. There's one in South Africa that does that, that I've looked at. It looks really cool. And yeah, it's not school because that would make some kids just like, um, not want to go. It's a hub with your other online schoolers. So that's the dream.

I think people can't tell already, this is a slightly different episode to what I'd normally do on The Garage Guy, but that's just because I think this is a topic I've been wanting to touch on for a while, and I think you're doing it in a particularly innovative way. Um, and yeah, I wanted to, to ask, you know, to link it slightly back to what I do.

Yeah, great.

What, what is happening in terms of careers education for these kids? Because, um, at school all I had was people coming and give talks. It felt very detached. Um, or maybe I just wasn't in the place to even think about careers. But I often think, like, what I started, I didn't need to be in my final year university to do it, like, start getting career consciousness. And I just wonder how you can actually, you know, if you have less time spending, you know, spending time doing things that you don't want to be doing at school, are you adding that to careers? Are you— how are you bringing it in at that age group?

Really, really good question. A lot of our sixth formers, um, a few entrepreneurs. Imagine it's, you know, you're 16, 17, 18, maybe 17, 18 more likely, and you come up with a business idea, but you want to get your A-levels. The kids are coming to us from Europe and UK for that. It's amazing. Um, uh, but to your point about careers, we're now with our student numbers a kind of medium-sized— no, large school, right? So we've got a full-time careers person who's in the wellbeing team. You know, she I was gonna pick up my phone and look at her recent email that went out to all school on Monday, but I might miss it. But, um, she's like a traditional careers leader at any school, but we want a joined-up approach where kids get careers advice from Year 7, their first year, all the way to sixth form. She's currently chatting to the Year 11s taking their GCSEs, for example, um, because career— you don't want to pigeonhole anyone ever. God, you know, I'm the opposite of that, right? I wanted my options open so wide. Yeah, so, so wide, all my options. I just— that was— that's, that's what I would preach to anyone, just keep your options open, keep search open, then bang, you'll find the thing. Um, but you want to from day one be able to give really good advice on career paths, because it's okay to also narrow down. If you want to be an architect when you're 13, like, and you should be encouraged to do that, and showing the pathway to become an architect. So, so I still believe that as well. So yeah, our careers leaders, just like a traditional school but it's online, um, is, is having these conversations with kids starting in year 7 all the way up to year 13. And at the moment it's with the Year 11 GCSE lot who are taking mocks like you would do at traditional school, but we do mocks, um, online. So yeah, that's, that's— I think that answers your careers question.

Um, I, I think it does. I'm just— yeah, I guess I'm curious.

I think careers advice in general is a bit old-fashioned. Well, yeah, have we launched something really cool and innovative with careers?

Maybe you haven't yet, but maybe, maybe that's a conversation we can have.

But I'd love to I really would. I think we're reasonably innovative in our approach to careers in that it's part of our online school. But yeah, we haven't— I think we're, we're not disrupting careers advice yet. No, one thing at a time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe. Yeah, exactly. Do that with you, that'd be fine.

As my final question to you, uh, which I ask every single one of my guests, is when you, when you first started out in your career journey, maybe you had dreams of being this— in this band, and, and that would have been what success looked like to you then. But fast forward with everything you've learned and achieved in your career, what is your definition of success and how has it changed?

Hmm, what's my definition of success? Uh, for me, for me, it's running a business that has such a positive impact on people's lives, in my case, family's lives. Whilst also being profitable and whilst also being able to finish work at half 5 most days.

Yeah.

And have weekends with my family. That for me feels very successful right now. And I wouldn't be able to say that 4 years ago. I wouldn't be able to say that 8 years ago, but I feel quite good right now. So yeah, but it's taken me a while to get there. It's 14 years since I left UCL. As you've reminded me walking around here, um, as listeners may know, we're very near University College London where we both went to university, and again, some lovely memories here. But yeah, that's my definition of success for me personally. I want to say happiness and freedom, um, but for me personally, it's running a successful business that has such an impact on thousands of people's lives, but, but it's crucially profitable, um, but it's crucially in a state where I can be— spend time with my— I've got young kids, um, with my family in the evening and the weekends. That's crucial. So yeah, I hope that's not too complex. I— oh, by the way, because I— I've— the last 4 years have coincided with having 2 babies. So yeah, um, yeah, I don't know how that's happened.

But anyway, thanks so much for coming on, mate. It's been a pleasure.

Pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.