Wayne CartmelFounder & CEO

MyNewTerm is an applicant tracking system and jobs board built specifically for the education sector. We partner with over six thousand schools and five hundred multi-academy trusts in England, handling job applications for teachers and non-teaching roles like site agents and teaching assistants.

Multi-academy trusts are groups of schools operating under a centralized legal structure. Unlike the old system where county local authorities ran schools, trusts centralize operations like finance and HR, allowing schools to benefit from economies of scale and run more efficiently.

When applying for math teaching jobs, I was shocked by the archaic recruitment process. I had to fill in lengthy word documents and paper forms by hand repeatedly for every single school. I could not believe a digital solution did not exist, so I decided to build one.

I won fifteen hundred pounds in a startup pitch competition and naively tried to build the software without technical skills. I lost my savings and realized after nine months that it was a total failure. I went back to teaching but resolved to try again with a proper technical partner.

On my second attempt, I won a five thousand pound government innovation voucher. I placed an advertisement at a local university computer science department looking for volunteers. I interviewed several people and found our CTO, who has been with me for ten years now.

It never crossed my mind because we were so small and unsexy that no bank or venture capitalist would have given us money. I realized the only way to make it work was to back myself, get into personal debt, and fund the software development out of my own teaching salary.

I hand-wrote letters to the ten most local schools asking for feedback, and only one replied saying they were too busy. I realized how hard sales would be, so I offered the system for free to a small cluster of local schools to build relationships and show them it worked.

Schools are highly risk-averse because of strict legal requirements around child safety in education. They did not trust our digital process and preferred their familiar paper forms. We had to work closely with our early users to prove our digital compliance and build trust.

No school would pay for a new, unproven system that had no candidates using it. Since it is a two-sided marketplace, we needed job openings to attract candidates and candidates to attract schools. Giving the software away for free was the only way to start the marketplace flywheel.

When the pandemic hit in March 2020, schools shut down and hiring stalled for nearly eighteen months. It was a very difficult period that nearly ruined us, but we pivoted to targeting multi-academy trusts and doubled down on product development while keeping our costs low.

It was one of our hardest moments. Our hosting provider had a technical error and wiped all our customer data. We were completely honest with our schools. Because we had built strong personal relationships, every single client stayed with us and renewed their subscriptions.

Refereeing professional matches in front of thousands of screaming fans teaches you how to manage conflict, handle extreme stress, and make quick decisions. It builds immense resilience. Going out on the pitch on weekends acts as a release from the pressure of running a startup.

We have a dedicated sales team, go to conferences, and run outbound campaigns. However, our main driver is word of mouth. Education is a close-knit sector. Our high customer satisfaction and ninety-eight percent retention rate mean clients constantly recommend us to peer schools.

We use AI to help candidates parse their resumes and automatically complete their professional profiles. Since candidates only need to enter their profile details once to apply to multiple schools, AI makes the application process significantly faster and easier.

We are serving schools that are educating children, and they need to get a great return on investment. If you do not provide great service and invest in the product, someone else will displace you. Not having investors means we control our destiny and do the right thing.

I want to keep building the business and achieve our founding goal of standardizing the school application process across England. Since we have built a successful, self-sustaining business without external pressure, we can afford to stay focused on serving our schools for the long haul.

I wish someone had told me that building the product is the easy part. The real challenge is distribution, sales, marketing, and the go-to-market motion. Nowadays, you can build a product cheaply with AI, but you must be disciplined and resilient enough to survive constant rejection.