Berkshire Annual Meeting 2026: The First Meeting Without Buffett at the Helm

Versión en Español

I just got back from Omaha, Nebraska, from my second Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting. The original plan was to land Thursday so I could spend all of Friday roaming the talks and the famous ecosystem that builds up around the event. Saturday would bring the main course —the shareholders meeting— followed by one more conference in the afternoon, and then the traditional Panamanian dinner at Gorat’s.

It didn’t go exactly as planned. A visa hiccup forced me to push back my flight, and between delays I ended up arriving Friday afternoon. Goodbye to Friday’s talks. People told me they were excellent, and that stung, because the thing I most wanted to confirm this year was whether the parallel ecosystem —the side conferences, the small groups, the investor meet-ups— was still alive. From what I heard and saw afterward: yes, it still has energy.

A hotel with a privileged view

I stayed at the Kimpton Cottonwood, on the famous Farnam Street. As it turns out, Warren Buffett’s offices are right next door, in Blackstone Plaza —the historic Kiewit Plaza, home to Berkshire Hathaway since 1962, which was renamed after it sold in 2019. Buffett’s house is on that same street, five minutes away. There’s a reason Shane Parrish’s excellent podcast is called Farnam Street: he devoted it to learning and writing about the wisdom of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, and named it after the street where the office sits.

Celebrities gathered at the Kimpton all weekend. One night there was a private Berkshire event in the lobby, and judging by the number of suited bodyguards outside, we figured Buffett was inside. Another day, right at the entrance, I had Bill Murray —yes, the actor— next to me; turns out he’s been a Berkshire shareholder since the 70s. And to top it off, Li Lu, the “Warren Buffett of China,” was hosting a private event on the 8th floor. Three of us Panamanians tried to sneak in, but we got stopped at the door: invitation only. For those who don’t know him, Li Lu is the only person Charlie Munger ever trusted to manage his personal money.

Blackstone Plaza at night on Farnam Street, Omaha, home to Warren Buffett's offices
Blackstone Plaza at night —the historic Kiewit Plaza, home to Warren Buffett’s offices on Farnam Street.

The Greg Abel era: less charisma, more operations

Saturday was, in a word, transition. Greg Abel led his first meeting as CEO, with Buffett (95) sitting in the audience for the first time in 60 years. The play looks a lot like Apple’s when Tim Cook replaced Steve Jobs: when the founder-legend steps away, the new CEO elevates the executive bench to show the depth of management and prove the company is bigger than any one person.

Last year Buffett was very general —he barely talked about the business; it was all life wisdom, anecdotes, philosophy. This year, with Greg, the tone flipped 180°:

  • Metrics and rankings, no filter. BNSF moved from 5th to 4th among the six Class I railroads. Operating margin rose 250 basis points in 2025. Union Pacific, the leader, sits at 39.5%. Clear gap, clear plan. Warren probably would have been too shy to talk that way about an asset he owns in public; Greg said it without blinking.
  • In-house technology. The mantra: be builders of technology, not buyers. They moved GEICO’s tech lead into a senior role at Berkshire Hathaway Energy and BNSF to replicate the playbook.
  • “Narrow AI.” Greg hates the bare term “AI.” Three principles: a human always in the loop, reproducibility as a safeguard, and AI that is additive to the business (no “AI for AI’s sake”).
  • They brought the general managers of GEICO, BNSF and NetJets/Consumer Products on stage. For the first time we saw those operators live, defending their businesses.

Does Greg have Warren’s charisma? No. And nobody expects him to: he’s an operator, not a comedian. And I think that’s the right call: if you’re not charismatic, you’d better teach people how you think as a business. The Q&A reflected it too. Buffett used to get questions like “what would you do if you could spend one more day with Charlie Munger?” Nobody asks Greg that: they ask him about AI, insurance succession, autonomous trucking, decentralization, tariffs. It’s much more about the business. In a way, you come away understanding the company better this year.

The CHI Health Center arena during the 2026 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting
The CHI Health Center at the first meeting with Greg Abel as CEO.

The tribute to Buffett —and the reality

The most moving part of the day: they officially raised Warren’s “jersey” —number 60, for his 60 years as CEO— to the rafters of the CHI Health Center, next to Charlie Munger’s. The arena erupted. Then Warren took the mic and, speaking about Greg, said: “He’s doing everything I did, and a little more, and he’s doing it better in every case.” 100% Buffett.

BUFFETT 60 1965-2025 banner raised to the rafters of the CHI Health Center
The “BUFFETT · 60 · 1965-2025” banner raised to the rafters, honoring his 60 years as CEO.

Warren went back to the Apple story —the $35 billion they invested ten years ago turned into $185 billion pre-tax, “and I didn’t have to do a damn thing”— and used the moment to recognize Tim Cook (also stepping down), who was in the audience. Later Becky Quick interviewed him live and he dropped lines that are already classics: “the market is a church with a casino next door” and “the best time to buy is when nobody answers the phone.”

Throughout the day, Warren drew the parallel more than once between himself and Steve Jobs, and between Greg Abel and Tim Cook: the visionary who creates, the operator who scales. I’m not the one making the comparison —he made it himself, from the stage.

