Photo by Daniel Kelly

“Entrepreneurship isn’t about starting companies. Entrepreneurship is an approach to life.”
— Ed Zschau

Ed Zschau is the Interim President of Sierra Nevada College, and he brings to the college 17 years of leading technology companies. He founded System Industries in Palo Alto, California in 1969, and as its CEO led it to a successful IPO in 1980. In the 1990s, he was the General Manager of the IBM Storage Systems Division headquartered in San Jose, California. Ed has a total of 10 years of teaching experience as a professor in the graduate business schools at Stanford University and Harvard University, and he has taught high tech entrepreneurship courses for a total of 22 years in the engineering schools at Princeton University, Caltech, and University of Nevada, Reno. In addition to serving on the boards of major public companies such as Reader’s Digest and StarTek, Ed has helped to start and build several technology companies during the past 20 years, some of which were founded and led by his former students.

In the 1980s, Ed represented the Silicon Valley area of California for two terms in the US House of Representatives, serving on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Also, during the 1980s, he was a General Partner of Brentwood Associates, a venture capital firm, and he was the Founding Chairman of The Tech Interactive, (formerly The Tech Museum of Innovation), a non-profit educational institution in San Jose, California.

Ed holds an A.B. degree (cum laude) in Philosophy (bridging with Physics) from Princeton University, as well as M.B.A., M.S. (Statistics), and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University and a Doctor of Laws degree (Honoris Causa) from the University of San Francisco. Currently, he is a Senior Fellow of the California Council on Science and Technology.

Please enjoy!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Overcast, Castbox, or on your favorite podcast platform.

This podcast is brought to you by 99designs, the global creative platform that makes it easy for designers and clients to work together to create designs they love. Its creative process has become the go-to solution for businesses, agencies, and individuals, and I have used it for years to help with display advertising and illustrations and to rapid prototype the cover for The Tao of Seneca. Whether your business needs a logo, website design, business card, or anything you can imagine, check out 99designs.

You can work with multiple designers at once to get a bunch of different ideas, or hire the perfect designer for your project based based on their style and industry specialization. It’s simple to review concepts and leave feedback so you’ll end up with a design that you’re happy with. Listeners of The Tim Ferriss Show get 20 dollars off plus a free 99 dollar upgrade on their first design contest. Head to 99designs.com/tim to learn more or get started today.

QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

SCROLL BELOW FOR LINKS AND SHOW NOTES…

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

• Sierra Nevada College
• System Industries
• IBM
• ELE 491: High-Tech Entrepreneurship, Princeton University
• Harvard University
• Princeton University
• Caltech
• University of Nevada, Reno
• Reader’s Digest
• StarTek
• US House of Representatives
• Brentwood Associates
• The TECH Interactive
• University of San Francisco
• California Council on Science and Technology
• Omaha Knights, Ice Hockey Wiki
• 10 Versions of Murphy’s Law for Universal “Truths“, ThoughtCo.
• “If You Fail To Prepare You Are Preparing To Fail”, Quote Investigator
• Case Method Teaching, Stanford University
• Harvard Business School
• Stanford Graduate School of Business
• The McPhee Syllabus, The Millions
• Kant’s Views on Space and Time, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity: A Simplified Explanation, Space
• Newton’s Views on Space, Time, and Motion, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• The Devastating Impact of the 1961 Plane Crash That Wiped Out the Entire U.S. Figure Skating Team, Smithsonian.com
• Officer Candidate School (OCS), Newport, RI
• Extemporaneous Speaking: Things to Know, ForCom
• 113 Extemporaneous Speech Topics, My Speech Class
• Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr’s Duel, American Experience, PBS
• American Electronics Association, NNDB
• How Silicon Valley Hacked the Economy, The Nation
• House Committee on Ways and Means, GovTrack
• 1986 United States Senate Election in California, Wikipedia
• Zschau Named CEO of Censtor, a Disk Maker, Los Angeles Times
• Boy Scouts of America
• The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss
• The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman by Timothy Ferriss
• Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson
• Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
• Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson
• The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
• Building on Bedrock: What Sam Walton, Walt Disney, and Other Great Self-Made Entrepreneurs Can Teach Us About Building Valuable Companies by Derek Lidow
• The Walmart Museum
• Income Share Agreements: What Students Should Know Before Signing, Nerdwallet
• Lambda School
• Mission Impossible
• The Steps of the Simplex Algorithm, HEC Montreal
• My Way by Frank Sinatra

SHOW NOTES

Dear listeners, timestamps will be added shortly. 

