Seed Of The Week: Edumapper

French startup funding may have plunged nearly 50% in February, but that didn’t stop Edumapper from closing a €5 million Seed round just a few days after launching its website. Its platform – which helps students find and apply to the right higher education programs - attracted top-tier VC investors without even being an AI-powered startup. (At least, not yet.)

So, how did they pull this off?

It might have something to do with the pedigree of its founders, three of whom previously built, scaled, and sold Meilleursagents, the real estate valuation platform. The trio of repeat entrepreneurs - Sébastien de Lafond, Julien Cheyssiel, and Jordan Sanial have been joined in their latest venture by Valentine Mandon.

In a funding climate where Seed rounds of this caliber are relatively scarce, I caught up with Edumapper co-founders Mandon and de Lafond to find out what they’re building - and how they managed to secure such a strong raise so early on.

What?

Edumapper is a platform - like an online catalog with filters - that helps post-baccalaureate students navigate the complex landscape of French higher education. 

Leveraging open-source data, Edumapper provides students with details of the higher education courses available to them whilst also calculating their chances of admission into their selected courses. The goal is to help students make informed and realistic choices about their academic future.

The company was officially launched in October 2024, although the team had been working on it behind the scenes for almost a year. Their website went live just last week and is already gaining significant traction.

Why?

For a majority of students in France, choosing the right higher education path is a major challenge. With over 30,ooo post-baccalaureate education courses available, finding reliable information on each course and its admission requirements can be an arduous task. Edumapper wants to make that easier.

According to Edumapper's founders, the education search market is dominated by marketing-driven platforms that focus more on generating leads for universities and schools than on genuinely guiding students.

“Many existing information solutions rely on gimmicks or marketing tactics rather than solving the real problem. The current system doesn’t provide meaningful, personalized guidance for students,” de Lafond explained. “What’s more, there is a lot of inequality, notably for students in the countryside or in less favorable urban areas, who don’t benefit from the same network effect and information as those from larger towns and with middle-class backgrounds.”

Edumapper wants to create a fairer approach by combining data science and transparency to offer all students and families everywhere high-quality, unbiased advice. 

Under The Hood

For now, Edumapper hasn’t integrated machine learning into its model. But that’s about to change, according to its co-founders.

At its core, Edumapper is powered by data. With over 30,000 post-baccalaureate programs available in France, accurately listing, organizing, and classifying them requires extensive web scraping, in-depth market research, and strong data science expertise.

This approach draws a clear parallel to MeilleursAgents, which transformed the real estate market by leveraging data-driven insights to assess property values, evaluate agents, and provide online estimation tools for homeowners.

Edumapper allows students to navigate a vast database of more than 25,000 post-baccalaureate courses - such as BTS, Licence, and CPES - enabling them to compare programs and make informed decisions about their higher education path.

Edumapper also features an admissions prediction tool, helping students assess their likelihood of acceptance into various programs. However, as Mandon emphasized, the platform prioritizes transparency and guidance over absolute certainty.

Rather than providing definitive predictions, Edumapper introduces a Confidence Index (e.g., 2/5, 4/5), offering students a probability-based assessment while acknowledging the inherent uncertainties of the admissions process.

“We want to empower students to make informed, realistic choices, but we remain humble,” said Mandon. “Our calculations are grounded in solid data, yet no model can predict human decisions with absolute certainty.”

Beyond admissions, Edumapper leverages data to give students insight into their future careers—helping them understand the types of jobs they can expect after graduation and the companies they might work for.

So far, the platform has mapped over 25,000 post-baccalaureate programs, with ongoing data collection to ensure accuracy and relevance. Looking ahead, the team plans to expand Edumapper to include advanced degrees—such as Master's and PhD programs—both in France and internationally, along with institution ratings to further guide students in their educational journey.

Business Model & Strategic Partners 

Edumapper is free for schools and universities—and the team has no plans to charge students.

“Our guidance and analytics tools will always be free for students, and higher education institutions won’t have to pay to be listed on the platform,” says co-founder Sébastien de Lafond. “In the long run, we’ll adopt a freemium model, offering paid features that allow schools to better showcase their programs—without compromising our neutrality. Our priority is to keep Edumapper student-first, rather than catering to paying clients.”

Beyond being just a tech platform, Edumapper aims to create a hybrid model - one that blends data-driven, AI-powered insights with human expertise. To support this vision, the team is already in discussions with leading education specialists, like Claire Challier, who brings 20 years of experience in the field.

Who?

The Edumapper team consists of 6 people:

• Valentin Mandon 
• Sébastien de Lafond, 
• Julien Cheyssial 
• Jordan Sanial
• Julien Randon-Furling a data scientist from the Borelli Center (ENS Paris Saclay)
• Pierre Quiros.

“We are lucky to have Julien and Pierre whose strong background in data science and applied mathematics enabled us to sort the data, create the filters, and build the algorithms necessary for calculating admission predictions,” Mandon said.

Investors & Key Figures

Edumapper’s €5 million funding round was backed by five top-tier VC investors: Daphni, Eurazeo (through the HEC Ventures fund), Ring Capital, and Kima Ventures.

Pierre-Yves Meerschman, Partner at Daphni, said Edumapper targets a critical market: “France, with 42% of its population holding higher education degrees, faces international competition in the race for talent, no matter where it comes from.”

According to de Lafond, this successful funding round came down to three key factors:

1. The clear, pressing need for better student guidance.
2. The entrepreneurial experience of the three co-founders from MeilleursAgents.
3. The undeniable chemistry between the co-founders.

“We initially met Valentine to compare notes, as she was working on a similar project with a different co-founder,” explained Sébastien de Lafond. “We hit it off, kept talking, and when her co-founder moved on to different opportunities, we decided to join forces. A few months later, we co-founded Edumapper. I truly believe the chemistry between the four of us, along with our complementary generational perspectives, played a key role in attracting our investors.”

The Edumapper team plans to use the fresh cash to strengthen their team with tech, data, student orientation, and marketing experts.

Competitors

Edumapper’s home-grown competitors include companies like L’Étudiant (A historic player with €60M in revenue), Studyrama (Focused on an event-based model), and Diplomeo (A lead-generation platform, now acquired by HelloWork).

However, Mandon and Le Lafond said these platforms often monetize by selling student data to institutions, rather than prioritizing long-term guidance. For families who can afford it, private career advisors are an option - but there remains a significant gap in structured, widely accessible alternatives for the broader public.

The Road to Series A

With 4,000 student accounts created in just four days since the platform’s launch last week, Edumapper is gaining significant early traction. 

The next steps will include expanding the database to feature international programs, building analytics tools that provide valuable insights for schools (initially free, with monetization plans for the future), developing AI-powered features to improve and personalize student recommendations, and growing its community of students, parents, and educators to improve knowledge and experience feedback.

The team’s ultimate goal is to become the leading platform for academic guidance in France and beyond thereby helping to shape a more equitable and informed educational landscape.

Mandon said: "We will have succeeded when we become an essential player in academic guidance, helping every high school student - regardless of their background or path - make the best possible choice for their future."