Tribute portrait of Warren Buffett at the 2026 meeting exhibit hall
The tribute in the exhibit hall: “With Gratitude, Warren Buffett, Chairman.”

But I’ll be honest with you: Buffett made me sad. He looks very old. When he speaks he struggles to modulate, struggles to laugh, and there are moments you can’t fully understand him. He doesn’t have much time left, and that brings me to the elephant in the room.

Warren Buffett, 95, at the microphone in his blue sweater at the Berkshire 2026 meeting
Warren Buffett, 95, at the microphone in the blue sweater that went viral.

What happens the day Buffett is gone?

This year the energy was clearly lower. My eyeball estimate: 30-40% fewer attendees than last year (the press put it around 25,000, versus 40,000 in 2025). The exhibit hall was quieter at the register. And the question that haunts me is: what happens the year Warren isn’t there?

You can already see the moves to fill the vacuum, and it’s clear there will be competition to be the gathering place for value investors next year:

  • Tom Gayner (Markel) wants to build a whole weekend like Berkshire’s.
  • Bill Ackman said he’ll be much more active on social media and at public conferences, partly to promote his new funds.

Will any of them come close to Buffett? I doubt it. Warren combines something almost impossible to replicate: a six-decade track record, a legendary communicator, and a cultural figure beyond finance. But a power vacuum is clearly forming in the symbolic leadership of value investing, and several people will try to grab the baton. My bet: there won’t be a single successor, but a fragmentation —each great investor with their own “meeting” in a different town.

The after-party: Kanbrick and the Panamanian dinner

Walking out of the main meeting, I went to the exhibit hall for my annual shopping: Brooks sneakers (thanks, Dan Sheridan), a coffee mug, a signed baseball. It’s one of the nicest spaces of the weekend: you walk among Berkshire’s brands, discovering products and services you’d otherwise never see.

Then I had the good fortune of getting into a very good session by Kanbrick, the firm built by Tracy Britt Cool (former financial assistant to Buffett, former CEO of Pampered Chef) and her partner Brian Humphrey. What they’re doing is brilliant: a “Berkshire for smaller companies” —a long-term home, patient capital, 10+ year holds, conservative leverage (~2.5-3x, versus 4-6x for traditional PE), an identical philosophy at a more manageable scale. Their thesis: the world didn’t need another middle-market PE shop; it needed a long-term home with operator DNA.

Three ideas I took home and applied straight to Porta Norte:

  1. The compounding equation. 20% a year for 20 years turns into ~38x. That’s the math any long-term builder should have written on the wall. In solarpunk real estate with a 50-year horizon, that discipline is our competitive advantage.
  2. The 4 Ms to evaluate counterparties (developers, institutions, businesses entering Porta Norte): Market, Moat, Management, More potential. “More potential” is their personal version of the margin of safety: not in price, but in what you can co-create with the partner.
  3. Patience compounds. Tracy and Brian have spent five years investing in their community of CEOs (~4,000 people), and two of their portfolio companies came out of it. The lesson: build community before you need the deal flow. It applies directly to how we cultivate relationships with investors, residents and operators at Porta Norte.

Then, at night, the traditional dinner at Gorat’s, the steakhouse Buffett made famous. We were about 12-14 Panamanians at the table (some had already left by the time I took the photo), and that’s a high number for any conference in the United States: the trip from Panama takes at least 12-14 hours with layovers, almost as long as flying to Madrid. The passion it takes to make this trip every year is high, and it says something about the kind of people who do it.

The Panamanian dinner at Gorat's Steak House during the Berkshire 2026 weekend
The traditional Panamanian dinner at Gorat’s, the steakhouse Buffett made famous.

The next day I flew back to Panama early. I still regret missing Friday’s talks, but Saturday —even with the lower energy— was worth every hour in the air.

Reflection

It’s my second year going, and I increasingly see this trip as investing practice, not financial tourism. Annual meetings are a powerful way to:

  • Get to know the companies you’re invested in better, and decide whether to add or trim your exposure.
  • Watch management: see their faces, hear how they think, judge how they’re aging (literally and figuratively).
  • Recharge your passion by surrounding yourself with people who care about these things. Let’s be honest: very few people in the world know —or want— to talk about combined ratios, capital allocation and moats in depth.

When you’re in a room with thousands of people who flew 12-14 hours to hear a CEO talk about the 10-Q, you realize something: there’s a tribe that thinks this way, and surrounding yourself with them makes you a better investor. More than any book or course.

I’m left wanting to go to other meetings —Markel, Constellation Software, Fairfax, maybe. If you want to learn to think like a long-term owner, events like these are the best education there is.

See you next year, Omaha. I hope Warren is still there.

And what do I think about BRK?

People ask me this a lot, so I’ll cut to it. Today BRK-A is around $750,000 and BRK-B around $500. It depends on what you’re after and the price you pay, but my read is this: Berkshire is fairly valued and the S&P 500 is, to me, overvalued. That’s why right now I like Berkshire quite a bit more than the index.

