Campuswire Raises 3.6M to Develop a Social Learning Platform for College Classes

Originally published 10/31/2019

NEW YORK — EdTech startup Campuswire has announced $3.6 million in seed funding from five venture capital firms and eight angel investors who back the company’s mission to improve course-related communications between university faculty and students.

Campuswire is a course communication tool built to increase student collaboration and streamline educators’ workflow by combining synchronous and asynchronous messaging and Q+A sessions, and by emphasizing a social media-inspired user experience. Professors are able to easily share announcements, facilitate online discussions, and privately message individual students using the tool.

The EdTech startup joins the growing movement to “unbundle” traditional Learning Management Systems like Blackboard and Piazza, which are often rendered unusable by the overwhelming number of features they offer. As professors turn away from these legacy tools, platforms like Gradescope and TurnItIn — which focus on perfecting tools which fulfill specific needs, like grading or plagiarism checks — have become increasingly necessary and popular.

Campuswire fits nicely into this movement as the only complete, modern course communication tool built specifically with today’s professors and messenger-obsessed students in mind.

Founder and CEO Tade Oyerinde explains his vision for the company, saying:

“Unlike learning management systems, which include a jumble of grading, career, discussion, and degree planning features, we are completely focused on building the best tool possible for course-related communications. We are doing one thing exceptionally well, rather than a dozen things not-so-well. We plan our roadmap and build new features based entirely on feedback from our professors, so that we can be the most powerful communication tool available to them.”

Josh Samani, a Physics lecturer at UCLA, was one of Campuswire’s early adopters. On making the switch from Piazza to Campuswire, he says:

“I was a Piazza user for years, but I switched to using Campuswire because its founder and lead engineer articulated a vision for a course communication platform that is modern and continuously improving, just like my own vision for higher education. Campuswire has not disappointed.”

The team’s close attention to professors’ needs — as well as the positive effects using the tool has demonstrated on student learning outcomes — is likely responsible for Campuswire’s 2.8X user growth over 2019’s first three financial quarters. The company has reported an 85% semester-over-semester retention rate for their professor users and shared that student users remain active on the messaging platform for an average of 3.5 hours per night.

While they have not publicly released figures for their growing user base, Campuswire enters the fourth fiscal quarter in use by professors across more than 110 college campuses. The company’s rapid growth is encouraging to investors.

Matt Greenfield, a Managing Partner at Rethink Education, explained his decision to invest in Campuswire, saying:

“Campuswire is transforming higher education by helping students to learn in a genuinely collaborative way. Their student engagement levels are extraordinary.”

BloombergBETA led Campuswire’s seed funding round alongside other strategic investment firms Rethink Education, Precursor Ventures, Betaworks, and City Light Capital. Eight angel investors also contributed to the fund, including Rob Hayes of First Round Capital — notable for being Uber Technologies’ first investor. A full list of group and individual contributors can be found below.

The $3.6 million in capital raised enables Campuswire to expand their team of engineers and continue to improve the tool. This is especially valuable for the company as they prepare to launch Campuswire Pro — a new, paid version of Campuswire which will incorporate live video collaboration and a collection of active learning features — this coming January. The funding will also be used to further Campuswire’s professor-by-professor growth and virality.

“We’re in the early innings of the internet fundamentally shifting the way college classes learn and communicate,” Oyerinde says. “The future is a lot more efficient and collaborative, and we’re excited to be a part of creating it.”●

Campuswire’s funding comes from:

Venture Capital firms including:

• BloombergBeta
• Rethink Education
• Precursor Ventures
• Betaworks
• City Light Capital

Angel Investors including:

• Samuel Cole
• Rob Hayes
• Jason Citron
• Doug Scott
• Naguib Sawiris
• Richard Kerby
• Scott Wood
• Will Bressman

For more on Campuswire’s funding, growth, and mission, please contact: Sanna Sharp, sanna@campuswire.com.