When Anna Sexton started working as a coach in 2010, “it was seen as a bit of a weird thing,” she says. But today she’s an award winner for her work.
Sexton, who is also the founder of creative coaching agency Open to Create, was recently announced as the winner of the first ever EdTech Startup Coach Awards, run by the edtech startup accelerator DOHE. As part of its 24-week accelerator programme, DOHE pairs startups with coaches to identify their key objectives with the goal of achieving them by the end of the programme.
A startup coach is an experienced business professional with extensive knowledge of startups who guides founders in growing their company.
One of the entrepreneurs Sexton was paired with was Ryan Bell, the founder of Tech Balance, a mental health support tool for higher and further education students. Sexton says the weekly sessions were spent helping Bell to stay motivated and on track with his goals — as well as filling him in on the bureaucracy that so often exists in education institutions.
Coaching can be hugely beneficial to startups. According to one survey, company execs report an average ROI of six times what they paid for their coaching sessions. Tech giant Intel even reckons it has increased its profit margin by $1bn per year thanks to its coaching programme.
Yet, according to Sifted’s 2024 mental health survey, only 28% of founders see a coach regularly. So why aren’t more of them doing it?
The benefits
Sometimes it can be as simple as not knowing where to start or misinterpreting what a coach is and does, says Veronika Sucha, another DOHE EdTech Startup Coach Awards winner.
“There are different pillars to it,” she explains. “One of the coaches' roles is to help founders set the framework for how they can actually deliver their vision and strategy — which is crucial, because if you don’t you can waste a lot of time, effort, money and energy going the wrong way.”
She taught me that self-awareness, which I had in bucket loads, is not actually a great tool if you haven’t got self compassion.
Coaches also act as a soundboard, giving founders a consistent place to go to chew over problems. Most crucially, they seek to support the founder to make decisions themselves — becoming a better leader in the process.
“This is where coaching differs from other approaches, say mentoring or consulting,” Sucha says. “The coach’s role is to bring the answers and solutions out of them — it’s not me telling them what to do. [We] encourage the autonomy of thinking and the resourcefulness of the founder.”
Hugo Cheyne, the founder of edtech platform Trailblaze, was coached by Tina Neve, the founder of coaching and therapy service Human Decisions, and another EdTech Startup Coach Award winner, through DOHE.
“She opened up the concept of coaching as a toolbox of techniques I could use,” he says of Neve.
He adds that as well as helping him work towards his business goals, Neve coached him on a number of techniques to deal with the mental pressures of running a business, from 'butterfly pats', a grounding technique where you cross your hands in front of your chest and tap your body, to focusing on building self-compassion.
The practicalities
Working with a coach often starts by figuring out what concrete goals there are for the coaching sessions — to help a founder figure out their exit strategy, or to execute a business model pivot, for example — before the work begins on working towards that. The frequency of appointments — often weekly, sometimes monthly — depend on what’s being worked towards.
Coaching brings out the best in you.
“You have functional, practical objectives to work with but some of those objectives might be personal, like to be more resilient or agile,” says Neve.
Sexton says she uses things like personality tests — including the popular Gretchen Rubin tendencies quiz — to help clients better understand themselves, and what motivates them.
To get the most out of a coach though, you need to come into it knowing where you want to go, says Neve, who often works with clients who are still in employment and taking the very first steps towards starting a business.
“You might have a specific project and you want support to bring that to fruition, or you might be at the beginning of an idea and it’s about how to work out how you’ll do this,” she says.
“Coaching brings out the best in you, all the resources you may or may not know you have, and supports you to grow and develop on your journey.”
DOHE hosts startup coach awards every year with a £200k prize pot available. Next year’s awards will also include startup coaches outside of the edtech sector. For more information, click here.