Don’t expect high returns over the medium term —I’d aim for something like 6% a year. I see it as almost as safe as a T-Bill, but with better yield: country diversification, a fortress balance sheet, and a common-sense discount. Very conservative.

That’s why I keep investing in it alongside my parents. For my personal portfolio I hold a position, but these days I prefer less conservative things with a better expected return. Different horses for different courses.

Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting 2025: My First Time

A few years ago I set myself a goal: sharpen my investment judgment and become a wiser steward of my family’s financial future. The deeper I dug, the more hooked I became. I read dozens of investing books, and every path eventually pointed to Berkshire Hathaway. It soon became clear that Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger are the gold standard for learning how to invest—and, by extension, how to run any business with discipline and common sense.

Many nights, after work, I unwind by watching the Q&A sessions from the Annual Meeting or old Buffett & Munger lectures. Their philosophy hooked me so hard I promised myself I’d attend the meeting one day.

In 2025, I finally made the pilgrimage to Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Shareholders Meeting. Seeing 40,000 investors under one roof felt surreal, and Saturday’s marathon Q&A anchored the whole weekend.

I left Panama on Friday morning. We had a connecting flight in Houston and almost missed the meeting because of bad weather. We waited inside the plane for about two hours. The airport almost shut down. In the end, the skies cleared, and we took off.

On the plane, I reread the Annual Report. In it you can find his annual letter, where Buffett writes a very instructive essay. He discusses Berkshire’s results and his investment principles. In the Annual Report you can also find the agenda and some events in Omaha for shareholders.

We arrived at the hotel at midnight and agreed to meet in the lobby at 6 a.m. to walk to the arena. They have to hold it in an arena because there are about 40,000 attendees.

I woke up at 5:30 a.m., and off we went. The lines were shockingly long. Some people even camped throughout the night. We were lucky that part of our group arrived even earlier, and we joined them. The energy while waiting in line was intense. When the doors opened, people shouted, filmed, and pushed. It felt like an oversold concert.

Shareholders waiting outside for the Annual Meeting.

Seating is first come, first served. We managed to get good seats together. There were about ten Panamanians in our group and more scattered around. I was surprised by how many Panamanians attended. One even asked a question online. Also, there were a lot of celebrities there; I saw Tim Cook, Li Lu, and Bill Ackman a few meters away.

The event began at 8 a.m. sharp. Warren Buffett, Greg Abel—the future CEO of Berkshire—and Ajit Jain, head of insurance, were all seated at the podium.

Warren Buffett, Greg Abel and Ajit Jain.

They usually make one video each year, but this time there was no video. He had already announced a “change of plans” in the Annual Report. The event usually starts with ten minutes of Warren summarizing the financial statements. This includes operating earnings and changes in the outstanding shares.

The whole event lasts five hours, which consists mainly of questions and answers. Questions are divided between shareholders attending in person and Becky Quick from CNBC, who chooses the best questions submitted online.

The shareholder questions vary wildly in quality. But Warren has the art of answering them with something wise. He adds an anecdote and always includes a touch of humor. He is very funny. The questions span from investment to life philosophy.

You can watch and read the Q&A online. Which I highly recommend. To give you a taste, here are 5 examples:

1. On real estate

Audience Member (Zone 2): Good morning, Warren, Greg and Ajit. My name is Jackie Han. I’m from China and now work in Toronto, Canada. This is my eighth Berkshire Hathaway meeting. At this point, I’ve probably spent more time with you than most people spend on Netflix. As you might guess, coming from a Chinese family, we always had a soft spot for real estate. So the question isn’t why don’t you own a house, it’s why are you still buying stocks instead of more property? So here is my question: With today’s high interest rates and global uncertainty, do you still believe in being greedy when others are fearful, or is value investing facing new challenges in today’s environment? Thank you.

Warren Buffett: Well, in respect to real estate, it’s so much harder than stocks in terms of negotiation of deals, time spent, and the involvement of multiple parties in the ownership. Usually when real estate gets in trouble, you find out you’re dealing with more than just the equity holder.

There have been times when large amounts of real estate have changed hands at bargain prices, but usually stocks were cheaper and they were a lot easier to do. Charlie did more real estate. Charlie enjoyed real estate transactions, and he actually did a fair number of them in the last 5 years of his life. But he was playing a game that was interesting to him.

I think if you’d asked him to make a choice when he was 21 – either be in stocks exclusively for the rest of his life or real estate for the rest of his life – he would have chosen stocks. There’s just so much more opportunity, at least in the United States, that presents itself in the security market than in real estate.

In real estate, you’re usually dealing with a single owner or a family that owns a large property they’ve had a long time. Maybe they’ve borrowed too much money against it. Maybe the population trends are against them. But to them, it’s an enormous decision.

When you walk down to the New York Stock Exchange, you can do billions of dollars worth of business, totally anonymous, and you can do it in 5 minutes. The trades are complete when they’re complete. In real estate, when you make a deal with a distressed lender, when you sign the deal, that’s just the beginning. Then people start negotiating more things, and it’s a whole different game with a different type of person who enjoys the game.

