MentorShow closes $15.8 million Series A to bring famous experts to your screen –

Léo Dubert and Mathieu Moreno had a similar idea that they wanted to implement independently: to get famous and talented people to teach their craft in an exciting way. They happened to suggest to the same person to give a masterclass on their respective platforms, and that person told them to contact each other.

Fast forward a few years and MentorShow has just closed a €15 million ($15.8 million) Series A funding round, with participation from investors such as Credit Mutuel Innovation, Educapital, Left Lane Capital and a number of angel investors. The first tranche of the €10 million ($10.5 million) Series A round came early last year and was preceded by a €4.5 million ($4.7 million) seed funding round and a €500,000 ($527,000) pre-seed funding round.

Currently, the half-million strong user base can watch Karim Benzema teach football shooting, Pierre Gagnaire teaches cooking, Kung teaches electronic dance music, Marc Levy teaches writing and much more.

Founded in 2020, the company started at a time when everything was being digitized and “edutainment” experienced a huge boom during the pandemic.

“It was a good time for e-learning. The market is undergoing a complete evolution and Covid has accelerated this evolution. They saw the opportunity and we are now riding the wave,” Benjamin Blachère, operations manager at MentorShow, told GCV.

The biggest name in the world in the business of famous people giving lessons is US-based Masterclass, which boasts a huge roster of globally known faces. However, MentorShow does not see them as direct competition as their focus is specifically on the French and European market and serves local demand.

The capital will be invested extensively in expanding the content offering and geographical expansion.

“As you can imagine, it’s a lot of hustle and bustle,” says Blachère of the process of bringing a new star or “mentor” on board. It starts with market research – quantitative and qualitative measures, including surveys and interviews, to find out what people want. After that, they use an internal system to determine who the best and most popular potential mentors are in those categories. Then they filter them by credibility and expertise. A dedicated team is in charge of the actual outreach, and a “curriculum team” is there to develop the lesson alongside the star.

A crucial prerequisite for bringing someone on board and making their content interesting is the enthusiasm of the mentor.

“We find that mentors are often very interested and flattered and want to share their experiences. For them, this is a new channel to share experiences. Many of our mentors have written books or held seminars in person, but we offer a new channel that has not existed before, at least in Europe,” said Blachère.

Some of the mentors, perhaps not used to the large production sets and camera crews here, may have needed some encouragement to overcome any intimidation of the setup, but generally the process is smooth.

For the only corporate investor on the capitalization table, Credit Mutuel Innovation, it’s a somewhat unusual investment, but one that Blachère says they’re excited about. “For them, it’s actually not a standard investment. Usually they’re more in the B2B space, but they’re so excited about it that they’re really involved in everything we do. They’re really interested in opening up their network, sharing knowledge and giving access to experts. Money is very important, but even more important is the expertise and network that you get from these investors.”