The Tim Ferriss Show #286: The Man Who Taught Me How to Invest
Ghetto Testing Book Titles
- Tim Ferriss and Mike Maples Jr. A/B tested book titles like "The 4-Hour Work Week" vs. "Drug Dealing for Fun and Profit".
- They used Google AdWords and tracked click-through rates to less opinion-driven decisions.
Book Cover Testing
- Tim Ferriss tested book covers at a bookstore by wrapping similar-sized books with mock-up covers.
- He stood like a bouncer at the bookstore, observing how many people picked up each version during rush hour.
Bookstore Hack
- Mike Maples Jr. bought $1,000 worth of "4-Hour Work Week" books at key bookstores.
- This triggered supply chains and created artificial scarcity, boosting the book's New York Times ranking.
Mike Maples, Jr. (@m2jr) is the man who taught me how to invest. He's one of my favorite people and a personal mentor.
He is a partner at Floodgate, a venture capital firm that specializes in micro-cap investments in startups. He has been on the Forbes Midas List since 2010 and named one of Fortune magazine's "8 Rising VC Stars." Before becoming a full-time investor, Mike was inolved as a founder and operating executive at back-to-back starup IPOs, including Tivoli Systems (acquired by IBM) and Motive (acquired by Alcatel-Lucent). Some of Mike's investments include Twitter, Twitch.tv. ngmoco, Weebly, Chegg, Bazaar-voice, Spiceworks, Okta, and Demandforce.
Enjoy!
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Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.
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