When people talk about founders, the conversation almost always starts with growth.
- Grow the business
- Grow the team
- Grow the market
- Grow the valuation
But one thing nobody really tells you about being a founder is this: your job isn’t just to grow the organisation. Your job is to protect it.
The founder role isn’t just about driving growth. It’s about being the custodian of the organisation – protecting the mission, the people, the culture and the integrity of the business.
That mindset shapes how I think about leadership at Gaia Learning.
We believe all children should have access to inspirational education, whatever their background, challenge or need.
At Gaia, our brilliant team – supported by our Bloom platform helps make that possible.
When your work directly impacts children and families, you quickly realise growth can’t just be measured in financial metrics and board deck slides.
Growth also means enabling stability and protection:
- Protecting the children, families and schools we support
- Protecting the team and giving them the clarity and environment to do their best work
- Protecting the trust of investors and stakeholders
- Protecting the organisation itself – its reputation, financial health and infrastructure
Founders hear a lot about moving fast and scaling quickly.
There’s far less conversation about building something resilient.
Protecting the financials isn’t just about watching costs. It’s about ensuring the organisation grows in a healthy and sustainable way.
Protecting reputation means making thoughtful decisions and sometimes deliberately moving slowly.
Protecting infrastructure means building systems and a culture that help people succeed.
When you think like that, growth tends to follow.
On track for £1m revenue
At Gaia Learning, we’re on the journey towards our first £1m in revenue – and we’re not far away.
Much of that progress has come from deeply understanding the children we support – thinking fast but choosing to move carefully.
When you listen properly to what people need and build around it, momentum accelerates.
In the past 18 months, we’ve focused on operational efficiency.
Over the last year, we’ve achieved 94 per cent revenue growth while increasing costs by just 22 per cent, allowing us to scale while supporting the organisation’s long-term health.
One of the most important lessons I’ve learned building a company is this: the more human you are as a leader, the stronger your leadership becomes.
There’s often pressure to appear certain. But building a company is messy, uncertain and constantly evolving.
Good leadership requires a spine of steel and a heart of gold.
The spine of steel means holding the line on your values, mission and the decisions that protect the organisation – even when they’re difficult.
The heart of gold is how you show up for people: with honesty, empathy and openness.
When you lead like that, people trust you.
When teams understand the reality, they lean in.
When investors understand the journey, they support you.
When stakeholders trust you, they stay with you.
Authenticity builds momentum
Authenticity builds momentum. It builds loyalty. And it creates a business people believe in.
Another reality of being a founder is constantly shifting perspective -looking across the whole business while also diving deep.
One moment you zoom out and think about the bigger picture – what’s happening in your industry, how policy might shift, where the organisation needs to be in three or five years.
The next moment you’re zoomed in, working alongside your team to unblock a problem or solve something practical.
You’re constantly switching between those two lenses.
And somewhere in the middle of all that, like most founders today, you probably spend more time on LinkedIn than you ever expected.
Growth will always matter.
But if there’s one thing nobody tells you as a founder, it’s this: your real job is to protect the organisation – its mission, its people and the trust that holds it together – so it can keep growing and creating impact and value long into the future.
Bio: Kate Heath is the CEO and founder of Gaia Learning, an education technology company transforming support for children with special educational needs. Gaia combines expert teaching with its proprietary platform, Bloom, to deliver personalised learning for learners with SEN. Kate Heath founded the company with a mission to ensure every child can access inspirational education, whatever their background, challenge or need.