Skip to content
#682: Bill Gurley Interviews Tim Ferriss — Reflecting on 20+ Years of Life and Business Experiments artwork

#682: Bill Gurley Interviews Tim Ferriss — Reflecting on 20+ Years of Life and Business Experiments

The Tim Ferriss Show

July 19, 2023

Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is usually my job to deconstruct world-class performers to tease out the routines, habits, et cetera that you can apply to your own lives. This is a special episode and a turning of the tables.

Speakers Tim Ferriss, Bill Gurley

TopicsEntrepreneurshipBusiness

Tim Ferriss (0:00)

This episode is brought to you by Secureframe. Secureframe's industry-leading compliance automation platform, paired with their in-house compliance experts and former auditors, helps you to get audit ready in weeks, not months, so you can close more deals faster.

I polled a ton of you online on social, and reviews came back, which were overwhelmingly positive for Secureframe. Secureframe simplifies and streamlines the process of getting and staying compliant to the most rigorous global privacy and security standards. They help thousands of businesses achieve compliance with security and privacy frameworks, including SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, PCI, and GDPR. Secureframe is the most comprehensive security and compliance automation platform with hundreds of integrations, built-in security training, vendor and risk management, and more.

You continuously detect and remediate misconfigurations across your technology stack. You also get complete visibility with actionable insights on critical security and privacy compliance issues.

Security training for SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI DSS, GDPR, and more are built into Secureframe's platform. You can quickly meet security and privacy compliance requirements and save time assigning, tracking, and reporting on required training. Secureframe provides unmatched expert guidance every step of the way with their 30 plus former auditors and industry professionals. Secureframe helps you quickly achieve and maintain compliance so you can focus on other things, like serving your customers, scaling your business, and growing revenue. So consider automating your security and privacy compliance with Secureframe. Schedule a demo today at secureframe.com, as it sounds, secureframe.com, and tell them, Tim Ferris, that's me. Tim Ferris sent you to unlock 10% off for your first year. Again, that's secureframe.com, and during your demo, tell them that Tim Ferris sent you to unlock 10% off for your first year. One more time, secureframe.com.

This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. Temperature is one of the main causes of poor sleep, and heat is my personal nemesis. I've suffered for decades tossing and turning, throwing blankets off, pulling the back on, putting one leg on top, and repeating all of that ad nauseum. But now I am falling asleep in record time. Why? Because I'm using a device, it was recommended to me by friends, called the Pod Cover by Eight Sleep. The Pod Cover fits on any mattress, and allows you to adjust the temperature of your sleeping environment, providing the optimal temperature that gets you the best night's sleep. With the Pod Cover's dual zone temperature control, you and your partner can set your sides of the bed to as cool as 55 degrees, or as hot as 110 degrees.

I think generally in my experience, my partners prefer the high side, and I like to sleep very, very cool. So stop fighting, this helps. Based on your biometrics, environment, and sleep stages, the Pod Cover makes temperature adjustments throughout the night that limit wakeups and increase your percentage of deep sleep. In addition to its best-in-class temperature regulation, the Pod Cover sensors also track your health and sleep metrics without the need to use a wearable. So go to eightsleep.com/tim, all spelled out, eightsleep.com/tim, and save $250 on the Eight Sleep Pod Cover. That's eightsleep.com/tim. Eight Sleep currently ships within the US, Canada, and the UK. Select countries in the EU and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com/tim to save $250 on the Eight Sleep Pod Cover.

SPEAKER_2 (3:24)

At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

Bill Gurley (3:29)

Can I ask you a personal question?

Tim Ferriss (3:47)

Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is usually my job to deconstruct world-class performers of all different types to tease out the routines, habits, et cetera, that you can apply to your own lives. This is a special episode and a turning of the tables. This time around, legendary investor Bill Gurley interviews me, and the recording is from earlier this year at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. The conversation explores some of my lessons learned and favorite findings over the last two decades or so in areas like entrepreneurship, tech, and podcasting, just to name three. I also throw in some favorite books and other spicy bits to keep things interesting.

Let me mention a bit more about Bill before we get started. Bill Gurley, you can find him on Twitter, on Twitter at B Gurley, G-U-R-L-E-Y, has spent more than 20 years as a general partner at Benchmark. Before entering the venture capital business, Bill spent four years on Wall Street as a top ranked research analyst, including three years at Credit Suisse First Boston.

Over his incredibly impressive venture career, he has worked with such companies as Grubhub, Nextdoor, OpenTable, Stitch Fix, Uber, and Zillow, just to name a few. For more takeaways from his incredible investing career, you can find my interview with Bill, that's me interviewing Bill, at tim.blog slash Bill Gurley. And as a side note, my 2007 South by Southwest keynote, this was a speech, my first appearance at South by, that I mentioned in this conversation with Bill, was what started it all in many senses. It's what put my first book, The 4-Hour Workweek, on the radar of influential bloggers and bigger media outlets, ultimately landing the book on the New York Times bestseller list where it stayed, more or less unbroken for the next seven years. It's been a wild ride.

56 more minutes of transcript below

Thousands of transcripts fetched by people building searchable podcast archives

Fetch the whole transcript

The demo key returns a sample episode in full, no card needed:

request
curl -H "x-api-key: pt_demo" \
  https://spoken.md/transcripts/1000651996090

Markdown with the speakers named, for your notes, your knowledge base, or anything that makes HTTP calls.

From $0.10 per transcript. No subscription. Credits never expire. Prices exclude VAT, added at checkout for EU customers. Not what you expected? Email us within 14 days with 20 or fewer credits used and we refund the pack in full.

Using your own key:

request
curl -H "x-api-key: YOUR_KEY" \
  https://spoken.md/transcripts/1000621665352