Chip Paucek: Co-founder and CEO of 2U, Inc. (Raise the Line)

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Hi, I'm Shivani. Thanks for checking out our raise the line interview series.
In which me and my cohost osmosis chief Medical Officer Dr Rishi Desai explore how to strengthen our healthcare system with some amazing leaders in medicine, technology, education and government.
And they have some great advice for people starting careers in healthcare as well. I hope you'll watch these highlights and then go listen to the full podcast interview wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, I'm Shla and today on Raise the line, I'm happy to be joined by Chip Pause, who's the co founder and CEO of two U A leading publicly traded education tech company that works with over 70 universities to offer online degrees, certificates and boot camps that to date has served more than 225,000 students.
Can you tell us in your own words, how um you got started with, to you, I co-founded the company with a small team of incredible people that really at the time believed that the world was ready for high quality online education and most of what was being done.
Uh even though the technology was, was, was good, uh, it's not as good as it is today, but good enough, uh We really didn't think it was very high quality.
And so the whole idea was to work with great universities if we could convince the school to really get behind something to offer an online degree.
Now, the company has evolved substantially over the last 12 years. And I think as you mentioned in the intro, we now offer short course and boot camps and undergraduate degrees things we didn't offer in the early days.
But it was really all about driving high quality online ed and eliminating the background and higher education, which was our mission.
But getting it off the ground was really tricky. 2008 was a very difficult time to launch a company.
And, you know, as everybody knows, the economy was pretty rough and um we were, you know, we were really focused on it and just, uh you know, wouldn't take no.
And fortunate we're fortunate enough to, to get enough things, right. Uh That, that we gradually built the company and uh today, uh it's been, it's been, you know, incredible experience, uh you know, more ups than downs.
Uh but running a company for 12 years and sort of ip it six years ago, uh very proud of what we're delivering for students.
What um advice would you give them and the other early stage um students um and professionals uh since so many of our audience are, are also in the same shoes, you know, I guess I'd go a bit philosophical on you.
Um, so, uh, a long time ago I met, met somebody that told me this story of, uh, the fact that he had, uh, he had, you know, kind of been a AAA bit hard on everybody and then had a massive heart attack.
And when he woke up, um, all he could do is count the ceiling tiles for a month. And he, he said to me, um, you know, don't wait until you count the ceiling tiles to really live life.
And his whole philosophy was every day is a holiday. Every meal is a feast.
And I would say, um, it's hard to process every day. But if you can figure out how to live a little bit more like that and not wait until you've had a heart attack.
And in this time of COVID, I think it's become even more pressing and more relevant. Um where, you know, we take it for granted.
Now it's difficult to do because you might be having a rough day or you might have a rough day at work and, you know, life is hard sometimes.
But if you, if you can try to process life through that lens, everybody around you is a little bit better. Um You're better.
It's just a better way to be. Thanks for watching this preview of Raised Line to hear the full interview.
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