Curriculum intelligence for Aotearoa — the business case for Aotearoa New Zealand's canonical teaching resource platform.
Executive Summary
Te Kete Ako is an AI-powered teaching resource platform built specifically for the New Zealand curriculum. It indexes 12,929 curriculum-aligned resources against 10,500 verbatim achievement objectives, with triple-search architecture (keyword, semantic graph, vector). It is live, has paying subscribers, and is operated by a practising NZ secondary teacher. The target market is 53,000 registered NZ teachers, with a secondary-teacher TAM of $3.3M ARR at 1% penetration. The immediate funding goal is the Velocity Ideas Challenge ($1,000), Velocity $100k Challenge ($25k seed), and Callaghan Innovation R&D support.
Live platform · 12,929 resources · Triple-search · Stripe billing · Paying subscribers · Three production MCP servers · Solo-built and operated
500 subscribers · Primary curriculum expansion · First B2B school pilot · Workshop series running · Callaghan / Velocity funding secured
Canonical NZ curriculum intelligence layer · 2,000+ subscribers · Kāhui ako B2B licensing · NZTE export pathway · $480k+ ARR
Lean Canvas
Find the right NZ curriculum resource — in seconds, not hours.
AI search that understands the curriculum the way a teacher does — because it was built by one.
Direct (tekete.co.nz) · Teacher networks (Facebook, PPTA) · Community AI workshops (Raglan) · Education Gazette · LinkedIn · Word of mouth · GitHub (technical credibility)
Fixed: Supabase (database + auth + edge functions) · Neon Postgres (10GB free) · Qdrant (vector store) · Cloudflare (CDN + tunnels)
Variable: Claude API (AI generation) · Stripe fees (2.7% + 30c) · Development time
Current burn: ~$200 NZD/month infrastructure
Te Tiriti: $18.40/mo · $184/yr
Kaiako Pro: $20.99/mo · $199/yr
AI Workshops: $150–$250 + per-person fee
Future: B2B school licensing · Kāhui ako institutional access
Problem
The 2023 NZ curriculum refresh introduced revised achievement objectives across nearly every learning area. For teachers — particularly those early in their careers — this meant a significant increase in planning load. Finding a resource is no longer sufficient; verifying its alignment with the correct objective for the correct year level is a separate and time-consuming task.
The problem is structurally invisible. It doesn't show up in school performance data or teacher wellbeing surveys as "resource search time." It shows up as teacher burnout, late-night planning, and the gradual erosion of professional confidence in curriculum decisions.
Existing solutions are insufficient: TKI (Teaching & Learning) is a government repository but is not searchable by AI; Teachers Pay Teachers is US-focused and not NZ-aligned; general AI tools (ChatGPT, Gemini) hallucinate curriculum content and aren't grounded in the actual NZ curriculum document.
TKI — not AI-searchable. Teachers Pay Teachers — US-focused. ChatGPT — hallucinates NZ curriculum content. Google — no curriculum awareness.
53,000 registered teachers in NZ. If each spends 2 hours/week on resource search, that's 5.5M hours/year of profession-wide inefficiency — equivalent to 2,750 full-time equivalent roles.
Solution
Te Kete Ako's core advantage is its search architecture: three independent search pathways that work in combination, each compensating for the other's weaknesses.
Fast full-text search across titles, tags, year levels, and curriculum areas. Instant results for known queries.
Semantic graph traversal across curriculum structure. Understands related objectives, prerequisite concepts, cross-strand connections, and mātauranga Māori relationships.
Embedding-based similarity search. Finds semantically relevant resources even when exact terminology differs — critical for te reo / English cross-search.
Market Analysis
All 53,000 registered NZ teachers at blended subscription ARPU of $240/yr
Secondary teachers (18,000) plus teacher educators and early primary adopters at same ARPU
2,000 secondary subscribers (11% of SAM) + 15 B2B school contracts by Year 3
B2B upside: New Zealand has approximately 2,500 secondary schools. A per-school institutional license at $2,000–$5,000/year represents a $5M–$12.5M market independent of individual subscriptions. This segment is the Year 3+ growth engine — but requires a proven product and subscriber base first.
Business Model
Te Tiriti plan: $18.40/mo · $184/yr
Kaiako Pro: $20.99/mo · $199/yr
Direct-to-teacher, monthly or annual billing via Stripe. Customer Portal for self-service management. BETA100 coupon (100% off, 50 uses) for early adopter growth.