• The Princeton engineering course in which Dr. Zschau and I met, and how I convinced him to let me in.
• Ed’s background in competitive figure skating and what it taught him about the value of practice, dedication, persistence, and determination.
• Where did Ed’s meticulous attention to detail originate?
• Learning by doing: the many benefits of the case method.
• How does Ed define entrepreneurship?
• What’s the role of optimism in entrepreneurship — and, by extension, life — where things can and often do go horribly wrong?
• As a teenager going into young adulthood, what did Ed think he was going to be when he grew up?
• As an aspiring physics philosopher obsessed with Einstein, what drew Ed to Princeton as an undergrad? Did he find it to be the challenge he was expecting?
• How did Ed get into teaching, and what led to his belief that career planning is overrated?
• After seizing the opportunity to teach when he’d never taught before, how did Ed actually learn to become good at it? In what ways did his high school experience with extemporaneous speaking help?
• What extemporaneous speaking competitively taught Ed about preparation and adaptation.
• How does Ed think about focusing for extended periods or opening himself to opportunities?
• Why did Ed decide to run for Congress?
• What were the two advantages of committing to serve a maximum of three terms — if elected — in the House of Representatives? Why does he, in retrospect, believe he’s made more of a contribution to a better future as a professor than he would have had he won his campaign to become a senator?
• After losing his Senate race to the incumbent by a narrow margin, what were the following days and weeks like for Ed? As someone who was generally used to success from his efforts, what did he say to himself at this point?
• What was Ed’s decision process like when trading his investor hat for that of a CEO at this time? Over the course of his life, what’s been the primary motivation for most of his decisions?
• How does Ed differentiate between the things that will have the greatest impact for others and feeling peer-pressured to commit to something? How does he ensure his skills are put to their most efficient use?
• How does Ed’s parenting style compare to his deliberate teaching style?
• Ed believes the best way to help people find their way is through encouragement rather than direction. What does this look like in practice, and how did his own parents instill this in him?
• Where did Ed’s overarching goal to live a life that matters originate? Has he ever wavered from this goal?
• Influential books — particularly biographies — that have inspired Ed, and what he would recommend for aspiring entrepreneurs to read.
• What Ed is most excited about these days, and how he’s tackling the modern problem of making higher education affordable through technology.
• The mantra by which Ed lives his life, how his mother would respond whenever he’d pivot according to this mantra, and the childhood nickname that follows Ed to this day.
• How Ed has always brought the sound of music to his endeavors — whether in finding an optimal solution to a linear programming problem or encouraging students to do things in their own unique way.
• How Ed’s desire to change the world has influenced and inspired the lives of many — including me — to hopefully continue his work.
• Parting thoughts.

PEOPLE MENTIONED

Posted on: August 1, 2019.

Please check out Tribe of Mentors, my newest book, which shares short, tactical life advice from 100+ world-class performers. Many of the world's most famous entrepreneurs, athletes, investors, poker players, and artists are part of the book. The tips and strategies in Tribe of Mentors have already changed my life, and I hope the same for you. Click here for a sample chapter and full details. Roughly 90% of the guests have never appeared on my podcast.

Who was interviewed? Here's a very partial list: tech icons (founders of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Craigslist, Pinterest, Spotify, Salesforce, Dropbox, and more), Jimmy Fallon, Arianna Huffington, Brandon Stanton (Humans of New York), Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ben Stiller, Maurice Ashley (first African-American Grandmaster of chess), Brené Brown (researcher and bestselling author), Rick Rubin (legendary music producer), Temple Grandin (animal behavior expert and autism activist), Franklin Leonard (The Black List), Dara Torres (12-time Olympic medalist in swimming), David Lynch (director), Kelly Slater (surfing legend), Bozoma Saint John (Beats/Apple/Uber), Lewis Cantley (famed cancer researcher), Maria Sharapova, Chris Anderson (curator of TED), Terry Crews, Greg Norman (golf icon), Vitalik Buterin (creator of Ethereum), and nearly 100 more. Check it all out by clicking here.