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Timothy Ferriss (born July 20, 1977) is an American
entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...
,
investor An investor is a person who allocates financial capital with the expectation of a future Return on capital, return (profit) or to gain an advantage (interest). Through this allocated capital most of the time the investor purchases some specie ...
,
author An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states: "''An author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility f ...
,
podcast A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosing ...
er, and
lifestyle guru Lifestyle gurus (also called lifestyle coaches, lifestyle trainers, lifestyle consultants) trained people to understand how they can make themselves happiness, happier through changes in their lifestyle (sociology), lifestyle. Lifestyle gurus are a ...
. He became well-known through his ''4-Hour'' self-help book series—including ''The 4-Hour Work Week'', ''The 4-Hour Body'', and ''The 4-Hour Chef''—that focused on lifestyle optimizations, but he has since reconsidered this approach.


Early life

Ferriss grew up in East Hampton,
New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...
. Throughout childhood, Ferriss experienced poor health, sparking an interest in self-improvement. After graduating from St. Paul's School, Ferriss matriculated at
Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
, earning a B.A. in
East Asian studies East Asian studies is a distinct multidisciplinary field of scholarly enquiry and education that promotes a broad humanistic understanding of East Asia past and present. The field includes the study of the region's culture, written language, hist ...
in 2000. His senior thesis was titled ''Acquisition of
Japanese Kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subsequent ...
: Conventional Practice and
Mnemonic A mnemonic ( ) device, or memory device, is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval (remembering) in the human memory for better understanding. Mnemonics make use of elaborative encoding, retrieval cues, and imag ...
Supplementation'', under the supervision of Seiichi Makino. After graduating from Princeton, Ferriss worked in sales at a
data storage Data storage is the recording (storing) of information (data) in a storage medium. Handwriting, phonographic recording, magnetic tape, and optical discs are all examples of storage media. Biological molecules such as RNA and DNA are conside ...
company.


