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I always run across great quotes from Warren Buffett, but I never spent any time actually reading any of his writings or anything written about him. What's the best place to start to absorb some of his wisdom? Anything that's applicable to startups, tech, and life in general, beyond being the CEO of a holding company?

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Not to diminish any of his accomplishments, but read his quotes and story as being a product of his time. He famously missed out on a lot of solid tech investments because of his background as a value investor. Value investing doesn't exist the same way it did when Berkshire started making a name for itself. Tech investing also isn't them same as 1997, 2004, or 2010.

Berkshire has outperformed Nasdaq and SP500 from the IPO (May 9, 1996), 10y, 5y, 1y time periods and he has now $340B in cash.

All this with low risk holding lots of cash. He has not missed anything.

His only miss was actually buying Berkshire. He estimates that he lost out on well over $200B had he never bought Berkshire.

Just because it beat indexes doesn't mean it couldn't have done better.

From 2017:

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/06/warren-buffett-admits-he-mad...

"Not to diminish the accomplishments of Magnus Carlsen , but he has lost many games."

"Not to diminish the accomplishments of the world's best poker player, but he did lose many hands."

My point is that you have to put all of his wisdom and stories in the context of what he's good at and the environment he was in. He tried to apply his value investing playbook to early Google, and it looked like a bad investment. He later realized this (see my link), but that gets talked about less than value investing in its heyday. Aside: for debated reasons, value investing, which used to outperform, has been in a slump for a long time.

It's east to hear his story and think if you do the same thing, you'd be successful. If you did the same thing in 1970, you might be! And some of his wisdom is generally applicable, but reading his story as a guide for investing today isn't the right approach.

He's always been an independent thinker. He stopped the low price to book value thing ages ago and went more for companies with good long term growth such as Apple. And recently he's switched a lot to cash/t-bills. We'll see if that proved a wise move but he's got a good track record of doing smart things rather than always doing the same thing.

Think of the time horizon.

The current tech investing boom is just a blip just like previous tech booms (Auto industry boom, aircraft boom, personal computer boom).

Someone probably said something similar in the 1960s when Buffet avoided crowded Go-Go era investments in the 1960s to his benefit.

It's not that he missed out on it, both Buffett and munger said that they didn't really understand technology so they didn't feel a reason to go there. They felt they better understood insurance and railroads and candies and whatnot and they made Bank doing it.

I agree and I think furthermore no one has really understood technology enough to have consistently made the right moves, because tech stocks fundamentally were blazing a new trail.

Buffett invested in businesses that, relatively speaking, were already well understood, if not widely by everyone, the point being that you could look at the balances and financial statements of an insurance company and derive an investment plan that was based on basically nothing new. Google, and tech in general, were not like that.

I think now some tech stocks do look like that. Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, all have business models that are much more well understood at this point than 30 years ago.

Even though Google has been wildly successful, I do see them as riskier since they derive so much of their income from web search ads, which feels like a precarious position compared to selling office productivity suites, databases, and CRMs to enterprises (I know Google does some of this but it's not where they make the bulk of their income).

> 1997

Yeah, looking at the NASDAQ from 1997 is a good reminder of everyone's selection bias. Saying Buffett missed out on the winners (with 20/20 hindsight) is forgetting that he also missed out on a lot of losers.

Here's some of the now lesser known NASDAQ tech stocks that were doing well in 1997:

  Dell (DELL)
  Compaq (CPQ)
  Gateway (GTW)
  Silicon Graphics (SGI)
  Hewlett-Packard (HWP)
  America Online (AOL)
  Yahoo (YHOO)
  Lycos (LCOS) 
  Excite (XCIT)
  Netscape (NSCP)
  3Com (COMS) 
  Bay Networks (BAY)

From: https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/tech-stocks-and-nasd...

And nobody ever went wrong by buying IBM

This is extremely superficial.

You are, and you're doing so naively, because one of the reasons Buffett has been successful is that he stuck to things that were in his circle of competence.

Not by Buffett, but you'll love Poor Charlie's Alamanack, by Charlie Munger, his lifelong business partner.

https://www.stripe.press/poor-charlies-almanack/cover

For Buffett I recommend Essays of Warren Buffett. Regarding Munger’s Almanack, I wrote a nice summary just before his death:

”A real estate investment of $24 by the Dutch to buy the island of Manhattan would today be roughly equivalent to $3 trillion. Across 378 years, that’s about a seven percent annual compound rate of return…”

https://www.lostbookofsales.com/notes/poor-charlies-almanack...

Buffet said of Munger:

> “In terms of managing money, there wasn’t anybody better in the world to talk to for many, many decades than Charlie.”

Buffet gets all the press, but he acknowledges Munger as a huge part, if you listen.

Munger really gave Buffet wings. They did it together.

It's a great book (I think), reading it now. It's the only book this far that I've brought with me to the gym (because I wanted to continue reading it, in between the exercises)

Start here - The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville

https://business.columbia.edu/cgi-finance/chazen-global-insi...

I still remember the feeling I got when I first read the first paragraph and especially this phrase:

"For one thing, if (a) you had taken 225 million orangutans distributed roughly as the U.S. population is; if (b) 215 winners were left after 20 days; and if (c) you found that 40 came from a particular zoo in Omaha, you would be pretty sure you were on to something."

Compared to anything in finance I've read up until then, it felt like I just found the right guy.

"The Intelligent Investor", by Benjamin Graham. He was Buffett's mentor, and contributed to that book. It's straight value investing. Never buy a startup.

There are biographies of Buffett. I read one of them years ago. It goes into great detail about the early deals that got him started. I never did quite understand the deal that moved him into the big leagues, the takeover of GEICO insurance.

Somewhat dated (10 years old), but a classic and probably the best single place to get started:

https://www.amazon.com/Essays-Warren-Buffett-Lessons-Corpora...

His shareholder letters are on the Berkshire website and are excellent.

I downloaded his letters to shareholders to an ebook reader, starting I believe in 1971 or so. Read all of it to the present, about 1500 pages (there's a lot of repetition)

What sticks out the most is what a clear thinker he is.

Would be possible for you to share it? I think would be a very interesting read. Thanks

For his personal background, the history of his companies, and insight into his overall investment philosophy, the Aquired podcast did a three part series on Berkshire Hathaway back in 2021. They also interviewed Charlie Munger just before he passed away. They’re good overviews and enjoyable listens.

Beside the various books he’s written, there’s also his writing on Berkshire Hathaways’ website: https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/

He didn't write a book. Maybe he will now he has more time.

You’re right. I stand corrected.

Watch YouTube videos of old Berkshire meetings, especially ones with Charlie.

For the lazy, "1994 - 2024 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meetings" will get you started :-)

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7aFD7bbigjgjUt0L2LWk...

Read his annual letters to shareholders. Fantastic writings.

Honestly his ex wifes book about how he reads 10k reports is really good. Cant remember the name.

If you’re talking about Mary Buffett, it is his ex daughter-in-law. How to read financial reports like Warren Buffett is the book (I think)

Thats the one, thank you

Never heard about it, and can't find a trace on google. If you remember, please post here.

Warren Buffett and the interpretation of financial statements by Mary Buffett

Thank you !

Ps. That's not his ex wife though, it's his son's ex wife

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