Paul Cheek

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Paul Cheek

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Paul Cheek is a global expert in innovation-driven entrepreneurship. Paul is a serial tech entrepreneur, educator, software engineer, and bestselling author of Disciplined Entrepreneurship: Startup Tactics. He is a Senior Lecturer in the MIT Sloan School of Management. Prior to his role at MIT, he co-founded three ventures which earned him recognition by Forbes 30 Under 30, the definitive list of young people changing the world. Paul has been featured in publications including Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Inc Magazine.

Paul was MIT’s first Hacker in Residence and has since taught, mentored, and advised thousands of entrepreneurs around the world. Paul designed and now leads a new advanced course he developed to help student entrepreneurs build their businesses called “Venture Creation Tactics”. Additionally, Paul teaches hundreds of MIT and Harvard undergraduate, graduate, and PhD students each year in the historic "New Enterprises" course. His teaching materials have been used by educators around the world.

Prior to his work at MIT, Paul was the co-founder of Oceanworks and Work Today. Oceanworks is a for-profit company with a mission to end plastic pollution. Work Today is a venture backed digital staffing and recruiting company. Paul has also built technologies for and consulted with LogMeIn, BlackRock, Prudential, Mazda, and more. He serves on the CNBC Disruptor 50 Advisory Board, the MIT Sandbox Funding Board, and judges the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s CO—100 Awards.

You can learn more about Paul on his website, PaulCheek.com, or follow him on LinkedIn.

Publications

Disciplined Entrepreneurship: Startup Tactics.

Cheek, Paul. John Wiley & Sons, 2024. Startup Tactics.

Recent Insights

Alumni

Michael Autery, SFMBA ’26

Michael Autery, SFMBA ’26, a U.S. Navy Civil Engineer Corps officer with 15 years of active service, discusses his journey from active duty to entrepreneurship.

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Ideas Made to Matter

Download: Insights for success in entrepreneurship

From MIT Sloan experts, practical guidance for launching ventures, shaping strategy, and making innovation work.

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Media Highlights

Press Kathimerini

Shaping the next generation of AI entrepreneurs

While speaking at the EmTech Europe 2026 conference, senior lecturer Paul Cheek expressed the belief that AI will start and run companies, with AI agents taking on roles equivalent to those of a CEO, processing data and rearranging priorities at regular intervals.

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Executive Education

Executive Education Course

AI Risk and Readiness

This two-day course demonstrates that the organizations winning with AI are not those taking the fewest precaution but the companies that have built the data governance, risk architecture, legal clarity, and stakeholder accountability that enables them to move with both speed and confidence. Drawing on frameworks including from IBM Research's AI Security, Safety, and Governance practice and Harvard Law School's work on the legal, ethical, and regulatory dimensions of AI, participants will develop a comprehensive, actionable understanding of what it means to be truly AI-ready. The program covers the full stack of AI risk, from model-level vulnerabilities and system-level threat vectors to liability law, bias, informed consent, data privacy, and the global regulatory landscape, and translates each into practical governance decisions. The organizing question across both days is not 'what could go wrong?' but rather: 'what does getting this right actually look like, and how does it unlock everything else?' Join your peers on campus to reframe risk as a strategic enabler and to build the infrastructure required for responsible, high-velocity AI adoption.

  • Oct 8-9, 2026
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Executive Education Course

AMP Reunion

  • Jun 11-12, 2026
  • Jun 17-18, 2027
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