He bought an existing business with a well-defined business model and one with a long history of operations that he could analyze. This is waaaaaaaay less risky than doing a startup.
Mistakes are the best teachers. One does not learn from success. It is desirable to learn vicariously from other people’s failures, but it gets much more firmly seared in when they are your own.
You don’t make money when you buy stocks. And you don’t make money when you sell stocks. You make money by waiting.
Heads I win, tails I don’t lose much.
There is no such thing as a value trap. There are investing mistakes.
The only way one should buy stocks is if you understand the underlying business. You stay within the circle of competence. You buy businesses you understand.
I have a hard time getting past the day without the nap, so the nap is a must.
Warren Buffett has said many times that people either get value investing in five minutes or they won’t get it in five years. So, there is something in the human brain, that for some of us, makes all the difference in the world right away and the patience it requires is part of the wiring process.
The problem most nonprofits have is that they are run by romantics who are great to hang out with, but they have no clue.
Entrepreneurs are great at dealing with uncertainty and also very good at minimizing risk. That’s the classic great entrepreneur.
The good news in investing is there are no HR problems. If there are no humans, there are no problems!
People see poverty all around them in India, but they are desensitized or immune to it. I came to the conclusion that poverty is driven by lack of education.
We Americans love original ideas. But truly, there are already plenty of good ones out there, ours for the taking. If I were too proud to copy the ideas of others, I likely wouldnt have even a fraction of my current success.
The key to investing is not assessing how much an industry is going to affect society, or how much it will grow, but rather determining the competitive advantage of any given company and, above all, the durability of that advantage.4 – Warren Buffett.
Einstein also recognized the power of simplicity, and it was the key to his breakthroughs in physics. He noted that the five ascending levels of intellect were, “Smart, Intelligent, Brilliant, Genius, Simple.” For Einstein, simplicity was simply the highest level of intellect.
Capitalism is greed driven.