Tim Ferriss Beyond the 4-Hour Workweek: From Uber Adviser to Psychedelics

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Tim Ferriss was born in 1977 and grew up in East Hampton, New York, a frequently sick child. At 15 he spent a year in Japan as an exchange student, wrestled in high school, and in 2000 graduated from Princeton in East Asian Studies before taking a job in data storage sales. In 2001, still in that job, he founded the online supplement company BrainQUICKEN, which he sold to a London private equity firm in 2010. The burnout of running it fed The 4-Hour Workweek, published in 2007 and expanded in 2009, with its DEAL framework of definition, elimination, automation and liberation, the 80/20 principle and overseas virtual assistants. He went on to advise or back Uber, Facebook, Twitter, Shopify, Duolingo and Evernote, and helped launch Shopify's $100,000 Build a Business competition in 2010.

His podcast, launched in 2014, passed one billion downloads, and Fortune named him to its 40 Under 40 in 2016. Yet in 2015 he announced a long break from new investments, citing stress and a sense his impact was minimal, and by 2017 he had left the San Francisco Bay Area. He has spoken about bipolar disorder and depression and lost a close friend to a fentanyl overdose. In a 2020 interview he concluded that not everything meaningful can be measured, and he turned to Seneca, Tara Brach and Anthony de Mello. He funded Roland Griffiths' work at Johns Hopkins, giving over $2 million by 2019 and organizing $8 million more, gave $1 million to MAPS for MDMA research on PTSD, and backed Imperial College London, UC San Francisco and Harvard Law School.

• He is described as a Chinese kickboxing champion with a Guinness World Record for tango spins.
• The shipping startup Shyp, for which his AngelList syndicate raised over half a million dollars, shut down in 2018.
• His TV show on HLN produced 13 episodes; after few aired, he bought the rights in 2015 and it topped iTunes downloads.
• A $10 million challenge grant from his audience helped raise $30 million for psychedelic research.
• In 2016 he funded all 145 DonorsChoose classroom projects on Long Island, and in 2025 he released the card game Coyote with Exploding Kittens.