Every entrepreneur strives for competent financial counsel. And it couldn’t be better coming from one of the world’s billionaires, Jeff Bezos. The Amazon founder is one of the world’s top 10 billionaires and has seen it all in business, so he can provide guidance.
His wealth-building skills has earned him a reputation for providing valuable counsel. Shaquille O’Neal is one of several who looked to the Amazon founder for inspiration before investing in Campus, an online community college business.
The college has already raised over $29 million from investors like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Discord founder Jason Citron. In an interview, O’Neal claimed that he opted to invest in the firm because he believed Campus had the potential to “change people’s lives,” which reminded him of previous advice he had received from Bezos.
“I heard Jeff Bezos say, if you invest in things that’s going to change people’s lives, you’ll always get a great return on your investment,” he told Fortune. “But this particular investment is not about great return because I feel that everyone should have access to world-class education.”
Tade Oyerinde, 29, the son of Nigerian immigrants, founded Campus in 2022 and has since hosted seminars taught by professors from universities such as Princeton, Vanderbilt, and Spelman.
Bezos has affected O’Neal’s investing decisions before, and Campus is no exception. In 2012, he was hesitant to bid on the NBA’s Phoenix Suns after reading news that Bezos was mulling his own offer for the team.
According to him, he would rather not compete against Bezos and other “heavy hitters” who were interested in the squad, which was subsequently sold to billionaire Matt Isbhia the next year. Aside from that, he has been promoting Bezos’ advise to seek out investment possibilities that he feels will alter people’s lives.
“If something comes across my desk and I don’t believe in it, I don’t even look at it,” O’Neal said to The Wall Street Journal in 2019.
“Once I started doing that strategy, I think I probably quadrupled what I’m worth,” he went on to say.