Education technology startup BridgeU Ltd. has raised seed funding of $2.5m in a round led by Octopus Investments that include Fresco Capital, Seedcamp, Jonnie Goodwin (Lepe Partners/Founders Forum) and Deborah Quazzo (GSV Capital).

Founded in 2013 BridgeU offers an adaptive university preparation and careers guidance platform for students and secondary schools for use both its home country of the United Kingdom, and internationally.

The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform utilizes machine learning to calculate and make recommendations to students on the best courses and appropriate Universities for them based on their academic indicators along with their social and vocational preferences.

BridgeU says it also helps students leverage their unique strengths throughout the applications process by assisting them to build compelling CVs and write powerful essays that facilitate them in expressing themselves and communicate their achievements and aspirations.

For educational institutions the service is said to streamline the admissions support process for faculty, significantly reducing admin time for teachers and advisors through the use of built‐in task management, smart notifications, and process automation.

“Making a decision about which University to attend can be daunting and difficult,” Octopus Investments Partner Rebecca Hunt said in a statement sent to SiliconANGLE. “BridgeU uses technology in an adaptive, intelligent way to understand and support the needs of each individual student as he or she makes this crucial decision.”

Smart solution

Despite advances in the digital age the processing of College and University placings, let alone the matching of students to schools, is still rooted primarily in old fashioned practices, and this is where BridgeU steps in.

You could potentially call the company a game changer but what really stands out isn’t that the solution is particularly innovative as an idea, but that it’s an established idea in other business and community sectors that is being implemented in a space that most definitely needs it.

The service has already received praise prior to this round, having been selected as an “All Star” to represent European EdTech at SXSW‐ Edu, and recently, and was named one of the top 20 fastest‐growing, most innovative EdTech startups in Europe.

Including the new round, BridgeU has raised $2.9 million to-date.

The company said it would use the new funding to expand its core product to support earlier stage student decision‐making, and diversify the range of post‐program offerings to include alternatives to traditional higher education, such as apprenticeships and vocational training opportunities, foundation degrees and online programs.

Image credit: screenshot/BridgeU