Half-day: $150 base + $20/participant
Full-day: $250 base + $30/participant
Community AI literacy workshops for non-technical adults. Raglan first, then regional NZ. Builds brand trust and community goodwill alongside direct revenue.
Target (2027+): $2,000–$5,000/school/yr
Format: Unlimited staff access, usage analytics, kāhui ako coordination tools
School clusters and institutional purchasers replace the individual subscription model at scale. Pipeline development begins once subscriber base exceeds 500.
Competitive Analysis
| Tool | NZ Curriculum alignment | AI search | Te Reo / mātauranga | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TKI (MoE) | ✅ Official | ❌ Basic keyword only | ⚠️ Some te reo content | Comprehensive but unsearchable |
| Teachers Pay Teachers | ❌ US focused | ⚠️ Basic | ❌ None | Wrong market entirely |
| ChatGPT / Gemini | ⚠️ Hallucinated | ✅ General AI | ⚠️ Limited / inaccurate | Generates plausible misinformation |
| Google / Pinterest | ❌ No curriculum awareness | ❌ No semantic search | ❌ None | Where teachers go by default |
| Te Kete Ako | ✅ 10,500 objectives indexed | ✅ Triple-search AI | ✅ Structurally embedded | Purpose-built for NZ |
Financial Projections
All figures in NZD. Projections are conservative — based on direct subscriber growth with no viral or partnership acceleration.
| Metric | Year 1 (2026) | Year 2 (2027) | Year 3 (2028) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Active subscribers | 100 | 500 | 2,000 |
| Avg. subscription ARPU | $228/yr | $237/yr | $240/yr |
| Subscription ARR | $22,800 | $118,500 | $480,000 |
| Workshop revenue | $2,000 | $8,000 | $20,000 |
| B2B licensing | — | $6,000 | $30,000 |
| Total revenue | $24,800 | $132,500 | $530,000 |
| Infrastructure costs | $2,400 | $6,000 | $18,000 |
| Stripe fees (~3%) | $744 | $3,975 | $15,900 |
| Gross margin | $21,656 | $122,525 | $496,100 |
| Grant funding (projected) | $1,000–$25,000 | $25,000–$50,000 | NZTE eligible |
Year 1: Organic growth only, no paid marketing. Year 2: First workshop series, one B2B pilot. Year 3: B2B licensing launched, content expanded to primary learning areas. Infrastructure costs grow with usage but remain low due to self-hosted Neo4j/Qdrant architecture.
Grant & Funding Pipeline
Each funding round builds on the previous. The Ideas Challenge entry is the seed document; the $100k Challenge lean canvas deepens it; Callaghan and NZTE follow once traction is demonstrated.
| Opportunity | Timing | Value | Rationale | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Velocity Ideas Challenge University of Auckland |
Closes 11 May 2026 | Up to $1,000 | Arts & Education + Kura Roa Award. UoA student eligible. | ● Active |
| Regional Business Partner Network | Now | Free advisory + up to $5k | Immediate. Business advisors + small grants for registered NZ businesses. | ◆ Ready to apply |
| Velocity $100k Challenge University of Auckland |
Opens 30 Jun 2026 | $25k seed + VentureLab | Full lean canvas. Same UoA student eligibility. Incubator access. | ◆ Preparing |
| Callaghan Innovation R&D Tax Incentive |
Ongoing (annual claim) | 15% tax credit on R&D | Eligible on AI/ML development spend. Low effort once registered. | ○ Year 1+ |
| Te Puni Kōkiri Māori business development |
Ongoing | Variable | Strong Te Tiriti-centred design angle. Mātauranga Māori structurally embedded. | ○ Year 1+ |
| NZTE Market Development | Scale phase | Variable (export-focused) | When platform is export-ready — Pacific nations, other Commonwealth curricula. | ○ Year 3+ |
Appendix
The following is the verbatim 1,000-word entry submitted to the University of Auckland Velocity Ideas Challenge 2026, targeting the Arts & Education Faculty Prize and the Kura Roa Award.
Tobias Croydon-McRae · GDipTchg Secondary · Waipapa Taumata Rau · May 2026
New Zealand teachers are resource-rich and time-poor. The 2023 curriculum refresh introduced new achievement objectives across almost every learning area. For classroom teachers — many of whom are new to the profession, many of whom are managing 30+ ākonga across mixed year groups — that refresh meant relearning what "good alignment" looks like while still teaching full time.
