Part of my series on what, why and how we do things at RunSignup, Founder’s Corner.
As I have said many times before, I am a huge fan of Warren Buffet and his long term thinking. This was reinforced the past several months as I went down the rabbit hole of the Acquired Podcast Series 3 time 3 hour deep dives on Berkshire Hathaway and a 1 hour interview with Charlie Munger the month before he passed away at 99.
Warren issued his annual letter this past weekend, and I thought I would share the email I sent to everyone in our company:
One of my favorite things to read, the annual Berkshire letter from Warren, was published this weekend – https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2023ltr.pdf. When you have time it is worth reading all of them – https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html.
I found it very reinforcing of how we are thinking about our company these days with our steady, diversified growth and profitability.
I liked this comment he made up front: Berkshire wants:
“investors who trust Berkshire with their savings without any expectation of resale (resembling in attitude people who save in order to buy a farm or rental property rather than people who prefer using their excess funds to purchase lottery tickets or “hot” stocks).”
Our investors are all of us – employees – who are mostly investing our time in return for immediate cash flow of compensation, but also in the stock for long term return. He talks about how Berkshire is getting annual dividends from AMEX that are greater than what they originally paid (in 1991) and they get that each year (of course that takes time and the magic of compounding growth).
I think our employees (including me) are all the kind of investors Warren is talking about.
The other thing he talks about is:
“The lesson from Coke and AMEX? When you find a truly wonderful business, stick with it. Patience pays, and one wonderful business can offset the many mediocre decisions that are inevitable.”
It kind of feels like we have found/created a truly wonderful business and I hope we all keep investing in it with our efforts to help our customers.
Thanks,
Bob