Tade Oyerinde is the founder and chancellor of Campus, a revolutionary online community college reimagining access to higher education. Starting with viral dorm-room startups, Tade’s journey took him from building UniRoulette and CampusWire to acquiring an accredited college and launching Campus. Today, Campus serves over 2,000 students, employs 240+ staff, and has raised $100M+ in venture capital, all while helping students graduate debt-free.
In this conversation, Tade shares the winding path to building Campus, including:
- Building viral products from a college dorm
- Pivoting away from unsustainable growth and recognizing false signals
- Learning the limitations of synchronous social platforms
- Discovering the adjunct professor pay gap—and turning it into a wedge
- The insight that top professors teach at community colleges too
- Why he acquired a college instead of starting one from scratch
- Building custom education software from the ground up
- Raising capital from Sam Altman, Jason Citron, and General Catalyst
- Why Campus prioritizes human support over AI
- Much more
🔑 Key Takeaways
- Viral ≠ Valuable: Tade learned early that virality alone doesn’t lead to retention or sustainable business models.
- Adjuncts are the secret weapon: Many top professors are adjuncts—underpaid and overlooked—yet open to better platforms.
- Perception ≠ quality: Community colleges often offer courses from the same professors as elite schools, but carry social stigma.
- Build infrastructure, not integrations: Campus runs fully on internally built tools for instruction, administration, and student support.
- Debt-free college is viable: Through Pell Grants and optimized economics, 86% of Campus students pay $0 out-of-pocket.
- Support at scale is human-powered: Every 50 students are supported by a real advisor, counselor, or coach—not AI.
- Raising was milestone-driven: Capital was unlocked at each inflection point—acquisition, accreditation, first students, scaled cohorts.
- Skepticism is a superpower: Having experienced the hype-crash cycle before, Tade built Campus with deliberate, durable conviction.
Brought to you by:
Where to Find Tade Oyerinde
Where to Find David Phillips (Host)
In This Episode, We Cover
- (00:00) Intro to Tade and the Campus vision
- (01:35) The Tade origin story: homeschool, aerospace, and building UniRoulette
- (03:45) Going viral and raising a seed round in London
- (05:55) The retention issue with synchronous social apps
- (07:15) Pivoting into mobile apps for universities
- (09:35) Building CampusWire and avoiding enterprise sales
- (11:05) Cold emailing 1M professors to grow
- (12:45) How COVID created a head-fake spike
- (14:20) Discovering the adjunct pay gap
- (15:35) The insight that UCLA profs teach at community colleges too
- (16:25) Why community college students weren’t retaining
- (18:10) Walking away from CampusWire to start Campus
- (19:45) Meeting Ralph Wolff, and the plan to buy a college
- (21:10) How Tade raised to acquire an accredited school
- (23:05) The challenge of buying a college as a dropout
- (24:40) Getting the first students and launching Campus
- (26:10) Making college free via Pell Grants
- (27:40) The impact of improving retention on gross margins
- (29:10) Building all the software from scratch
- (30:10) Campus’ live class model and top professors
- (31:05) Hiring a full-time human for every 50 students
- (32:10) Lowering CAC from $15K to sustainable levels
- (33:50) Unlocking funding across inflection points
- (35:10) What’s next for Campus
Referenced
UniRoulette (inspired by ChatRoulette):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatroulette
The Social Network (Film):
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1285016/
Clubhouse liquidity challenges:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/11/style/clubhouse-app-decline.html
Andreessen Horowitz's investment in Clubhouse:
https://a16z.com/2021/01/24/investing-in-clubhouse/
CampusWire (Tade's previous startup):
https://www.campuswire.com/
General Catalyst:
https://www.generalcatalyst.com/
UC San Diego Transfer Admissions:
https://admissions.ucsd.edu/transfer/
FAFSA Application (for Pell Grants):
https://studentaid.gov/h/apply-for-aid/fafsa
