Background and career
Timothy Ferriss (born July 20, 1977) is an American entrepreneur, investor, author, podcaster, and lifestyle guru. He is known for 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. He also supports scientific research into psychedelic treatments.
Ferriss grew up in East Hampton, New York, and credits his poor health in childhood for sparking an interest in self-improvement. At age 15, he spent a year in Japan as an exchange student. He was a member of the wrestling team in high school. After graduating from St. Paul's School, he attended Princeton University, earning a B.A. in East Asian studies in 2000, then first worked in sales at a data storage company.
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 in 2010. He has stated that The 4-Hour Workweek was based on this period.
Ferriss has been an angel investor and startup advisor. He invested or advised in companies including Reputation.com, Trippy, Digg, StumbleUpon, Posterous, SimpleGeo, DailyBurn, Facebook, Ampa, and Neko Health. Ferriss also served as a strategic advisor to Evernote and TaskRabbit. He is a pre-seed money advisor to Uber. In 2013, Ferriss raised $250,000 to invest in Shyp by forming a syndicate on AngelList. Ferriss raised over $500,000 through his backers, and Shyp raised a total of $2.1 million. In 2018, Shyp shut down and laid off all its employees. Ferriss was an advisor to Shopify, helping them to launch the "Build a Business" competition that fostered web-store startups in 2010 with a $100,000 prize. He was also an investor in Duolingo and Twitter. 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 was that, "After effectively 'retiring' from angel investing 2 years ago," he had no professional need to be in the Bay Area.
In November 2013, Ferriss began an audiobook publishing venture, Tim Ferriss Publishing. The first book published was Vagabonding by Rolf Potts. Other books include Ego Is the Enemy and The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday, Daily Rituals by Mason Currey, and What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars by Jim Paul and Brendan Moynihan.
Ferriss has written five books, The 4-Hour Workweek (2007, expanded edition 2009), The 4-Hour Body (2010), The 4-Hour Chef (2012), Tools of Titans (2016), and Tribe of Mentors (2017).
