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There are broadly two approaches I see when EdTech companies build their teams.
The first says:
Hire the best salesperson, product person or marketer you can find. They can learn education later.
The second says:
If we sell to educators, schools and universities, we need people who already understand education.
So which approach works better?
My answer is neither on its own.
The strongest EdTech teams combine education expertise with strong commercial, product and operational capability.
And there is data behind why both parts matter.
Some EdTech companies deliberately recruit people from SaaS, consumer technology and other industries.
The logic makes sense.
Someone who has scaled a £20m SaaS business, built a high performing sales organisation or grown a consumer product to millions of users brings knowledge that an early stage EdTech company may desperately need.
We can see this approach in current EdTech recruitment.
Outsmart, a higher education startup founded by former Duolingo executives, is currently looking for a Principal Product Manager with five to eight years of consumer product experience. Education experience is not listed as a requirement.
Campus, which is building a technology enabled college, similarly asks its Senior Product Managers for strong product management or software experience, customer empathy, analytical thinking and the ability to move quickly. Previous education experience is not required.
There are clear benefits to this approach.
People coming from other technology companies can bring:
→ Mature sales processes
→ Strong commercial discipline
→ Product growth expertise
→ Experience scaling internationally
→ Different ways of solving established problems
→ Knowledge from sectors that may be further ahead technologically
EdTech should not become an echo chamber where everyone has worked for the same five education companies.
Fresh thinking matters.
But there is a risk.
Education has a learning curve of its own.
Schools and universities do not buy like normal SaaS businesses.
There are academic calendars.
Procurement processes.
Budget cycles.
Safeguarding considerations.
Multiple stakeholders.
Pedagogical questions.
Implementation challenges.
And sometimes a surprising number of people who need to agree before anything happens.
Government research into the English EdTech market found that purchasing decisions can involve schools, MATs, local authorities and different members of senior leadership depending on the size and purpose of the purchase.
Another Department for Education study found that schools and colleges relied on trusted EdTech partners because their expertise helped them choose technology that actually met their needs. Technology decisions were frequently collaborative, involving senior leaders, EdTech leads, department heads and other stakeholders.
That changes the sales conversation.
It also explains why some companies actively look for sector understanding.
Take Google for Education.
A current Account Manager role asks for technology sales experience, but specifically lists an understanding of school district buying cycles and budgeting processes among its preferred qualifications.
For a Google for Education Higher Education Solutions Engineer role in London and Stockholm, candidates need extensive technical sales, sales engineering or EdTech experience. Google also prefers candidates who understand the higher education sector, including its challenges and decision making processes.
Securly provides another good example.
The company serves more than 20 million students and describes its workforce as a combination of parents, former educators and technologists.
A recent Securly sales role specifically listed K12 teaching or administration experience and an EdTech background as highly preferred. The role also called for an understanding of K12 structures, stakeholders and decision making.
That isn't accidental.
They are selling into schools.
Understanding the customer has commercial value.
This isn't only an EdTech argument.
A major meta analysis of sales performance looked at decades of research into what makes salespeople successful.
Among the strongest factors associated with performance were selling related knowledge and adaptive selling.
Selling related knowledge had an effect of β = .28, while adaptiveness was β = .27.
Another meta analysis covering 155 samples and more than 31,000 salespeople found that adaptive selling increased self reported, manager rated and objective performance measures.
That distinction matters.
Knowing education isn't enough.
And knowing sales isn't enough.
The strongest combination is:
Sector knowledge + commercial judgement + adaptability.
This discussion shouldn't stop at sales.
If you are creating a product designed to change how somebody teaches or learns, somebody within the organisation needs to understand pedagogy.
ISTE's research based Teacher Ready framework evaluates EdTech products across five areas:
→ User experience and agency
→ Learning design
→ Digital pedagogy
→ Inclusivity
→ Assessment and data
Its guidance specifically treats pedagogical usability as separate from technical usability. A product may technically work perfectly while still being poorly designed for teaching and learning.
Digital Promise takes a similar approach.
Its ENCORE initiative brings educators, researchers and product developers together to design, test and refine EdTech products. Educators and students are directly involved in co designing tools so that products reflect classroom needs and are practical for real settings.
This doesn't mean every Product Manager needs to have been a teacher.
It means somebody with meaningful educational expertise needs to have influence over the product.
Otherwise, EdTech companies risk building technically impressive solutions for classrooms they don't fully understand.
Trust also matters enormously in education.
A Department for Education survey found that 58% of headteachers used education sector publications or websites when assessing EdTech efficacy.
