News Detail
Chris Hutchins ’03
Throughout his career, Chris Hutchins ’03 has been laser-focused on one question: How do you maximize happiness at the lowest cost? He now ponders it weekly with other industry experts on his award-winning podcast “All the Hacks,” which has been downloaded over 7 million times since its inception in 2021.
Hutchins calls coming to Episcopal his very first life hack. “I lived in the suburbs, and my parents both worked,” he explained. “I couldn’t figure out how to get around without a car. So why not live with my best friends and eliminate the need to drive to hang out with them?” Thus began his career at Episcopal — and his fascination with hacking his way to a better life.
While at Episcopal, Hutchins began to explore his intellectual and entrepreneurial curiosities. Throughout his four years, Hutchins worked closely in the computer lab with his advisor David Hathaway, Episcopal’s technology director from 1986-2013. He also started a business selling pizza by the slice after Study Hall (which continues to be an EHS tradition today), lobbied the mail room to hire student helpers, and lobbied the school to create a multi-variable calculus class with other students and former math teacher Tom Berry.
Hutchins went from Episcopal to Colorado State University, and his path after college was as diverse as it was impressive. A few years into his first “career” in investment banking and management consulting, Hutchins and his wife Amy began to feel burned out and restless. Amid the 2008 financial recession, the two began to consider taking a break from the corporate world and traveling the world on a budget. “It never crossed our minds that this was a thing that you could do,” Hutchins said, but he had been travel hacking and optimizing credit card points to lessen the cost of travel for a few years. The Hutchins then dove in headfirst, buying a one-way ticket to South Africa, and spent the next seven months backpacking throughout Africa, the Middle East, India, and Southwest Asia.
Back in San Francisco, Hutchins once more caught the tech bug that began in the computer lab at Episcopal. He co-founded Milk, to experiment with mobile app ideas, which was acquired by Google in 2012. From there, he worked as an early-stage investor at Google Ventures (GV) making over 40 investments. After over three years at GV, Hutchins founded his own company, Grove, which strove to “make financial advice accessible and affordable to everyone.” Grove was acquired by investment firm Wealthfront in 2019.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Hutchins began to miss organic conversations with friends that once happened around the dinner table. “So I thought, ‘Why don’t I record the interesting conversations about life hacking that I was having?’” He started All the Hacks while working for Wealthfront, not anticipating the rapid growth the podcast would experience.
Now a fixture in the personal finance industry, Hutchins and his wife both went full-time with All the Hacks just two years later. The podcast has evolved from travel and credit card hacking to more all-encompassing tips on how to live a more fulfilling life and get better outcomes in everything you do. “Helping people live better lives and be more thoughtful about where they spend their time, energy, and money feels like such amazing work,” he said.
Hutchins has interviewed industry experts like personal finance guru Ramit Sethi, skateboarding legend Tony Hawk, and 3-time Olympic Gold Medalist Kerri Walsh Jennings; he has been a guest on Tim Ferris’ wildly popular podcast; he has been featured in a documentary titled “Playing With FIRE;” and, most importantly, he has continued to ideate and grow at every turn, following his curiosity as he has done since his days at Episcopal. “I’ve always been a relentless researcher,” Hutchins said. “I’m willing to push the boundaries of what is allowed.”
