ABOUT US

Some business stories don’t start in a boardroom.
Ours started in a van parked in San Francisco.

Back then, Spencer Handley was living out of that van — building a multimillion-dollar music education company from his laptop, powered by Wi-Fi, instant ramen, and unreasonable ambition. Adam Carney was doing something equally unlikely: he had dropped out of college to build one of the world’s largest yoga teacher training schools, turning an idea about embodied education into a business that reached tens of thousands of students across the globe.

When the two met, they immediately recognized something in each other — a kind of creative savant-ness. Both had dropped out of traditional education, not because they couldn’t handle it, but because it couldn’t handle them. They shared a belief that education should feel more like a startup — fast, alive, and built for the people it serves.

They bonded over two things: music and lean startup methodology. The first made life worth living, the second made life work. Between them, they’d built companies that had done tens of millions in sales, trained thousands of creators, and most importantly, proved that unconventional people can change entire industries when given the right environment.

So in 2022, they decided to take on their biggest challenge yet — higher education. Together they founded The Common Institute, a licensed U.S. higher education institution designed to reinvent what a college could be. 2080 University became one of its first member organizations — a creative engine for students who want to master real-world skills in design, entrepreneurship, and the new AI economy.

People are often shocked when we tell them that two college dropouts founded a legitimate, accredited university. They think we’re joking. They say our degree programs look too good to be true.

To which we say: opening a college isn’t that hard — you just have to listen.
Listen to what students actually want.
Listen to what employers actually need.
And build something that prepares people for the world that actually exists.

At 2080, we believe the future won’t reward rote memorization or paper credentials. It will reward creativity, adaptability, emotional intelligence, and the ability to think across systems. That’s why our programs are built like startups — lean, real-world, and radically practical.

Every course, every project, every mentor conversation is designed to do one thing: make you dangerous in the real world. We train people to create businesses, not just résumés; to build portfolios, not GPAs; and to live lives that are both creatively fulfilling and financially free.

We’re not here to sell education as usual. We’re here to make education useful again.

This is 2080 University — built by two college dropouts who believed they could out-innovate the system that once told them they wouldn’t make it.

Spoiler: we did.