Tade Oyerinde's Big Bet: Fix How College Classes Talk, Then How They're Taught

Tade Oyerinde took a leave from an aerospace engineering degree to start a company, and he's been building in education ever since.

The son of Nigerian immigrants, Oyerinde studied aerospace engineering at the University of Leeds in the UK, then took a leave of absence to launch his first company, Gleepost Labs. He later studied at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida. In 2016 he started Campuswire.

The idea was straightforward. Professors and students deserved better than a jumble of outdated tools. Campuswire pulled the essentials into one home base: a modern Q&A forum, chatrooms, direct messages, live video for lectures and office hours, and in-class polling. He built it by working with professors and students at every step to learn what they needed.

People noticed. Instructors at schools like UCLA, Cornell, and Brown said it got students talking, and some said it cut their email load. Its about page lists 300+ active universities and 150,000+ active users. Early backers included Bloomberg Beta, Precursor, betaworks, Rethink, and City Light. In 2021, Forbes named Oyerinde to its 30 Under 30 list for education.

Then came the bigger swing. While selling Campuswire to schools, Oyerinde saw that the best teaching professors could reach far more students than one campus allowed. That thinking led to Campuswire Courses, live online classes from top professors, and then to Campus, an online community college he founded and leads as chancellor. Forbes reported he has raised about $55 million across his ventures, with support from OpenAI's Sam Altman and Discord's Jason Citron, who met him in 2016 while Campuswire was getting started.

He has also named a pressure point in higher ed: the adjunct professor crisis. Campus aims to pay teachers competitively while giving students access to strong instruction at a lower cost.

Here's what I take from him:

• Build the tool with the people who use it.
• A product can become the proof that justifies the next, bigger company.
• Name the real problem in your industry, then make it your pitch.

Our lens at IndeedBlack is the road from learning to earning. Campus describes its mission as helping high-promise students get the best possible education and launch their careers, and that's a road worth watching.

Explore the original platform at campuswire.com. Tade Oyerinde is the founder and CEO of Campuswire and the founder and chancellor of Campus.