Campus Founder Tade Oyerinde Attracted Billionaire Investors Focused On Education And Not Profit

Campus Founder Tade Oyerinde is backed by a group of billionaires looking to disrupt the education system.

Campus

Oyerinde is the founder of Campus, a two-year accredited school that hires part-time instructors from the top 50 universities nationally and is on a mission to ensure students can receive debt-free education, as AFROTECH™  previously reported. This is made possible through strategic decisions, including providing an education that can often be covered through a Pell grant and offering free laptops and Wi-Fi to most students, as he mentioned on the “Black Tech Green Money” podcast hosted by AFROTECH™ Brand Manager Will Lucas. Of the 2,600 students currently enrolled in the school, which offers associate degrees in areas such as information technology, business administration with applied AI, and paralegal studies, none of the online students have had to take on student loan debt, a feat which Oyerinde says he takes great pride in.

Oyerinde’s call to action in education stems from his upbringing. He comes from a family of educators. His paternal grandfather was a college dean, and his maternal grandfather was a high school principal. Additionally, his mother has a Ph.D. in education and homeschooled him and his siblings before she became a college dean, while his older sister became a professor. Although Oyerinde initially considered pursuing a path in aerospace engineering, there was always a pull toward education.

“I’ve always sort of been brainwashed at a deep level to think about how can education work, how can it be better? How can we make it work for more people? And so I think that’s probably deep in my core… I really didn’t plan to be an education entrepreneur or to work in this space. I actually went to university to study aerospace engineering. I started flying planes. I was going to be a pilot when I was 12, so that was my plan. And then I think, what’s the quote? ‘Everyone’s got a plan until they’re punched in the face’ or something like that, and that’s how these things go,” Oyerinde recalled.

Securing Support From Billionaires

Oyerinde’s plan has led to millions raised for education. Campus secured $29 million in a Series A round led by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Discord Founder Jason Citron in 2023. Two years later, $46 million was raised in a Series B round led by General Catalyst with participation from Altman and Citron once again, as well as Founders Fund, 8VC, Bloomberg Beta, Rethink Education, Figma Founder Dylan Field, Max Altman, Notion Founder Akshay Kothari, and more.

“Almost all of our investors are already billionaires… These guys are not investing in Campus to make more money. They’re already billionaires. What are they going to do with more money? Buy another ping pong table. That’s not the goal here. The goal here is to solve this massive problem for America,” Oyerinde mentioned.

Watch The Full Episode

To hear the full conversation with Oyerinde on “Black Tech Green Money,” click here.