Tade Oyerinde and Teddy Solomon know a few things about building communities that last.

After all, Oyerinde is the founder and chancellor of the online school Campus, while Solomon is the co-founder behind the college social app Fizz.

The two spoke at this year’s TechCrunch Disrupt, breaking down the strategies that helped them scale their companies while maintaining consumer interest.

The campus offers associate degrees in areas such as information technology and business administration. It also offers certificates in specialties such as cosmetology and phlebotomy. There are more than 3,000 students enrolled on the Campus, and it employs more than 100 professors on at least a part-time basis, Oyerinde said.

Oyerinde said the Campus decided to launch à la carte courses since employers, in particular, demand classes that can teach their employees individual skills such as vibe coding.

He realizes that many people are looking for improvement and believes that in the future, everyone will have some kind of membership or subscription service that will help them develop new skills.

“Everyone in this room, not only the two-year degree-seeking people, will be able to go to Campus and learn with us,” he told the audience. “Live, online classes, taught by amazing people.”

Oyerinde uses the Pell Grant to help keep school affordable for most people. He also has a team of billionaires at his company’s cap table — like OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Discord’s Jason Citroen — meaning he doesn’t feel much pressure to focus on revenue above all else, he said.

“They don’t need the money,” he continued. “What they really want is to fundamentally shape the way education works in this country for the better.”

Fizz, on the other hand, operates more than 200 college campuses and at one point operated in high schools across the country. it still up than $40 million with investors including Owl Ventures and NEA.

Since launching in 2021, Solomon said the company has adopted features such as a peer-to-peer marketplace that lists more than 100,000 items, and a video element so people can write more than just text posts.

Now, the company is looking to create a product called Global Fizz to expand the product beyond the U.S. Solomon spoke more about that on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, where he mapped out the company’s future.

Solomon told the audience that the company is looking for ways to monetize, especially targeting ads. “We’ve worked with companies like Perplexity,” he said.

“There are subscription models that work well with apps, but right now we’re focused on our ads business, and we’re focused on building a great product that keeps our users engaged and makes them happy.”

After all, he said, “The users are everything.”