Sign In

Paul Cheek

Executive Director, Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship & Senior Lecturer @ MIT | Author of Startup Tactics | Forbes 30 Under 30

Paul Cheek is a serial tech entrepreneur, entrepreneurship educator, and software engineer. He is a Senior Lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the MIT Sloan School of Management, the Executive Director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, and a Co-Founder of Oceanworks.

Paul was MIT’s first Hacker in Residence and has since taught, mentored, and advised thousands of entrepreneurs around the world. Each year Paul teaches hundreds of undergraduate, graduate, and PhD students in the "New Enterprises" course, which is believed to be the oldest entrepreneurship course in the country and has also taught the advanced entrepreneurship course. From working closely with so many students, Paul identified a gap in the entrepreneurship curriculum, designed experimental entrepreneurship education content, and now leads a new advanced course he developed to help student entrepreneurs build their businesses called “Venture Creation Tactics”.

Paul is also the Co-Founder and CTO of Oceanworks, a for-profit company with a mission to end plastic pollution. At Oceanworks, he has developed a platform and traceability system to provide corporations with a trusted source for a variety of quality recycled ocean plastic materials at competitive prices. In the past two years, Oceanworks has diverted thousands of tonnes of plastic from the ocean, served hundreds of corporate customers in over 30 countries, and enabled the launch of a variety of high-profile sustainable products such as Clorox ocean plastic trash bags, Sperry ocean plastic boat shoes, and YKK ocean plastic zippers.

In 2021, Paul was recognized by Forbes 30 Under 30, the definitive list of young people changing the world, and for his leadership at Oceanworks, Forbes named Paul one of ten standouts who hold the future of cleantech in their hands.

Prior to Oceanworks, Paul co-founded Work Today, a venture-backed digital staffing and recruiting company. Work Today helped day laborers find jobs every morning to achieve financial predictability and stability. As CTO, Paul designed and built the company's technology and payments platform. He scaled the business from 0 to 50,000 workers across 16 major markets throughout the United States.

At 21, Paul envisioned a new way for global payment card networks to interact. He designed and engineered a technology that aggregates payment transactions across financial systems and was issued a patent for the invention. Paul has also built technologies for and consulted with LogMeIn, BlackRock, Prudential, Mazda, and more.

Highlights

Apr 17 · linkedin

🤩 I'm overwhelmed with the support of the community around the recent, highly successful Disciplined Entrepreneurship & Startup Tactics book launches! So appreciative - thank you! I collected every photo I could from social media around the launch day. Couldn't fit them all here but I thought this collage demonstrates some of the DE love from all around the world...

Thank you for sharing the book in Australia 🇦🇺, Brazil 🇧🇷, Canada 🇨🇦, China 🇨🇳, Colombia 🇨🇴, Croatia 🇭🇷, Denmark 🇩🇰, Egypt 🇪🇬, France 🇫🇷, Greece 🇬🇷, India 🇮🇳, Ireland 🇮🇪, Luxembourg 🇱🇺, Mexico 🇲🇽, Netherlands 🇳🇱, Peru 🇵🇪, Portugal 🇵🇹, Romania 🇷🇴, Saudi Arabia 🇸🇦, Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿, Singapore 🇸🇬, Spain 🇪🇸, Switzerland 🇨🇭, Tunisia 🇹🇳, United Kingdom 🇬🇧, and of course here in the USA 🇺🇸!

Eric Liguori Jason Feifer Euclides Major Elaine Chen Alberto Rodriguez de Lama Wilson Huang Callie Cheek Nagarjuna Venna Olivier Cadet Robert Hughes III Ana Luisa Santos Daniela Ruiz Massieu Patrick Todd Prof. Wail A. Mousa Jeffrey Babin David Lagares Luis Cisneros Martinez Aaron Lewin Rowena Barrett Yashar Ahmadov Yazide Sulemane Rafael Lorenzo Piñón Rogério Gomes da Silva, MBA Navroop Sehmi Megan Pozzi Alan Ringvald Kosta Ligris Christian Beaubien Carly Chase Andres Garza Villarreal Danielle (Silva) O’Neal and SO many more! (LinkedIn has a limit...)

The one and only Dipul Patel offered a money back guarantee on social media 😅 😂 😎

Nova School of Business and Economics Nova SBE Haddad Entrepreneurship Institute The Lisbon MBA Católica | Nova MIT Sloan Visiting Fellows Program EPIC Lab ITAM

Bill Aulet Marius Ursache Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship

#entrepreneurship #startup #startups #startuptactics #booklaunch #bestseller

Apr 2 · linkedin

BOOK LAUNCH DAY! 📚🚀 See comments for launch day exclusives and links to get your copy!

We’ve finally made it to the global release of the newest entrepreneurship books from MIT! The new Disciplined Entrepreneurship and Startup Tactics books are available starting today!

I’ve been working on Startup Tactics for the past 5 years without even realizing it. I’m so excited to have the opportunity to take what we’ve learned in curating the essential “tactics” for entrepreneurs here at MIT and share it with entrepreneurs all around the world.

Please help me make sure that entrepreneurs everywhere know that this resource is available. How can you help? Please repost this and add your comments. If you’ve taken a course with me and/or Bill please share what you took away. If you haven’t yet (you should, we’d love to have you!) please consider sharing these new books with any startup/founder communities that you’re a part of across LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Slack, etc.

See first comment for launch day exclusives!

Did you know that there is an easter egg in Bill’s new DE book? See if you can find me in one of the illustrations within 😎 Also including a fun photo from yesterday in the comments!

A huge thanks to all who have helped bring the book to entrepreneurs everywhere including (but most certainly not limited to!) Bill Aulet, the entire Trust Center team, Marius Ursache, Matt Volpi, Kelly Talbot, Anastasia Lysenko, and publishers Shannon Vargo, Deb Schindlar, Leah Zarra, and Gabby Mancuso of Wiley.

#entrepreneurship #book #booklaunch #entrepreneurshipeducation #startuptactics #delaunch #disciplinedentrepreneurship #reading #mit

Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT Sloan School of Management MIT Sloan Executive Education MIT Bootcamps

Marc Randolph Drew Houston Paul English Donna Levin Brad Feld Brian Halligan Omolara Awoyemi Mo Fong Rowena Barrett Jeffrey Larsen Daniela Ruiz Massieu Elaine Chen Nagarjuna Venna Noah Breslow Mark Gorenberg Rob Lalka Matt Segneri Camilo Fosco Timothy Barnes Osman Haneef Siobhan Dullea Melissa Roberts Chapman Andres Haddad Di Marco Alberto Rodriguez de Lama Hanna Adeyema Euclides Major Vassilis Papakonstantinou Boguslawa (Bogy) Cimoszko Skowronski Allison Rohe, MS.Ed David V Capodilupo Travis Hunter Chris Wolfel Ronan Cunningham

Related Questions

What is Paul Cheek's current role at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship?
Which company did Paul Cheek co-found to address ocean plastic pollution?
Which entrepreneurship courses does Paul Cheek teach at MIT?
What recognition did Paul Cheek receive in 2021 from Forbes?
Paul Cheek
Add to my network

Experience

Executive Director, Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Entrepreneur In Residence at Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Education

Bachelor's Degree, Marketing, Entrepreneurial Studies, and Computer Information Systems, Bentley University
Wellesley High School

Location

United States