The result is a familiar pattern: teachers search Google, find something that looks right, spend twenty minutes checking whether it actually aligns with the correct achievement objective, discover it doesn't, and start again. Multiply that by every lesson, every week. The problem isn't a shortage of teaching resources. It's the cost of finding, evaluating, and contextualising the right one for the right learner at the right moment.
This is not a marginal inefficiency. It is one of the biggest invisible taxes on the profession.
Te Kete Ako ("the basket of knowledge") is an AI-powered teaching resource platform built specifically for the New Zealand curriculum. It runs a triple-search architecture — keyword, semantic graph, and vector — across 12,929 curriculum-aligned resources indexed against 10,500 verbatim achievement objectives from the NZ Curriculum.
A teacher searching for "whakapapa and identity, Year 9 Social Studies" doesn't get a Google result. They get resources that have been semantically matched to the correct achievement objective, filtered by year level and learning area, ranked by relevance. The search understands curriculum structure the way a curriculum coordinator would — because it was built by someone who is both a teacher and the engineer.
The platform is live at tekete.co.nz. It has paying subscribers. It runs on real infrastructure: Supabase for user management and Row-Level Security, Qdrant for vector search, Neo4j for graph traversal, Stripe for subscriptions. This is not a prototype or a proof of concept. It is a functioning product used by NZ teachers today.
Te Kete Ako is not "bicultural in places." Te Reo Māori is integrated throughout the platform interface, resource metadata, and search vocabulary. Curriculum content grounded in mātauranga Māori is tagged, indexed, and surfaced through the same search pathways as any other resource — not siloed into a separate section.
The platform embeds te reo naturally because its builder uses te reo naturally. That design choice matters: teachers who see a platform treating te reo as an afterthought will treat it as an afterthought in their own practice. The reverse is also true.
This reflects the commitment in Te Tiriti o Waitangi to tino rangatiratanga — the right of Māori to exercise authority over their own knowledge systems. A platform that serves NZ teachers has a responsibility to model that commitment structurally, not decoratively.
New Zealand has approximately 53,000 registered teachers. The platform currently targets secondary teachers (Years 9–13), a segment of roughly 18,000. At $18.40/month per subscriber, even 1% penetration represents $3.3M in annual recurring revenue.
The adjacent market is larger: primary teachers, teacher educators, school leadership teams, and the Ministry of Education's own curriculum support infrastructure. The platform's architecture is subject-agnostic — what works for Social Studies works for Science, Mathematics, or Technology.
Beyond subscriptions, Te Kete Ako runs a community AI workshop series for non-technical adults in Whaingāroa (Raglan) — café owners, artists, local business operators who want to understand and use AI without needing a computer science background. This creates a second revenue stream and builds the kind of community trust that a school-facing EdTech platform depends on.
I am a practising secondary teacher completing my GDipTchg at Waipapa Taumata Rau this year, specialising in Social Studies and Digital Technologies. In my first year of classroom teaching, I helped lift literacy achievement by over a full stanine at a school carrying significant challenges — not through a programme, but through understanding what individual ākonga needed and building from there.
I built Te Kete Ako because I experienced the resource problem from the inside. I know what a teacher on a busy Tuesday morning actually needs — and I know what they will not pick up, however impressive the technology underneath. That understanding is not available to an EdTech company that has never taught a class.
I have been working with AI systems since ChatGPT launched in November 2022. I run three production MCP servers, a hybrid RAG pipeline, and a full-stack web platform — all built and maintained solo. The combination of classroom instinct and technical capability is what makes Te Kete Ako different from both teacher-made resources and enterprise EdTech products.
The immediate goal is to deepen curriculum coverage, expand to primary learning areas, and grow the subscriber base. Within 18 months: a B2B offering for school clusters and kāhui ako, replacing the individual subscription model with institutional licensing. Within three years: the canonical curriculum intelligence layer for Aotearoa New Zealand — the platform every teacher, every kura, and every curriculum advisor reaches for first.
The Velocity Ideas Challenge is the start of a longer funding arc. This entry is the seed of a full business plan targeting the Velocity $100k Challenge in June, Callaghan Innovation R&D support, and NZTE market development funding as the platform scales toward export.
Te Kete Ako exists because NZ teachers deserve better tools — built by someone who understands the classroom, the curriculum, and the code.