We did a few real estate deals that came our way in 2008 and 2009, but the amount of time they would take compared to doing something intelligent and probably better in securities – there was just no comparison. In a real estate deal, every sentence is important to the person. In stocks, if somebody needs to sell 20,000 shares of Berkshire and they call us and the price is right, it’s done in 5 seconds and it closes right away.

The completion rate for working on anything in stocks, assuming you’ve got a meeting of the minds on price, is essentially 100%. In real estate, the negotiation just begins when you agree on deals, and then they take forever. For a 94-year-old, it’s not the most interesting thing to get involved in something where the negotiations could take years.

We have seen some huge failures in real estate. If you go all the way back to Zeckendorf in the 1960s, he was going to change the world, and Century City in California is a product of his vision. If you go to Reichmann with the Canary Wharf buildings in London, he was sitting on top of the world, but people tend to get in trouble in that business.

The banks usually don’t want to recognize problems, but it takes a long time to go through the bank processes. They just got through redoing the Musk loan that he made when he was buying Twitter three years ago. Real estate transactions have parties on both sides that aren’t ready to act. We find it much better when people are ready to pick up the phone and you can do hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business in a day. I’ve been spoiled, but I like being spoiled, so we’ll keep it that way.

2. On patience

Audience Member (Zone 4): Hi, Mr. Buffett. My name is Daniel and I’m from Tenafly, New Jersey. First of all, I just want to say how grateful I am for getting the opportunity to ask you a question. When it comes to your principles of investing, you often talk about how important it is to be patient. Has there ever been a situation in your investing career where breaking that principle and acting fast has benefited you? Thank you.

Warren Buffett: That’s a good question. There are times when you have to act fast. In fact, we’ve made a great deal of money because we’re willing to act faster than anybody around.

Jessica Pune is the step-granddaughter of Ben Rosner, a manager of ours. In 1966, I got a call from a fellow named Phil Steinberg in New York. He said, “I represent Mrs. Anenberg. We have a business we’d like to sell you.” So I called Charlie up, got a few details, and it sounded very interesting.

Charlie and I went to Will Steinberg’s office in New York – he was a marvelous guy. He was handling things for Mrs. Anenberg, whose husband had been the partner of Ben Rosner, but he had died, and Ben got kind of tense about working with her.

So he offered us this business at a bargain price – $6 million. It had $2 million of cash, a $2 million piece of property on Market Street in Philadelphia, and it was making $2 million a year pre-tax.

Ben Rosner was there, and he was upset about doing business with his partner’s widow. She was extremely wealthy. He said to me and Charlie, “I’ll run this business for you until December 31st, and then I’m out of here.” Charlie and I went out in the hallway, and I said, “If this guy quits at the end of the year, you can throw away every book on psychology I’ve ever read.”

That began a wonderful relationship. We bought the company and had a great partnership. People in the East had a stereotype in their mind of what people from the Midwest were like. Ben had been married first to a woman from Iowa, and he just figured that anybody from the Midwest was okay.

The trick when you get in business with somebody who wants to sell you something for $6 million that’s got $2 million of cash, a couple million of real estate, and is making $2 million a year, is you don’t want to be patient at that moment. You want to be patient in waiting to get the occasional call. My phone will ring sometime with something that wakes me up. You just never know when it’ll happen.

That’s what makes it fun. So patience is a combination of patience and a willingness to do something that afternoon if it comes to you. You don’t want to be patient about acting on deals that make sense, and you don’t want to be very patient with people talking to you about things that will never happen.

Greg Abel: As you’re being patient, I happen to know – and I think that goes for Ajit also and all our managers – while we’re looking at opportunities and as you touched on, we want to act quickly, but never underestimate the amount of reading and work that’s being done to be prepared to act quickly. We know that when the opportunity presents itself, whether it be equities or private companies, we’re ready to act, and that’s a large part of being patient – using the time to be prepared.

Warren Buffett: And of course it doesn’t come in anything like an even flow. It’s the most uneven sort of activity you could get into. The main thing is you have to be willing to hang up after 5 seconds and you have to be willing to say yes after 5 seconds. You can’t be filled with self-doubt in this business.

One of the great pleasures – it is the great pleasure actually in this business – is having people trust you. That’s really why I work at 94 when I’ve got more money than anybody could count. It means nothing in terms of how I’m going to live or how my children are going to live or anything else.

But both Charlie and I just enjoyed the fact that people trusted us. They trusted us 60 or 70 years ago in partnerships we had. We never sought out professional investors to join our partnerships. Among all my partners, I never had a single institution – I never wanted an institution. I wanted people. I didn’t want people who were sitting around having presentations every three months and being told what they wanted to hear. That’s what we got, and that’s why we’ve got this group here today.

It’s all worked out. But you don’t want to be patient when the time comes to act – you want to get it done that day.

3. On advice for young investors

Audience Member (Zone 7): Hi, my name is Marie. I’m from Melrose, Massachusetts. Thank you for the time today. As a young person interested in investing like myself, I would love to hear your insights, Mr. Buffett. What were some pivotal lessons you learned early in your career? And what advice do you have for young investors who are looking to develop their investment philosophy? Thank you.

