Starting Again: Introducing Edzo

A company isn't just spreadsheets and analytics, sales and marketing, product and manufacturing. It's a group of people trying to create value for the world, and that's worth knowing about.

So this isn't just a story about a company. It's a love story, and a tale of adventure, risk-taking and blind faith, self-doubt and unwavering belief. And it has only just begun.

Here goes.

A poster under a mango tree

Jill and I had only just started dating. We were sitting under a mango tree on the family farm on the Sunshine Coast, cows grazing on the hill below and sugar cane stretching across the valley. It was an unlikely place for a conversation that would change the course of both our lives.

Jill mentioned something that had been bugging her. She'd spent hours the night before making a classroom poster: cutting, gluing, laminating. She was passionate about creating the best materials for her students, but she figured that if she was doing this, plenty of other teachers were spending their nights cutting, gluing and laminating too. It seemed strange for everyone to be making the same materials, for the same topics, reinventing the wheel year after year.

So I made her a poster that weekend. I designed it on the computer, it took me a fraction of the time, and it matched what Jill had in mind for a quality teaching resource. She pinned it up in her classroom on Monday. By Tuesday, three of her colleagues had asked where she got it.

That was the moment. Not a grand vision or a business plan. Just a poster on a classroom wall and a few teachers asking where it came from. That quiet moment was the spark that started Teach Starter.

Ten years of Teach Starter

What followed was an email newsletter. Then a website. Then a customer!

We built a team of talented, passionate educators, designers, illustrators and software engineers. We had a wedding and children (yes, Jill and I made it; I told you it was a love story). We packed up and headed to Austin, Texas, to build a team and connect with teachers in the US.

There were so many highlights, fantastic team members and incredible teachers along the way. Over ten years, that humble mailing list grew to hundreds of thousands of teachers worldwide.

What we learned

• Care more than your competition. Jill and I personally answered over 10,000 support tickets. That level of care shaped every product decision.
• Discipline beats inspiration. Showing up every night after work, for years, when nobody was watching. That's what builds something real.
• Think in decades. We always optimised for trust and loyalty.
• Grand visions come from doing the work. We didn't start with a master plan. We started with a poster, and the vision grew from there.

When we sold Teach Starter to TES in 2023, the team had supported thousands of teachers and learners around the world, and given millions of hours back to teachers. Hours they could spend on their students, their families and themselves.

That's a number worth being proud of.

Why we're starting again

Same founders. Same values. A decade of hard-won lessons to draw on. But this time we're not starting from a poster.

Edzo acquires and runs profitable, enduring education technology businesses, and looks after them for the long run.

Building Teach Starter taught us how much goes into earning educators' trust. Every late night rolling posters, every resource crafted, every "Missing Mona Lisa" (if you know, you know), every support email reply. And when we sold, we learned what it means to hand something you've built to someone else. You want to know it's going to people who understand education and will look after it.

That's the home we want Edzo to be.

We look for businesses that schools, teachers, parents or homeschooling families rely on. Typically that means:

• Recurring revenue from subscriptions or contracts, with simple pricing
• $200k to $2m in annual profit
• At least three years of track record, with customers who stick around
• Growth that comes from loyal customers and word of mouth, not paid ads
• A product that's crafted with care, one customers actually enjoy using

We keep the deals simple: cash at completion, clear terms, and a handover with an agreed end date. No earn-outs and no lengthy founder commitments, so founders can get on with their next chapter.

Then we do what we did for twelve years at Teach Starter. We listen to customers, keep investing in the product, and protect what people love about it. The lessons carry straight over: care more than anyone else would, and think in decades.

If you've built something educators rely on and you're wondering what comes next, we'd love to hear about it, even if you're not ready to sell. Email hello@edzo.com or read more about how we buy.