From Scarcity to Abundance: Why We Built Starlight

From scarcity to abundance — when the right conditions are created, the orchard flourishes, just as teachers and schools can with the right support from Starlight.

When I first stepped into teaching, I didn’t realise just how much scarcity shaped the profession. Not scarcity of passion — teachers have that in abundance — but scarcity of time, of feedback, of meaningful opportunities to grow. You’d get a formal observation once a year, maybe twice if you were lucky. Feedback came days later, sometimes weeks. The moments that could have helped you grow the most? They slipped through the cracks.

For years, this scarcity wasn’t a failure of will — it was just the reality of how schools worked. Senior leaders couldn’t be in every room. Coaching was something everyone agreed was important but no one quite had the time or systems to do consistently. And without it, some of our best teachers were flying blind. Others were leaving the profession altogether.

But technology — especially AI — changes that equation completely. AI has this extraordinary quality: it doesn’t just optimise what exists, it makes possible what was impossible. It turns the bottlenecks of human time and capacity into opportunities for scale, for consistency, for abundance.

And that’s why we built Starlight.

We didn’t set out to replace human coaching. Quite the opposite — we set out to make sure every teacher could get the kind of feedback that, in the old world, was a rare luxury. Where before there was a handful of observations a year, now there can be dozens of micro-insights, each one specific, timely, and actionable.

It’s the same shift entrepreneurs in every sector are starting to see: when technology unlocks abundance, you stop asking “Who gets access?” and start asking “How can we make this even better for everyone?” That’s a thrilling question to work on.

For us, it’s deeply personal. We know what it feels like to walk out of a lesson wondering if you really hit the mark, wishing you had someone to talk it through with. We know the quiet frustration of knowing you could be better if only someone had the time to sit down with you, listen, and help you see what you can’t see yourself.

Starlight exists because we believe teachers deserve that — not once in a blue moon, but every single week if they want it. We believe in making coaching abundant, so no one has to choose between supporting the few or supporting the many.

And maybe that’s the real promise of AI: not the flash or the hype, but the quiet, consistent abundance it can create in the places that matter most.

The Insight Engine is written by Adam Sturdee, co-founder of Starlight — the UK’s first AI-powered coaching platform — and Assistant Headteacher at St Augustine’s Catholic College. This blog is part of a wider mission to support educators through meaningful reflection, not performance metrics. It documents the journey of building Starlight from the ground up, and explores how AI, when shaped with care, can reduce workload, surface insight, and help teachers think more deeply about their practice. Rooted in the belief that growth should be private, professional, and purposeful, The Insight Engine offers ideas and stories that put insight — not judgment — at the centre of development.

Get in touch:

🌐 coaching.software

🌐 starlightmentor.com

X / Twitter: @star21starlight

📧 Email: contact@starlightmentor.com