Warren Buffett: Those are good questions. Who you associate with is just enormously important. Don’t expect that you’ll make every decision right on that, but you are going to have your life progress in the general direction of the people that you work with, that you admire, that become your friends.

I mentioned a few fellows that have died in the last couple years. All of those people were people that, if we were working together on something one-ten-thousandth the size of Berkshire, they’d be the kind of people you’d choose. They’re people that make you want to be better than you are. You want to hang out with people that are better than you are and that you feel are better than you are because you’re going to go in the direction of the people you associate with.

That’s something you learn later in life – it’s hard to really appreciate how important some of those factors are until you get much older. But when you’ve got people around you like Tom Murphy and Sandy Gottesman and Walter Scott, you’re just going to live a better life than if you just go out and look at somebody that’s making a lot of money and decide you’re going to try and copy them.

I would try to be associated with smart people too where I could learn a lot from them, and I would try to look for something that I would do if I didn’t need the money. What you’re really looking for in life is something where you’ve got a job that you’d hold if you didn’t need the money, and I’ve had that for a very long time.

All the fellows I named had it, and they also always did more than their share and never sought more than their share of the credit. They behaved the way you’d like anybody you work with to behave. When you find them, you treasure them, and when you don’t find them, you still keep doing whatever enables you to eat. But you don’t give up on looking around, and you will find people who do wonderful things for you.

I mentioned earlier going down to GEICO and knocking on the door when the door was locked. Who knows what was behind that door? But in 10 minutes, I found that I had a man that was going to be just wonderfully helpful to me. And of course, if somebody’s going to be helpful to you, you want to try to figure out ways to be helpful to them. So you get a compounding of good intentions and good behavior. Unfortunately, you can get the reverse of that in life, too.

I was lucky in having a good environment for living that kind of life, and other people have a whole different environmental situation they have to overcome. But don’t feel guilty about your good luck if you’ve got it. If you live in the United States, with 8 billion people in the world and 330 million in the United States, you’ve already won the game to a great degree. Just keep making the most of it.

You don’t want to associate with people or enterprises that ask you to do something that you shouldn’t be doing. Different professions select for different types of people. It’s interesting to me that in the investment business, so many people get out of it after they’ve made a pile of money. You really want something that you’ll stick around for whether you need the money or not.

Greg doesn’t need the money, Ajit doesn’t need the money – not remotely – but they enjoy what they do and they’re so damn good at it. I’ve had the advantage of seeing how that works over time.

The best manager I ever knew – and there’s a lot of contention for who that would be – but actually was Tom Murphy Sr., who lived to almost 98. I’ve never seen anybody who could get the potential out of other people more than Murph. If you wanted to become a better person, you’d want to work for Tom Murphy. There are all kinds of successful people that don’t bring that to the party. I’m not saying that’s the only way to succeed, but I think it’s the most pleasant way to succeed for sure.

The Berkshire experience is pretty dramatic – to operate with Sandy Gottesman from 1963 until he died a couple years ago, Walter Scott for 30 years – you really can’t miss it. You’ll learn all the time, but you’ll not only learn how to be successful at business, you’ll learn how to be successful at life.

So that’s my recommendation. And for some reason, apparently you live longer too. It’s pretty amazing – these people I’m talking about, including myself. I think a happy person lives longer than somebody that’s doing things they don’t really admire that much in life.

4. Greg Abel on capital allocation

Becky Quick: This question comes from David Rubin, a shareholder from Scottsdale, Arizona. It’s a question for Greg. We’ve heard over the decades and are familiar with Warren and Charlie’s investment thesis and their circle of competence. During the first 10 years after taking over as CEO, Greg will be tasked with allocating more capital during that time than Berkshire has had to allocate in its history. Given this, I’d like to hear from Greg about his views on capital allocation, particularly into new businesses.

Greg Abel: This bar is not too high! We start from a great place at Berkshire. We’ve got a great culture within the business. We have values that we as a management team, as defined by Warren and Charlie and everybody associated with the business – we’ve got great values that really set Berkshire up well for the future.

As we deploy capital and allocate capital, it’s critical to Berkshire going forward, and equally it’s around managing risk. When I think of our values, a couple are absolutely critical. One: we will maintain the reputation of Berkshire and that of our company. I view that in investing or how we operate things across each of our businesses. That will always be a priority and something we’ll ensure is in the forefront of our minds.

Looking at our balance sheet, as Warren commented, we will have a fortress of a balance sheet. I thought Sue Decker, our lead director, said it well yesterday. We’ve got a significant amount of cash right now, but it’s an enormous asset to have that and that will continue to be a philosophy. When we can deploy it, we’ll deploy it well. We recognize it as a strategic asset that allows us to weather difficult times and not be dependent on anybody.

We will remain Berkshire and will never be dependent on a bank or some other party for Berkshire to be successful. With allocation of capital comes management of risk and understanding risk. That falls upon all our managers, insurance and non-insurance, but we’ll bring that across Berkshire.