43% used user reviews.
And 56% conducted their own internal evaluation before making procurement decisions, rising to 67% among secondary schools.
Separate government research found that personal recommendations between teachers can drive EdTech adoption. It also found examples where products created by educators initially spread through their existing professional networks, creating clusters of roughly 50 to 200 schools using particular products.
That tells us something important.
Education is a trust based market.
Relationships matter.
Credibility matters.
Understanding the customer's world matters.
Someone who has spent years working with schools or universities doesn't simply bring a list of contacts.
They bring context.
This is where I think EdTech companies sometimes swing too far in the opposite direction.
Previous education experience is not evidence that someone will succeed in sales.
A former teacher may understand schools brilliantly and still dislike prospecting, negotiation or commercial pressure.
Someone moving from higher education may understand university procurement but struggle with the pace of a Series A company.
For a commercial hire, I would still want to see:
Business acumen
Can they connect customer problems with commercial value?
Commercial curiosity
Do they want to understand revenue, pipeline, competitors and market opportunity?
Adaptability
Can they change their approach depending on the customer?
Resilience
Can they deal with rejection and long sales cycles?
Communication
Can they translate complicated products into clear customer outcomes?
Learning mindset
Will they test new approaches to generating pipeline, outreach and the sales process?
Education expertise should strengthen these qualities.
It shouldn't replace them.
I haven't found credible research that directly compares two groups of EdTech companies and concludes that companies hiring former educators outperform companies that don't.
I wouldn't pretend that evidence exists.
What the research does tell us is that customer and market knowledge matter in sales, adaptive selling matters, pedagogy matters in EdTech product design, and education purchasing relies heavily on trust, evidence and sector understanding.
That points towards a third model.
For Sales
Look for commercial capability and education market fluency.
A former teacher with strong commercial instincts can be brilliant.
So can an experienced SaaS salesperson who has spent several years selling successfully into education.
For Customer Success
Education experience can be particularly valuable because implementation requires an understanding of what happens after the contract is signed.
For Product
Hire great Product Managers, but make sure educators, learning scientists or people with deep education experience have genuine influence over discovery and product decisions.
For Marketing and Product Marketing
Understanding the language customers actually use can be as important as knowing the latest SaaS marketing playbook.
For Engineering
Sector experience may be much less important. But engineers still need access to people who understand the users and context they're building for.
At RecruitHer, I don't believe every EdTech vacancy should go to a former teacher.
And I don't believe five years of SaaS experience automatically makes someone the strongest candidate either.
I look for the intersection.
People who understand education.
People who understand the customer.
People with the commercial, product or operational ability to turn that understanding into results.
And importantly, people from a wider range of backgrounds who can bring different experiences and perspectives into the organisations creating products for our learners.
Because EdTech isn't simply technology.
It sits at the intersection of technology, business and education.
Your teams should understand all three.
The question I'd encourage every EdTech founder to ask isn't:
“Have they worked in EdTech before?”
It's:
“Do we have enough people around this table who genuinely understand the people we're building and selling this product for?”
That is a much more useful hiring question.
Not always. Former teachers can bring strong sector knowledge, customer understanding and credibility, but success also depends on commercial skills, adaptability, communication and business acumen.
It can be a strong advantage. Salespeople who understand education buying cycles, budgets, stakeholders and procurement can often have more relevant customer conversations and build credibility faster.
Yes. Many education professionals already have skills that transfer well into consultative sales, including relationship building, communication, stakeholder management and problem solving. They may still need support developing commercial skills such as pipeline generation, negotiation and forecasting.
Not every employee needs pedagogical expertise, but EdTech companies should have people who understand teaching and learning involved in product discovery, design and decision making.
Neither is automatically more valuable. The strongest candidate often combines commercial or product capability with a good understanding of the education market and its customers.
Education has specific buying cycles, procurement processes, stakeholder groups and operational challenges. Understanding these can help teams communicate more effectively with schools, universities and other education organisations.
Education experience alone cannot guarantee a shorter sales cycle. However, strong sector knowledge can help salespeople identify the right stakeholders, ask better questions and build trust sooner, which may help opportunities progress more effectively.
Look for a combination of commercial judgement, customer understanding, adaptability, resilience, communication skills and the ability to learn. Experience within education or EdTech can strengthen this profile.
EdTech products serve a wide range of learners, educators and institutions. Building teams with different backgrounds and perspectives can help companies understand customers more deeply and reduce the risk of designing products around a narrow set of experiences.
