The Silicon Valley Transplant

Famous for being a life hacker, author, podcaster, and prolific startup investor who was early to Uber, Twitter, and many other now-household tech names, Tim Ferriss might be the ultimate Silicon Valley creation. And yet he moved to Austin in 2017. Why? “I love that there’s a conspicuous lack of a single dominant industry here,” he says. “In San Francisco, it felt like an echo chamber; there’s a mono conversation about technology. In Austin, I’m friends with tech people but also oil and gas people, consumer-products people, filmmakers.” After he unofficially retired from investing in tech companies about three years ago, he began to crave more diverse perspectives—hence the reset. For Ferriss, the move also delivers on a long-time wish. “I wanted to live in Austin after college and tried to get a job at the software company Trilogy,” he says. “That didn’t work out, but I returned again and again for South by Southwest and came to love the city.”