The other value I would touch on relates to where I’m going: ultimately we have a great set of operating companies that produce significant cash flows, be it in the insurance companies creating float or our various non-insurance companies producing significant cash flows on an annual basis. We intend to continue to ensure that’s a strength of Berkshire going forward.

With those cash flows and with the float, and with significant resources already on our balance sheet, we’ll continue to move forward with a very similar philosophy. It’s an identical philosophy to what we’ve had currently and for the past 60 years.

We’ll start by looking at opportunities within our business – are our insurance and non-insurance businesses properly capitalized and do they have the opportunity to manage their business? They’ll operate in an autonomous way, but Berkshire still manages the capital that will go into those businesses or what potentially will come out of them.

The next opportunity is to acquire businesses in their totality, 100%. There are great times when we can do that. Warren touched on the $10 billion acquisition in the last quarter. But the value relative to the risk have to be right. If it’s right, we want to own it. If it’s not the time, there’ll be another time to own assets like that.

Then there’s the opportunity to own pieces of companies through equity. But as Warren’s always highlighted, though we own a piece of a company, we own a piece of that cash flow, a piece of their balance sheet. It’s not just a share certificate. We’ll approach it with the thought that we’re going to own this company for the long term.

We need to thoroughly understand what the economic prospects of those companies will look like – as Warren said earlier – 5 years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now. If we don’t have a view of that, we won’t be investing, be it 100% or 2% of a company through equities. We have to thoroughly understand what those prospects look like and the underlying risks of the businesses. It’s really the investment philosophy and how Warren and the team have allocated capital for the past 60 years. It will not change, and it’s the approach we’ll take going forward.

5. On investor vs. operator

Audience Member (Zone 5): Hi Warren Greg. My name is Pig Huang Chen. I’m from Taiwan. This is my seventh time here. First of all, I want to thank you Warren for your generosity of sharing your wisdom and lesson. You changed my life and you are my role model and my hero. And my question is, Warren, you mentioned that Greg will be in charge of capital allocation in the future and I’d like to know your perspective on is it easier for business operator to be an investor or for investor to be a business operator. Thank you.

Warren Buffett: No, that’s a good question. I see we call him Greg even. Thank you. And I’ll – you’ll take it and it’s a lot tougher to be an operator. I mean it is. It’s easier to sit in a room like I do and play around with money. It’s just an easier life. That doesn’t mean it’s a more admirable life. It doesn’t, but it’s actually been a pleasant life for me. So, I don’t complain in the least.

And I’ve been able to choose my friends, which has made an enormous difference in my life. I’ve never had to work for anybody that I really didn’t admire. I mean, that’s a luxury in life. I had five different people I worked for and they were fantastic, whether it was the manager of the local Penneys which used to be located a couple miles from here, and newspaper managers, everything. I have never been really disappointed by any teacher I’ve had.

But I have to admit that I’ve been able to choose what I do with my day to an extraordinary degree compared to being a business operator. And in many cases, I wouldn’t like to compete to be a top-notch business operator in terms of some of the behavior that might be forced upon me.

I am the master. I mean, I’ve found myself in this position where I can run the kind of company I want to run and that’s an extraordinary luxury.

Buffett’s last words as CEO

Warren Buffett: I have a five-minute warning, so I would like to turn to a subject that I want to discuss with you for a few minutes.

Tomorrow we’re having a board meeting of Berkshire and we have 11 directors. Two of the directors who are my children, Howie and Susie, know of what I’m going to talk about. The rest of them – this will come as news to them.

I think the time has arrived where Greg should become the chief executive officer of the company at year-end. I want to spring that on the directors effectively and then give that as my recommendation. Let them have the time to think about what questions or what structures or anything that they want, and then the meeting following that, which will come in a few months, we’ll take action on whatever the view is of the 11 directors. I think they’ll be unanimously in favor of it.

That would mean that at year-end Greg would be the chief executive officer of Berkshire. I would still hang around and could conceivably be useful in a few cases. But the final word would be what Greg said, in operations, in capital deployment, whatever it might be.

I could be helpful, I believe, in certain respects if we ran into periods of great opportunity or anything. I think that Berkshire has a special reputation that when there are times of trouble for the government, we are an asset and not a liability, which is very hard to have because usually the public and government get very negative on business if there’s a time like that.

But Greg would have the tickets. Whether it’s acquisitions – I think the board would be more welcome to giving him more authority on large acquisitions probably if they knew I was around. But Greg would be the chief executive, period.

The plan is – and Greg doesn’t know anything about this until what he’s hearing right now – that the board will be able to ask me questions tomorrow about more of the specifics of what they should be thinking about. They’ll digest it, and then at the next board meeting after that, if they act, then obviously we have something to announce to the world as a material change and we’ll go forward with that operation.

I will play with the ouija board or whatever comes out in terms of doing things. But I have no intention, zero, of selling one share of Berkshire Hathaway – it will get given away.

