When Tade Oyerinde first set out to raise funds for his startup, Campus, a fully accredited online community college, it was incredibly difficult. Venture capitalists have funded for-profit education companies before, like Coursera and Udacity, but funding a more traditional two-year college was different. Plus, he was looking for capital a few years ago at a time when higher education was starting to face challenges from declining enrollment and rising tuition prices.
Oyelinde said in a recent episode of TechCrunch's Found podcast that despite the challenges, he believes it makes sense to raise money from venture capitalists for a few reasons. Campus is software-enabled and relatively lean, running on CampusWire, the online learning software Oyelinde built before launching Campus. He added that while Campus may not look like your average software or EdTech startup, the fact that it's disrupting a traditional industry makes it a perfect match for VCs.
“It was a big problem, high risk, high reward,” Oyelinde said. “If we could solve it, it would be a big opportunity to make this country stronger and better. If we could capture a small slice of the market, we could build a huge company. So it made sense to go into venture.”
But that doesn't mean it was easy. Oirinde says his first mistake was trying to find and pitch as many investors as possible and convince them to invest. Once he changed his approach and sought out investors who had interest and experience in the community college sector, fundraising began to become a bit easier.
Among the startup's first investors were OpenAI founder Sam Altman and Discord founder Jason Citron, both of whom had spent time in community college and understood the need for innovation in the community college space.
Oyerinde met Citron through Charles Hudson of Precursor Ventures while they were building CampusWire. Citron participated in Campus' seed round and later connected Oyerinde with Altman. Oyerinde said he was glad to have met Altman before ChatGPT, joking that it's probably a little harder to meet him now.
Oyelinde said another reason this resonated with students is that technology continues to evolve, but because community colleges remain largely the same, students may not learn the knowledge they need to catch up. Because the campus has ties to startups and Silicon Valley, it's closer to cutting-edge technology and can adjust its curriculum to keep up with trends quicker than a typical community college.
“Do we really think that traditional community colleges can quickly adapt to changing conditions? Probably not,” Oyelinde said. “So we need adaptive, thoughtful, technology-enabled and technology-focused experiences that are more efficient, accessible and successful.” [at] I actually helped the kids finish it, and they were really excited about it.”
Campus has raised more than $55 million in venture funding, including a $29 million Series A round led by Altman and Citron in May 2023 and a $23 million Series A extension led by Founders Fund in April. Oyerinde joked that even anti-college Peter Thiel still sees potential in the company.
The startup's recent funding round is especially noteworthy given the current state of the edtech sector, which has seen a steady decline in venture capital support since the pandemic boom. According to Crunchbase data, more than $38 billion was invested in edtech startups worldwide in 2020 and 2021. But that momentum didn't last. As of June 11 this year, edtech startups had raised just over $1 billion, and by 2024, the sector's total funding will likely be the lowest it has been in years. Existing edtech companies don't seem to be doing well either. Companies such as Byju's, once valued at $22 billion, recently raised a funding round that reduced their valuation to $20 million to $25 million.
But Oyelinde is undeterred. Funding was tough at first, but it's getting easier, and now startups are showing more interest. Oyelinde believes this change is because the campus is doing something truly innovative in a traditional and largely untouched field — the kind of disruption that's usually music to venture capitalists' ears.
“We hope this program will fundamentally change the way people learn in America, and ultimately the world,” Oyelinde said. “Silicon Valley is still the place to go if you're looking for moonshot funding, and our campus was that.”