Founder & CEO / Treering / Redwood City, CA
He spent three decades building software at IBM Lotus, E*TRADE, and Scalix. Then, in 2009, he co-founded a company that decided the school yearbook was broken - and built something schools in four countries actually use.
There is a particular moment Kevin Zerber's co-founder Brady McCue carries from childhood: yearbook signing day. Every year, McCue sat it out. His family couldn't afford a copy. That specific memory - not a strategic insight, not a market analysis - became the gravitational center of what Treering would become.
Zerber, a Connecticut-raised software architect with a CS degree from the University of Connecticut and stints at IBM Lotus, E*TRADE, and Scalix under his belt, joined McCue and Aaron Greco to launch Treering in 2009. The premise was deliberately simple: every student gets two free custom pages. The platform pays for itself through volume printing, school fundraising, and a digital-first model that doesn't charge schools upfront.
By 2012, Treering was printing 125,000 yearbooks a year and serving more than 2,000 schools. The company raised a $3.6 million Series A that included Rich Barton - the co-founder of both Expedia and Zillow - and Mike McCue, Flipboard's CEO. Not a typical edtech cap table. These were people who recognized a genuine market dislocation when they saw one.
A Series B of $3 million followed in 2015. Then Treering kept building, quietly, for years. No flashy pivots. No rebrand-every-18-months restlessness. Just compounding execution in a space that most Silicon Valley founders would overlook: the school yearbook.
By 2025, the 10 millionth yearbook came off the press. The Inc. 5000 recognized Treering among America's fastest-growing private companies, ranking it #346 among software companies. The community had grown to 12 million members across the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Schools had raised more than $11.9 million through yearbook fundraising over the company's lifetime.
Zerber leads a team of about 130 people from Treering's headquarters at 303 Twin Dolphin Drive in Redwood City - a quiet address for a company making considerable noise in American education. He doesn't appear on many conference stages. He's not a frequent quote in the tech press. He's the kind of CEO whose company's numbers do the talking.
In January 2026, he appeared on the Growth Think Tank podcast to discuss adaptive leadership - the practice of treating excellence as a moving target rather than a fixed achievement. The conversation ran 25 minutes. Characteristically direct. Characteristically unflashy.
Treering has also planted over 4 million trees globally through Trees for the Future. Each tree is named after a school. It's the kind of detail that reveals how Zerber thinks about time - not in quarters, but in rings.
"Being on the 2025 Inc. 5000 list is a testament to the impact we're having in transforming how memories are captured and shared - a direct reflection of our innovative technology and user-centric experiences that are driving our growth."- Kevin Zerber, Founder & CEO, Treering
Treering's investor list tells a particular story. Rich Barton - who built Expedia, then Zillow, before founding Glassdoor - saw Treering early and wrote a check. So did Mike McCue, the CEO of Flipboard and a Netscape veteran. These are not people who invest in novelties.
The 2012 Series A was led by angel investors and included Second Avenue Partners (Mike Slade), Cedar Grove Investments (Tom Hughes), and Baleon Capital. The 2015 Series B added Sopris Capital Associates to the mix.
Total capital raised: $7.6 million. For a company serving 15,000+ schools with 130 employees, that number suggests something rare in tech: a business that grows on its own terms, at its own pace, without requiring perpetual outside fuel.
Zerber talks about leadership the way engineers talk about systems: in terms of feedback loops, iteration, and the absence of final states. On the Growth Think Tank podcast in January 2026, he described excellence not as a destination but as a direction. "Excellence is a moving target, not a fixed destination" is the kind of line that sounds simple and is actually hard to live.
He guided Treering through the COVID-19 pandemic without retreating. While many edtech companies stumbled over sudden remote-everything demands, Zerber's team pivoted quickly enough to turn the crisis into a growth phase - helping schools raise $1.6 million through yearbook sales when physical fundraising was completely off the table.
His approach to team building emphasizes mentorship and what he describes as "releasing attachment to perfect outcomes" - a philosophy that lets teams move faster and learn more honestly from failure. Trust, in Zerber's model, is built through consistent follow-through over time, not announced in an all-hands.
"Continuous improvement is an ongoing journey rather than a single initiative."- Kevin Zerber
"When I was in school, my family could not buy a yearbook. Every school yearbook signing day, I had to sit out. It was awful, and I didn't want any other kid to feel the same way."- Brady McCue, Treering Co-Founder (the story behind the mission)
The four countries are not an afterthought. US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand represent a deliberate expansion into English-speaking markets where the yearbook tradition exists but the technology hasn't kept up. Treering isn't chasing an international moonshot - it's methodically following the culture.
In August 2025, when Treering announced its Inc. 5000 recognition, it also unveiled something new: Treering Memories, a white-label AI-powered photobook platform. The announcement came alongside a brand refresh and a pivot into the travel industry.
At WTM London in November 2025, Treering Memories was exhibited as the world's first AI-powered photobook platform for the travel sector. The proposition: let travel companies, tour operators, and hospitality brands offer custom memory books to their customers - the same personalization engine that built 11 million school yearbooks, now applied to weddings, trips, and experiences.
It's a significant surface-area expansion. Zerber's team has spent 15+ years building software that turns crowd-sourced photos into printed physical objects at scale. That competency translates cleanly into the travel-memory space - a market where consumer expectations are high and existing products are largely generic.
Treering operates quietly but publicly. The company's social presence is company-focused rather than founder-focused - consistent with Zerber's approach to leadership.