I would add this – the decision to keep every share is an economic decision because I think the prospects of Berkshire will be better under Greg’s management than mine. There may come a time when we get a chance to invest a lot of money, and if that time comes, I think it may be helpful with the Board that they know I’ve got all my money in the company and I think it’s smart. And I’ve seen what Greg has done. So that’s the news hook for the day. And thanks for coming.

(standing ovation)

The enthusiasm shown by the audience’s response can be interpreted in two ways. But I’ll take it as positive. Thank you.

There was a standing ovation for Buffett, and people clapped for a long time. The quick witted Buffett finished the Annual Meeting with a joke, saying that applause could mean two things: that he had done well, or that it was time for him to go. He still has it.

I just witnessed history. What a legend.


After the event, in the same arena, there’s a huge hall. Many of Berkshire’s subsidiaries display and sell their products to shareholders there. This happens on Friday and Saturday. It was packed—you could barely move. There were See’s chocolates, prefab houses, boats, RVs, stuffed animals, sneakers, pilot simulators, and much more.

I bought several boxes of See’s Candies. I also purchased a pair of Brooks sneakers that say “Berkshire Hathaway.” Additionally, I got the book on Berkshire’s 60-year history. After that, we walked around downtown Omaha, had lunch, and dropped our things at the hotel.

Buying See’s chocolate at the hall with Berkshires subsidiaries.

That night, a big group of Panamanians went to dinner at Gorat’s Steakhouse, famous because it was Warren’s most-visited restaurant. There I ate Buffett’s favorite meal: a T-bone with hash browns.

At Gorat with my friend Fernando Lewis and Mr. Buffett.
Panamanian group at Gorat.

The next day, Sunday morning, we got up early for a 5 K run. The event was organized by Brooks. I ran almost the whole race and finished in 34 minutes. That isn’t bad given that I never run and the whiskey/wine/steak combo of the night before.

Finishing Brooks 5k race.

After the race, I changed at the hotel and walked to the Omaha Brunch hosted by Markel Group. Markel is considered a “mini-Berkshire.” It runs an event like its annual shareholder meeting. They discuss strategy, numbers, operations and they finish with a Q&A.

The event is led by CEO Tom Gayner. It’s clear they model everything on Berkshire and mention Buffett and Munger a lot. One thing that stuck with me was how often they said things like: “We are open to feedback, we are learning, I want to teach you how we think about allocating capital.” About 2,000 people attended.

What I learned about the Markel meeting was how much they worked on their communications. It is odd for me to see a company focus and repeat so much on the word «compounding». It is strictly about making the most money possible.

The show was mainly about the business model, their best companies and capital allocation. I say «show» because they mentioned everything was rehearsed. The animated video was professionally produced. Everybody dressed the same way. Everything was written down. I think even the jokes were scripted. It was very well produced.

Tom Gayner at Markel’s event.

After the Markel meeting I walked around Omaha. The town of Omaha is charming, small, and fairly wealthy. I assume some of Berkshire’s tax money has been invested in the city. To give you a sense of scale, during the annual meeting, Berkshire’s market cap exceeds one trillion dollars. It holds $345 billion in cash and cash equivalents—which represents 5% of all U.S. Treasury bills.

Street art of Charlie Munger in Omaha.

Monday morning at 4 a.m. I departed to Panama.


Reflections of the Annual Meeting

The Berkshire meeting felt like a rock show—Warren Buffett was treated as a rockstar in front of 40,000 fans. Markel’s brunch, though smaller in scale, followed a similar script, with Tom Gayner in the spotlight and plenty of applause. Both stood in stark contrast to Panamanian annual meetings, where the crowd is minimal, the atmosphere strictly business, and questions rarely come up.

I went in expecting deep dives into financial statements—slide decks filled with operating metrics, acquisition details, and footnotes that only made sense in person. Instead, the Berkshire session boiled down to five hours of Q&A. The “numbers” segment appeared in just three plain black-and-white slides that Buffett nearly forget until Greg Abel reminded him just before the end of Part 1.

Everyone was speaking the same value-investing language, trading book recommendations, and comparing notes on companies. I loved chatting with people from all over—and especially bonding with the unexpectedly large group of Panamanians. 

With Buffett set to step back, I asked veterans if they’ll return next year. Many hesitated but ultimately agreed it’s still worth returning. Even if Buffett isn’t on center stage, he’ll attend if he’s healthy, and Greg Abel will surely put on a good show. Plus, the surrounding ecosystem—side events like Markel’s brunch, hedge-fund dinners, and best-practice roundtables—offers networking you can’t replicate anywhere else. I’m in the camp that says: see you in Omaha 2026.

In a conversation I had, we talked about how it was amazing to witness such a historic moment. Warren Buffett is a prodigy who lived an exceptional life. We also concluded that value investing has two fathers: Benjamin Graham and Warren Buffett.

Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffett’s mentor and author of The Intelligent Investor, organized the core ideas of value investing. Buffett personalized these ideas and achieved one of history’s largest fortunes. Both investors made quantum leaps in professional investing, with Buffett notably grabbing Graham’s baton and advancing it further.