Career

In 2001, Ferriss founded BrainQUICKEN, an internet-based nutritional supplements business, while still employed at his prior job. He sold the company, then known as BodyQUICK, to a London-based
private equity firm A private equity firm is an investment management company that provides financial backing and makes investments in the private equity of startup or operating companies through a variety of loosely affiliated investment strategies including leve ...
in 2010.Tim Ferriss Wants You to Get a Life
''
ABC News ABC News is the news division of the American broadcast network ABC. Its flagship program is the daily evening newscast ''ABC World News Tonight, ABC World News Tonight with David Muir''; other programs include Breakfast television, morning ...
'', October 11, 2007.
He has stated that ''
The 4-Hour Workweek ''The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9–5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich'' (2007) is a self-help book by Timothy Ferriss, an American writer, educational activist, and entrepreneur. It deals with what Ferriss refers to as "lifestyle design", and ...
'' was based on this period. Ferriss has been an
angel investor An angel investor (also known as a business angel, informal investor, angel funder, private investor, or seed investor) is an individual who provides capital for a business or businesses start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or owners ...
and advisor to startups. He invested or advised in such startups as
StumbleUpon StumbleUpon was a discovery and advertisement engine (a form of web search engine) that pushed web content recommendations to its users. Its features allowed users to discover and rate Web pages, photos and videos that are personalized to their ...
,
Posterous Posterous was a simple blogging platform started in May 2008. It supported integrated and automatic posting to other social media tools such as Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook, a built-in Google Analytics package, and custom themes. It was based in ...
,
Evernote Evernote is a note-taking and task management application. It is developed by the Evernote Corporation, headquartered in Redwood City, California. It is intended for archiving and creating notes in which photos, audio and saved web content can ...
,
DailyBurn Daily Burn is a health and fitness company with a membership of approximately 2.5 million that provides workout and nutrition programs on a variety of web, mobile, and TV apps. Daily Burn streaming workout videos are led by master trainers and ...
,
Shopify Shopify Inc. is a Canadian multinational e-commerce company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario. Shopify is the name of its proprietary e-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. The Shopify platform offers online ret ...
,
Reputation.com Reputation.com is a business-to-business online reputation management and customer experience management company headquartered in San Ramon, California. The company claims its software-as-a-service platform helps businesses monitor and respond to ...
, Trippy, and TaskRabbit. He is a pre-
seed money Seed money, sometimes known as seed funding or seed capital, is a form of securities offering in which an investor invests capital in a startup company in exchange for an equity stake or convertible note stake in the company. The term ''seed'' su ...
advisor to
Uber Uber Technologies, Inc. (Uber), based in San Francisco, provides mobility as a service, ride-hailing (allowing users to book a car and driver to transport them in a way similar to a taxi), food delivery (Uber Eats and Postmates), package ...
, co-founded by
Garrett Camp Garrett Camp (born October 4, 1978) is a Canadian billionaire entrepreneur. He has helped build a series of companies, including founding StumbleUpon, a web-discovery tool; co-founding Uber; and founding Expa, a startup studio. Camp is chairma ...
, the founder of
StumbleUpon StumbleUpon was a discovery and advertisement engine (a form of web search engine) that pushed web content recommendations to its users. Its features allowed users to discover and rate Web pages, photos and videos that are personalized to their ...
, which Ferriss also advised. In 2013, Ferriss raised $250,000 to invest in Shyp by forming a
syndicate A syndicate is a self-organizing group of individuals, companies, corporations or entities formed to transact some specific business, to pursue or promote a shared interest. Etymology The word ''syndicate'' comes from the French language, Frenc ...
on
AngelList AngelList is a U.S. website for startups, angel investors, and job-seekers looking to work at startups. Founded in 2010, it started as an online introduction board for tech startups that needed seed funding. Since 2015, the site allows startup ...
. Ferriss ended up raising over $500,000 through his backers, and Shyp raised a total of $2.1 million. In 2018, Shyp shut down and
laid off A layoff or downsizing is the temporary suspension or permanent termination of employment of an employee or, more commonly, a group of employees (collective layoff) for business reasons, such as personnel management or downsizing (reducing the ...
all its employees. In November 2013, Ferriss began an
audiobook An audiobook (or a talking book) is a recording of a book or other work being read out loud. A reading of the complete text is described as "unabridged", while readings of shorter versions are abridgements. Spoken audio has been available in sc ...
publishing venture, Tim Ferriss Publishing. The first book published was '' Vagabonding'' by
Rolf Potts Rolf Potts (born October 13, 1970) is an American travel writer, essayist, podcaster, and author. He has written five books, including ''Vagabonding'' (Random House, 2003), ''Marco Polo Didn't Go There'' (Travelers Tales, 2008), ''Souvenir'' (Bloo ...
. Other books include ''
Ego is the Enemy ''Ego Is the Enemy'' is the fourth book by author Ryan Holiday, published on June 14, 2016. It is about the treacherous nature of ego. Background Having previously written about external obstacles in his book ''The Obstacle Is the Way'', Holida ...
'' and ''
The Obstacle Is The Way ''The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph'' is the third book by author Ryan Holiday. It was published in 2014. It is a book which offers individuals a framework to flip obstacles into opportunities, an approach c ...
'' by
Ryan Holiday Ryan Holiday (born June 16, 1987) is an American author, modern Stoic, public-relations strategist, owner of the Painted Porch Bookshop and host of the podcast ''The Daily Stoic.'' Prior to becoming an author, he served as the former director of ...
, ''Daily Rituals'' by Mason Currey, and ''What I Learned Losing A Million Dollars'' by Jim Paul and Brendan Moynihan. In 2015, ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' listed Ferriss among their "Notable angel Investors" while
CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by the M ...
said he was "one of the planet's leading angel investors in technology." Also in 2015, Ferriss declared a long vacation from new investing. He cited the stress of the work and a feeling his impact was "minimal in the long run", and said he planned to spend time on his writing and media projects. In 2017 he stated one of the reasons he moved from
Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...
was that, "After effectively 'retiring' from angel investing 2 years ago," he had no professional need to be in the
Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Gov ...
. Ferriss has written five books, ''
The 4-Hour Workweek ''The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9–5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich'' (2007) is a self-help book by Timothy Ferriss, an American writer, educational activist, and entrepreneur. It deals with what Ferriss refers to as "lifestyle design", and ...
'' (2007, expanded edition 2009), ''
The 4-Hour Body ''The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman'' is a nonfiction book by American writer Tim Ferriss. It was published by Crown Publishing Group in 2010. It focuses on diet, with chapters on ex ...
'' (2010), '' The 4-Hour Chef'' (2012), ''
Tools of Titans ''Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers'' (2016) is a self-help book by Timothy Ferriss, an American writer, educational activist, and entrepreneur. He interviewed more than 100 "wor ...
'' (2016), and ''Tribe of Mentors'' (2017). In December 2013, ''The Tim Ferriss Experiment'' debuted on HLN. The series focused on Ferriss'
life hack A life hack (or life hacking) is any trick, shortcut, skill, or novelty method that increases productivity and efficiency, in all walks of life. The term was primarily used by computer experts who suffer from information overload or those with a p ...
ing and
speed learning Speed learning is a collection of methods of learning which attempt to attain higher rates of learning without unacceptable reduction of comprehension or retention. It is closely related to speed reading, but encompasses other methods of learni ...
methods. Although 13 episodes were produced, only a portion were shown on television. Ferriss also hosted the 2017 TV show ''Fear with Tim Ferriss'', in which he interviews people from different industries about success and innovation. Ferriss has raised funds for the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (JHUSOM) is the medical school of Johns Hopkins University, a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1893, the School of Medicine shares a campus with the Johns Hopkins Hospi ...
and for the Center for Psychedelic Research at
Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...
. Since 2016, Ferriss donated at least $2,000,000 for clinical research into psychedelic drugs. In 2017, Tim Ferriss gave the TED talk "Why you should define your fears instead of your goals." In 2019, Forbes called Tim's "4-Hour" advice "everything that's wrong with the modern world" because it contributes to the idea that people's success is about " iguringout how to most attractively package their shortcuts and fake-outs" more than actual accomplishment. He reevaluated his earlier ideas in a 2020 interview with GQ, concluding that "not everything that is meaningful can be measured." Ferriss continues to release episodes of ''The Tim Ferriss Show'', an interview-centered podcast running since April 22, 2014.


Published works

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References


External links

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Podcast
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ferriss, Timothy 1977 births American male bloggers American bloggers American business theorists American business writers American Internet celebrities American motivational writers American podcasters Angel investors Diet food advocates Life coaches Living people People from East Hampton (town), New York Princeton University alumni Technology evangelists Henry Crown Fellows 21st-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American male writers American male non-fiction writers Writers from New York (state)