#139: Meet "Scorpion," The Real-Life Santa Claus with an IQ of 197
The Tim Ferriss Show - A podcast by Tim Ferriss: Bestselling Author, Human Guinea Pig
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This episode might make your head explode... in the best way possible. Walter O'Brien (AKA "Scorpion") (@walterobrienscs) is the founder of Scorpion Computer Services and ConciergeUp.com, a for-hire global think tank that provides intelligence-on-demand as a concierge service. The tag line for the latter is, "for any funded need." Need to defend against chemical warfare? Move an entire manufacturing operation over a weekend? Save a loved one from a deceitful spouse? Thread the needle on a thorny legal issue? Become a pop star in a foreign country? When Walter and his team of 2,000+ distributed geniuses say "any funded need," they mean it literally. Born in Ireland, Walter was diagnosed as a child prodigy with an IQ of 197. He became an Irish national coding champion and competed in the Olympics in informatics. Fast forward to today, he and Scorpion get paid to fix every imaginable problem for billionaires, startups, governments, Fortune 500 companies, and people like you and me. On the large side, it ranges from mitigating risk on $1.9 trillion of investments to inventing artificial intelligence engines to protect United States war fighters in Afghanistan. Walter is also the executive producer of the hit CBS TV show Scorpion, inspired by his life, which has reached more than 26 million television viewers. I was introduced to Walter well before the show, and we go deep in this conversation, with lots of amazing and also hilarious examples of problem solving. Enjoy! Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Wealthfront. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive (in a good way) set-it-and-forget-it investing service, led by technologists from places like Apple. It has exploded in popularity in the last two years and now has more than $2.5B under management. Why? 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