“A cross between Jack Welch and a Buddhist monk.”
— The New York Times
BIO — SHORT VERSION:
Tim Ferriss has been listed as one of Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Business People” and one of Fortune’s “40 under 40.” He is an early-stage technology investor/advisor (Uber, Facebook, Shopify, Duolingo, Alibaba, and 50+ others) and the author of five #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers, including The 4-Hour Workweek and Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers. The Observer and other media have called Tim “the Oprah of audio” due to the influence of The Tim Ferriss Show podcast, which is the first business/interview podcast to exceed 100 million downloads. It has now exceeded one billion downloads.
BIO — LONG-WINDED VERSION:
Getting into the weeds, Tim is the author of the following books, listed from oldest to newest:
The 4-Hour Workweek — Translated into 35+ languages; #1 New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and BusinessWeek bestseller.
The 4-Hour Body — #1 New York Times bestseller.
The 4-Hour Chef — #1 Wall Street Journal and New York Times bestseller; winner of a Gourmand “Best in the World” Award at the 18th Annual Paris Cookbook Awards.
Tools of Titans — #1 New York Times bestseller.
Tribe of Mentors — #1 New York Times Advice/How-To, #1 New York Times Business, #1 Wall Street Journal
Tim is listed as #6 in the “Top 20 Angel Investor” rankings for 2014 (see his deals here), and Newsweek calls him “the world’s best guinea pig,” which he takes as a compliment.
His podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show — focused on deconstructing world-class performers — is often ranked #1 across all of Apple Podcasts (also selected for “Best of Apple Podcasts” three years running).
This blog is one of Inc. Magazine’s “19 Blogs You Should Bookmark Right Now“, and it has been ranked #1 on the Top 150 Management and Leadership Blogs list, based on Google PageRank, Alexa traffic ranking, Bing results, PostRank, and more.
Tim’s Twitter account was selected by Mashable as one of “5 Must-Follow Twitter Accounts for Entrepreneurs,” a list including Richard Branson, Mark Cuban, Marissa Mayer, and Jack Dorsey.
Tim has been featured by more than 100 media outlets—including The New York Times, The Economist, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, TIME, Forbes, Fortune, CNN, and CBS—and was a popular guest lecturer at Princeton University from 2003-2013, where he discussed entrepreneurship as a tool for world change and ideal lifestyle design.
He also serves on the advisory board of DonorsChoose.org, an educational non-profit and the first charity to make the Fast Company list of 50 Most Innovative Companies in the World.
Tim has been invited to speak at some of the world’s most innovative organizations, including Google, MIT, Harvard Business School, Nike, Facebook, The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Microsoft, and Palantir. He has also been invited to keynote at dozens of summits and events, including TED, The EG, E-Tech, SXSW, LeWeb, and the Web 2.0 Exposition, where he shared the stage with figures like Eric Schmidt, Chairman of the Board of Google, and Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.
Tim has amassed a diverse (and certainly odd) roster of experiences. Most of the below are from 1999-2009:
- Princeton University guest lecturer in High-Tech Entrepreneurship and Electrical Engineering
- Finance and Entrepreneurship advisor at Singularity University at NASA Ames, co-founded by Peter Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil.
- First American in history to hold a Guinness World Record in tango
- Speaker of 5 languages (video samples here)
- National Chinese kickboxing champion
- Horseback archer (yabusame) in Nikko, Japan
- 2009 Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute
- Political asylum researcher
- Wired Magazine’s “Greatest Self-Promoter of 2008”
Tim received his BA from Princeton University in 2000, where he focused on language acquisition and East Asian Studies. He developed his nonfiction writing with Pulitzer Prize winner John McPhee and formed his life philosophies under Nobel Prize winner Kenzaburō Ōe. He is far dumber than both.
Tim enjoys bear claws, chocolate croissants, writing “About” pages in third person, and neglecting italics.
Tim Ferriss on Instagram
Tim Ferriss on Twitter
Tim Ferriss on YouTube
Tim Ferriss on Facebook
Tim Ferriss on TED
Tim Ferriss on AngelList