Overview of #207: Former Teacher Built a Market-Leading School Hiring Marketplace - Wayne Cartmel
In this episode of the Practical Founders Podcast, Greg Head interviews Wayne Cartmel, founder and CEO of My New Term, an applicant tracking system and jobs board for schools in England. Wayne shares how he went from teaching math and growing up on a farm in the Lake District to building a bootstrapped, market-leading hiring platform serving thousands of schools and hundreds of multi-academy trusts. The conversation focuses on the realities of building a two-sided marketplace, the importance of distribution over product, and the persistence required to survive years of rejection, debt, and setbacks.
What My New Term Does
Product and customer base
- My New Term is a hiring and applicant tracking platform for the education sector in England.
- It serves:
- Schools
- Multi-academy trusts (MATs), which are groups of schools under a shared legal/operational structure
- The platform functions as both:
- a jobs board for school vacancies
- an applicant tracking system to streamline hiring
Scope and traction
- The company works with:
- 6,000+ schools
- 500+ MATs
- It handles 100,000+ candidate applications per month in recent months.
- Wayne says the company has surpassed £5 million in revenue and has been roughly doubling year over year, aside from the COVID disruption.
Wayne Cartmel’s Founder Journey
Early background
- Wayne grew up on a farm in Cumbria’s Lake District and says that experience shaped his work ethic and mindset.
- He later studied in the northeast of England and became a teacher, eventually teaching math.
The original idea
- The idea for My New Term came from Wayne’s own frustration applying for teaching jobs.
- He was struck by how outdated and painful the process was, relying on paper forms, Word documents, and email.
- He wondered why no one had digitized school hiring properly.
Building the company part-time
- Wayne started the company in 2015.
- For the first couple of years, he built it part-time:
- evenings
- weekends
- holidays
- even working from the university library and later “the pub”
- He won some early startup support:
- a pitch competition
- later a £5,000 innovation voucher
- A local computer science volunteer he recruited eventually became the company’s CTO for more than 10 years.
The Hard Part: Distribution, Not Product
Early reality check
- Wayne thought building the software would be the hardest part.
- Instead, the real challenge was:
- getting schools to try it
- getting candidates to use it
- convincing a conservative market to change established processes
Marketplace challenge
- Because My New Term is a two-sided marketplace, it needed both:
- schools posting jobs
- candidates applying
- Wayne learned that without both sides, there is no real product-market fit.
First traction efforts
- He started very locally, targeting a handful of schools near Luton.
- He initially gave the product away for free to get feedback and build trust.
- He used:
- local outreach
- Facebook groups
- referrals
- public forum recommendations
- Over time, relationships and word-of-mouth became the company’s strongest growth channel.
Major Obstacles and Setbacks
No early customer response
- Wayne recalls writing to 10 local schools asking for feedback and getting only one reply, which was a rejection.
Financial strain
- He bootstrapped entirely and took no outside funding.
- At one point, he was over £100,000 in personal debt.
- He says it took four years before the business made its first penny.
COVID disruption
- The business had just started monetizing in September 2019 when COVID hit.
- School hiring slowed dramatically, and the company stalled for about 18 months.
Data loss incident
- In 2020, their hosting provider accidentally deleted all of their data.
- Despite the crisis, customers renewed because of their trust in Wayne and the relationship the team had built.
CTO health crisis
- In 2021, Wayne’s CTO suffered serious health issues and had to step away.
- Wayne was left managing the company largely on his own, without technical expertise, which he describes as one of the hardest periods.
Business Model and Positioning
Pricing and packaging
- The company uses a subscription model:
- schools pay an annual license fee
- they can post unlimited vacancies
- they can use the hiring system as much as needed
- Pricing is based on the size of the school or trust.
Market position
- Wayne says My New Term has now surpassed a legacy incumbent in its market.
- In MATs, the company is working with about 500 of 1,100 trusts, or roughly 45% market share.
- He estimates the broader market penetration across English schools at around 30%.
Customer retention
- Retention is extremely strong:
- 98%+ retention
- many MATs have remained customers for years
- Wayne credits this to:
- strong customer service
- relationship-building
- product quality
- consistent attention to customer needs
How the Company Grew
Sales and marketing motion
- Growth now comes from a mix of:
- direct sales
- events and conferences
- referrals
- existing customer advocacy
- Wayne says referrals are the largest source of new business.
Why it works
- Schools and trusts talk to each other.
- Because the product is embedded in a niche market, reputation matters a lot.
- Once the platform worked well and customers had positive experiences, momentum became easier to sustain.
Wayne’s Views on AI and the Future
AI’s role
- Wayne sees AI as useful mainly for:
- internal efficiency
- helping candidates complete profiles faster
- supporting development workflows
- He believes AI is making it easier to build products, which makes distribution even more important.
Focus over expansion
- Wayne is deliberately focused on the core education hiring market.
- He believes there is still enough room to grow significantly within England alone.
- He is open to new opportunities, but only if they fit the company’s mission and strengths.
Personal Reflections
Life balance and identity
- Wayne says the company used to depend heavily on him, and he couldn’t really take time away.
- That has changed as the team has matured.
- He now values:
- skiing
- active holidays
- time with family
- having a company that can function without him being in every detail
Referee side career
- In addition to running My New Term, Wayne is also a professional football referee in England.
- He says refereeing helps him:
- stay resilient
- handle pressure
- manage people and conflict
- decompress from startup stress
Key Lessons and Takeaways
1. Distribution is harder than building
- Wayne’s biggest lesson: product is not the hardest part.
- Sales, marketing, and go-to-market execution are what determine whether a company survives.
2. Marketplace businesses are especially difficult
- Two-sided products require persistence on both supply and demand.
- Without both sides, the product does not really exist.
3. Bootstrapping gives control, but at a cost
- Wayne chose no funding and retained full control.
- The tradeoff was years of debt, stress, and slow growth.
4. Trust and customer service create moats
- In a small, relationship-driven market, customer happiness and retention become powerful growth drivers.
5. Persistence matters more than early momentum
- Wayne succeeded by continuing through rejection, setbacks, and long periods of uncertainty.
Final Thought
Wayne Cartmel’s story is a classic practical founder journey: identify a painful problem from lived experience, build carefully, endure years of struggle, and eventually create a durable, bootstrapped company with strong market position. His advice to founders is simple but hard-earned: don’t underestimate distribution, and be prepared to outlast the hard moments.