🎧 The Startup Growth Podcast, Ep. 5: Tade Oyerinde — He Bought a College to Fix Higher Ed — $100M Vision

Tade Oyerinde is the founder and chancellor of Campus.edu, an accredited online college that’s raised over $100 million to rethink how higher education works — from the ground up.In this episode, Tade shares his journey from building viral college apps like UniRoulette, to growing CampusWire to 300,000+ students, to walking away from it all to acquire a real college and launch a bold new model: live, online, debt-free education for thousands of students across the U.S.We go deep on:The story behind UniRoulette and CampusWireWhy community college is broken and how to fix itHow he bought a college (yes, literally)Raising capital from Sam Altman, Jason Citron, and General CatalystThe economics of a scalable, student-first collegeWhy real human connection still matters — even in online education📍 Timestamps:(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 in this episode:Full reference list: [See description below]👉 Subscribe for more conversations with founders building the future:https://www.youtube.com/@UC71TU8BGrOJBWrM3Zbb5ymg 🌎 Where to Find Tade OyerindeTwitter: https://x.com/oyerindeLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tadeoyerinde/Campus: https://campus.edu🎙 Hosted by David PhillipsTwitter: https://x.com/davjLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davjphillips/👀 Want more?Check out Fondo — the all-in-one accounting platform for startups: https://www.fondo.com📩 Get your startup’s taxes, books, and R&D credits done with ease.#StartupPodcast #EdTech #HigherEducation #CampusEdu #TadeOyerinde #StartupGrowth #SamAltman #CommunityCollege #VentureCapital #FounderStory