5 lessons from 11 years taking The Key from 0 to 12,000 schools
I joined The Key in December 2008. It was a government funded pilot — an online knowledge bank for school leaders, about to be rolled out to every school in England.
At least, that’s what I was told at the interview. Three weeks after I started, the Department for Education cancelled the project.
Eleven years since that decision, The Key is a subscription service supporting 12,000 schools.
Last month I moved to ScholarPack — a challenger MIS for primary schools, acquired by The Key last summer.
Although I’m still part of The Key family, this feels a good time to reflect on some lessons I’ve learned scaling a company to 50% market share.
Lesson #1— it’s a marathon
In early 2011 we were struggling. We had 2,200 member schools but were losing money. Our CEO Fergal Roche asked me to run a project to review how we could become a sustainable business.
(I called it Project Cantona. That name may be my career highlight).
Looking back at my report, one section is striking:
Although we currently have 8%, people still talk of us serving 20%, 30%, or 50% of the schools in the country.
This ambition also affects the way we organise ourselves, and our expectations. There is a conflict between our current resource needs and our need to be ‘ready’ to grow so significantly.
On the plus side, it is a great ambition and we all hope that The Key will serve as many schools as possible.
On the downside, this ambition has created a sense that we are always chasing the horizon. Some people feel that the ‘tipping point’ will never come, and that we should be more positive and realistic about where we are now.
These people believe that there is no way The Key could reach even 25% of schools (6,250). They say that our market is limited to those schools with the right attitude, people, and culture. Most schools just won’t or don’t engage with a service like The Key, and many school leaders simply aren’t thinking or working in a way that would make The Key right for them.
It’s fascinating for me to look back at this. We did get to 50% of schools.
So what happened?
In one critical way, those people were right. There was no ‘tipping point’. No great deal that doubled our membership. No single marketing campaign that went viral. No single change of legislation that was a huge benefit.
What happened is this — sales outperformed churn. For a decade.
We didn’t write one great article, we wrote thousands.
We didn’t have one great marketing campaign, we had hundreds.
It’s not sexy, and it’s all a bit of a blur. But that’s what happened. We cared. We stepped into problems. We valued new ideas. We focused on quality, and refused to compromise the trust of our members. We repeatedly challenging ourselves to step back, reflect, and improve.
Business books and Silicon Valley have created a kind of mythology around getting product-market-fit, crossing the chasm, and popping the champagne. I guess that does happen out there, in that world. I guess it happened to us. But that idea can set all sorts of false expectations. Dreams of ‘it’ suddenly happening.
I suspect that even in huge tech companies, the founders would feel much the same way I do. Progress happens hour by hour, day by day.
One percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
If you consistently make good decisions, and work hard, you can end up in a good place.
Lesson #2— the power of thinking big
The government pilot meant that The Key was intended as a national service from day one.
Although this created challenges (as mentioned in the report quote above), over time I’ve come to realise how essential this “great ambition” was to our success.
That national mindset meant we didn’t end up in the situation I see many edtech startups struggling with. We didn’t start locally, going door-to-door, creating a niche product with an expensive and unscalable model for sales and support.
In our heads, we had 24,000 schools to serve, which meant we thought about things in a different way. From the start we focused on national marketing and simple self-service sales.
We never wrote content aimed only at a local issue. We never did a deal that compromised our intended destination.
Thinking big is a forcing function. Of course it doesn’t guarantee success. But thinking small can prevent it.
Lesson #3 — time your leaps, but take them
In 2008, The Key’s website used Plone CMS and Zope. It was hosted on a single physical server (backed up to tape!) and the users were stored in the same database as the content. The website was suitable for desktop only. Our website development was outsourced (to the good people at Isotoma). All of the content was hidden from Google search.
The Key’s website in early 2009, as we looked for our first subscribers
(Also in 2008 — Android version 1.0 was released, the iPad didn’t exist, and Microsoft tried to buy Yahoo for $44bn.)
Today, The Key’s six products use Django, Wagtail CMS, VueJS. They are hosted on Google Cloud Platform. Users are stored in an independent application handling all authorisation and authentication. 50% of traffic come from Google searches. The website is responsive, of course, and we have native IOS and Android apps. And we now develop our software in house.
(And Yahoo was bought by Verizon for $4.4bn)
The Key for School Leaders homepage, today
A lot has happened in the last decade, and a lot will happen in the next.
When you develop an internet product over time there is a constant tension between:
Delivering new features
Maintaining and improving what’s already in place
Jumping platform to a completely new technology
This tension is endless, and really hard. There are always compromises, questions, temptations, doubts and regrets.
(I have spent 11 years thinking “Why didn’t we do this six months ago?”)
But one thing is certain — the only way to survive is to adapt. Most products look as old as they are, especially in a tight market like education. Over time, the ‘boiling frog’ of ageing technology and ageing design can become fatal.
At The Key we’ve found a good balance between evolution and revolution.
While each choice was hard, the most important thing is we did make big decisions, committed to them, and saw them through.
Lesson #4 — keep it simple
After one of (many) office moves, we decided to decorate the empty walls with some quotes. I chose this one from Albert Einstein:
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”
At the time, I was Editorial Team Leader and my focus was on our content. I used this quote a lot when talking to our writers.
In a lot of our articles we summarise government legislation and guidance, putting it into more practical, plain English.
I used that quote because of the second half — “but no simpler”. Because there is a real risk when a summary becomes too simple, removing or obfuscating critical details.
As my role evolved to include digital leadership, UX design, overseeing a development team, and product management, I have kept coming back to that quote.
There is huge value in simplicity. But while we strive for that simple solution, we should always have Einstein’s challenge in mind. There comes a point when the simplicity is actually a lie.
As I often find myself saying while we tackle a messy problem — “We need to deal with that complexity, and not just pretend it’s simple.”
Lesson #5—look after each other
Lessons 1–4 paint a challenging picture. A marathon of hard work, stretching ambitions, doubts, complexity, and big decisions.
Yet amid all that theory, the practical and pleasant reality is that a company is a group of people going to work. People on their own journeys with their own ups and downs.
On a personal level, my colleagues have supported me through all the life events you could imagine over the course of 11 years. From losing friends and family, to having kids, I’ve always known that at any moment I could step back from the busyness.
And I’ve done every thing I can to offer the same to my colleagues. No matter how high the pressure or tight the deadline — we look out for each other, and understand that home life is the most important thing.
Reflecting on what really makes me proudest about The Key, it’s two simple things:
Every piece of positive feedback from our members
Looking around at my colleagues and being glad I’ve contributed to creating an organisation where good people are supported to do good work