Tim Ferriss

"I had to mime, 'Don't masturbate under the table.'" — Craig Mod (@craigmod) https://t.co/pj4acA2yJJ

Harvard Business School (HBS) reached out last year to create a case study on my entrepreneurial journey, which tracks me from childhood to the current day.

On a few levels, this is a full-circle dream come true, as one catalyst for starting my own companies was the ELE 491 “High-Tech Entrepreneurship” class at Princeton taught by Professor Ed Zschau. He used HBS case studies as the backbone of this class, and 20-plus years later, I still have all of them gathered in a three-ring binder. ​ I owe special thanks to the two forces of nature behind this 2025 case study: Denise Koller, a Research Associate at Harvard Business School, and Professor Reza Satchu, a highly accomplished serial entrepreneur, investor, philanthropist, and teacher. The case study is roughly 40 pages, and you can buy it for $11.95. I don’t earn a penny. ​ It ended up including interviews with a bunch of my friends and mentors, and I had a lot of fun throughout the process. It culminated in participating in two classes at HBS in Professor Satchu’s “Founder Mindset” course. Below are a few excerpted paragraphs, and I elided a lot of text around the ellipses: ​ ​​ "​Tim Ferriss was sitting in his high-rise recording studio in Austin, Texas, watching cranes build a new skyline for an exploding city. He was also contemplating his own future. It was April 2024, and the entrepreneur was days away from the 10th anniversary of his wildly successful podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show. … ​ "Ferriss seemed to be at the top of his game [but]… He was questioning the sustainability of his business model and the industry as a whole: 'When I started the podcast in 2014, it was a blue ocean. Now, flash forward ten years: everyone has a podcast. Even your grandma has a podcast. It has become a red ocean: saturated and competitive.' ... ​ "Ferriss knew that the decisions he would make in the coming months would shape his own career and the impact he might be able to have. Industry insiders also suggested that whatever he would decide to do next might have ripple effects across the creator economy more broadly. Given the speed with which the ecosystem was changing, the window for pivoting successfully was narrowing, and he felt the growing tension. As he considered his next move, Ferriss remembered the Mark Twain quote that had guided him since his college days at Princeton: 'Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.' ..."