The Valley of Genius: Productivity Mastery #78 with Adam Fisher

In this episode, we’re going to talk about a different valley – “The Valley of Genius”, which happens to be the most most-read and best-reviewed book about the history of modern Silicon Valley. And our guest is its brilliant author – Adam Fisher!

From having a “geeky” childhood in the Silicon Valley, to working for magazines in New York, to writing about some of the biggest companies in the Silicon Valley, Adam learned a lot about passion and success. And he gave us some great insights about:

🎯How he managed to get access and interview most of the legends of Silicon Valley and put it all in a book (for 4 years),

🎯The untold stories of some of the biggest companies in the world when they were just start-ups,

🎯What made all these iconic companies successful,

🎯How the invention of a meta formula for solving mazes helps us measure success, and much more!

Adam Fisher is a writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is a best-selling author who specializes in books about the culture of high technology.

His first book, Valley of Genius, The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley, is both the most-read and best-reviewed history of modern Silicon Valley. The book appeared on best-of lists compiled by media outlets as varied as Bloomberg Businessweek and the BBC. Chapters of the book were excerpted by Vanity Fair, Wired, New York, and The Smithsonian Magazine.

Adam's second book, about a reclusive tech billionaire, was published privately.

His third book, Designing Ideas, about the design superstar Yves Behar, was just released by the art publisher Thames & Hudson. Currently, Adam is working on a fourth book, also to be published privately.

In a former career as a magazine journalist, Adam roamed the world covering art, travel, music, and tech for The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Men's Journal, the MIT Technology Review, and Wired. When Adam is not writing books for private clients, he still writes the occasional long-form feature story, but now mostly for the new magazine, Alta, where he is a contributing editor.

Enjoy listening and stay #productive!