Founder of the Week: Sean Hirons

• Sean Hirons founded MyEdSpace in 2022 after bouncing back from poor GCSEs himself, determined to give every UK student access to excellent teaching irrespective of their postcode.
• MyEdSpace delivers live online lessons in Maths, English and Sciences from KS2 through to A-Level, taught by teachers drawn from the UK’s top talent and designed for modern learners.
• The startup has scaled fast: it has achieved about £1.5 million in annual recurring revenue with low cash burn, drawing investment from Emerge VC, Coalition Capital and others.
• Sean’s biggest leadership shift was introducing cross-functional founder-led operational teams to reduce bottlenecks, give domain leads more autonomy, and maintain quality while scaling.

 

Tell Me About Yourself and MyEdSpace

 

I grew up in London and went to The London School of Economics for university. Following which, I went into investment banking at J.P. Morgan, which is also where I met my co-founder, Kharis Yanakidis. After this, I worked at Prosus, one of the largest tech investors in the world, before founding an e-commerce business, followed by an at-home wellness marketplace and now MyEdSpace.

MyEdSpace is the online learning platform making top-tier education available to every UK student

Covering the full curriculum in English, Maths and the Sciences from KS2 to A-Level, MyEdSpace pairs the UK’s top 1% of teachers with a modern virtual classroom built for how students learn today. Think ‘Twitch’ but for education. The idea is simple: one great teacher can reach thousands

 

What Inspired You To Start MyEdSpace? What Problem Were You Trying To Solve?

 

I’d always been passionate about education since I was a child. My mother was a teacher and my father was a university lecturer, so education is in my blood.

My journey to founding MyEdSpace started when I flunked my GCSEs, largely because of poor teaching and a really bad learning-environment

In response, my mother pushed to move to a better school and moved us to a different part of London so I could go there. It worked, as I got 3 A*s and 2 As in my A-Levels & EPQ and ended up going to LSE.

It taught me the power of great teaching, and also how unfair it is that someone’s location and access to great teachers has such an effect on their grades. I was fortunate enough to move to a different school, but so many kids don’t get the same luxury, and so can’t achieve their full potential through no fault of their own. It’s been a passion of mine to try and level the playing field ever since.

 

 

What Has Been Your Biggest Challenge So Far? How Did You Overcome It?

 

My biggest challenge was shifting from ‘I’ll do it’ to scaling through leaders without losing speed or quality. Early on I was deep in every single workflow, which worked – until I became a bottleneck.

I fixed this by creating a cross-functional Founder’s Team that rotates around the org into where the need is greatest, and embeds deeply into problem areas, ships experiments fast, then hands ownership back with clear playbooks and metrics.

Impact: Team leads now have more ownership over their domains and autonomy, and it allows me to still be deeply involved in the operations and have a direct founder-impact across most of the org without being as much of a bottleneck.

 

Can You Describe A Pivotal Moment That Significantly Shaped the Direction of MyEdSpace?

 

The turning point was about eight or nine months in, when everything started to click on social media with our founding teacher, NeilDoesMaths. His videos on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook started gaining real traction, and suddenly we had millions of followers and a real audience.

We went live just before the exams and thousands of students joined with no paid-promo and stayed for eight hours i it was wild. That sense of recognition from students was the moment I realised we were onto something bigger and we had something that students loved.

 

How Do You Define Success? 

 

For Your Business: We want to democratise education and change it on a societal level. So in that sense, success is measured by real student outcomes, at scale. We want students to be motivated to learn and create an environment where all students have an opportunity to succeed. We want every child in the country to be using MES to support their learning, and we’d love to get to the point where we can offer it for free to every child who qualifies for free school meals.

As a Founder: On a big level, I want to be the person to change education as we know it. I want MyEdSpace to be the global education brand and to ultimately outlive me. On a smaller level, every time I read a review about how we’ve helped a child boost their grades and become more confident, I feel a huge sense of achievement and a sense of success as we are making a real difference in the world.

What Advice Would You Give To Someone Thinking About Launching Their Own Startup?

 

Start before you feel ready. There’s no perfect moment. Risk is always overestimated, upside underestimated. You have to swing the bat to hit the ball.

Don’t obsess over the perfect launch. Execution beats elegance. Launch scrappy, and test relentlessly. Momentum compounds.

Distribution is a moat in itself. You might have a great product but people need to know it exists. Focus on nailing distribution early – it buys you the time to keep improving the product.

Choose an obsession you can live with. Startups demand unreasonable energy. If you’re not obsessed with the problem, you’ll quit before you reach product-market fit.

Anchor on mission and impact. The early team makes or breaks you. Hire people who believe in the mission first and skills second – you can train skills, not conviction.

 

What’s Next For MyEdSpace? Any Exciting Developments We Should Watch Out For?

 

We have been working extremely hard to release our new learning portal for students this academic year – built for the future of learning with AI-first features to support a new form of education and learning experience. Additionally, we are officially an international company and have launched our first lessons in the US.

 

Want to be featured as TechRound’s Founder of the Week? Find out more about this weekly feature and how to get involved here.

 

Founder’s Five with Sean Hirons

 

Being a successful entrepreneur and startup founder is an impressive feat, but we want to know more about the man behind MyEdSpace. Here’s our exclusive “Founder’s Five” with Sean Hirons.

 

1. Favourite Business Tool?

 

n8n – I try to automate everything

 

2. One Lesson You Learned the Hard Way?

 

Focus isn’t a mood; it’s an operating system. Context switching as a founder is crazy and it can look like speed but it often steals outcomes.

 

3. One Future Trend You’re Watching?

 

AI-powered learning – watch this space.

 

4. One Quote You Live By?

 

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts”.

 

5. One Book or Podcast You Recommend?

 

“The Courage To Be Disliked” by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga.

 

Want to be featured as TechRound’s Founder of the Week? Know someone who deserves to be recognised as a founder making waves in the startup landscape? Find out more about this weekly feature and how to get involved here.