People call the Berkshire meeting “Woodstock for Capitalists” because, just as Woodstock 1969 was the biggest music festival of its era, thousands fly to Omaha each May, pack an arena, and listen to Buffett talk for hours. It’s not just a shareholder assembly—it’s a gathering of people who believe that Buffett’s way of thinking can change how you view money and life.

My advice for anyone who wants to go is to book a hotel at least six months in advance. It might be better to plan from Thursday to Sunday. I don’t think I’ll fly in on a Friday again because there’s not enough cushion for a delayed flight.

To go, you have to be a shareholder. The Annual Meeting is for owners of Class A and B shares. A single Class A share costs above $700,000. A Class B share is around $500. So, the lowest buy-in to attend is $500, which is a bargain. With proof of stock you will gain the badge for admission we have around our necks:

The team with the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting Badge.

If you want to create a latticework of mental models on investing I recommend learning more about Berkshire, Buffett and Munger. Watch their videos and check out the following books.: Lessons of Corporate America, The Making of a Great American Capitalist, Buffett and Munger Unscripted, Poor Charlie’s Almanack, and Damn Right!: Behind the Scenes with Berkshire Hathaway Billionaire Charlie Munger.

In this spirit, I wish to enlighten you with a quote by Charlie Munger:

I think you learn economics better if you make Adam Smith your friend. That sounds funny, making friends among the “eminent dead,” but if you go through life making friends with the eminent dead who had the right ideas, I think it will work better for you in life and work better in education. It’s way better than just giving the basic concepts.

Wishing you the best of luck on your treasure hunt for great companies at fair prices.

Charlie Munger

Charlie Munger died today, just a month away from his 100th birthday.

As Warren Buffett’s lifelong business partner, Charlie was instrumental in the growth of Berkshire Hathaway. Charlie Munger was more than just a successful businessman and investor; he was a philosopher. He has inspired many entrepreneurs with his outstanding intelligence and direct approach. To me, Charlie symbolizes wisdom and rationality.

His main ideas included:

Wisdom as Duty

«Wisdom acquisition is a moral duty. It’s not something you do just to advance in life.»

Practical Wisdom

«You don’t have to be brilliant, only a little bit wiser than the other guys, on average, for a long, long time.»

Integrity

«Always take the high road; it’s far less crowded.»

Independence

«Like Warren, I had a considerable passion to get rich, not because I wanted Ferraris—I wanted the independence. I desperately wanted it.»

Thinking

«We (Warren Buffett and I) both insist on a lot of time being available almost every day just to sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. We read and think.»

Patience in Investing

«It’s waiting that helps you as an investor, and a lot of people just can’t stand to wait.»

Deserving Success

«The best way to get what you want in life is to deserve what you want. How could it be otherwise?»

Hard Work

«Almost everybody that has an unusually good result has three things: They’re very intelligent, they worked very hard, and they were very lucky.»

Focus

«Take a simple idea and take it seriously.»

Learning Vicariously

«I believe in the discipline of mastering the best that other people have ever figured out. I don’t believe in just sitting down and trying to dream it all up yourself. Nobody’s that smart…»

Importance of Reading

«In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time—none, zero. You’d be amazed at how much Warren reads—and at how much I read. My children laugh at me. They think I’m a book with a couple of legs sticking out.» I am a biography nut myself. And I think when you’re trying to teach the great concepts that work, it helps to tie them into the lives and personalities of the people who developed them. I think you learn economics better if you make Adam Smith your friend. That sounds funny, making friends among the eminent dead, but if you go through life making friends with the eminent dead who had the right ideas, I think it will work better in life and work better in education. It’s way better than just being given the basic concepts.

It is impressive how almost all the founders and investors I admire from Silicon Valley admire Charlie Munger. The founders I have studied almost always talk about Charlie Munger. This, I believe, is because Charlie Munger’s teachings are ideal for founders. To be successful in their ventures, founders need to be learning machines, equipped with a broad range of skills that enable them to lead a company and comprehend various aspects like finance, engineering, marketing, sales, and management.

If you aspire to be more rational, wise, and a learning machine, I strongly recommend studying Charlie Munger’s book «Poor Charlie’s Almanack,» a compilation of his lectures.

Personally, Charlie has been a major influence on me, giving me the confidence to learn about whatever I need for my ventures and investments. His wisdom has made me a wiser and better person. «Poor Charlie’s Almanack» has been a recurring book on my nightstand for many years, because every once in a while I like to impregnate my subconscious mind with Charlie’s wisdom. He has been one of my most important role models.

RIP Charlie Munger

Thank you for sharing your vast wisdom. You are a legend.

Becoming Optimistic and Definite

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Peter Thiel’s book Zero to One deals with startup strategies to build a better future. Peter is one of the most recognized entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, a co-founder of PayPal, Palantir, and Founders Fund, and was the first external investor in Facebook.

The book details the philosophy and strategies necessary to create startups with exponential growth: creating monopolies, avoiding competition, betting on new technology, creating cults, the importance of founders, and more. The title, Zero to One, refers to two types of companies:

  • 0 to 1: Use technology to invent new products or services. Ex: Google, Apple, etc.
  • 1 to n: Copy or expand existing products or services. Ex: restaurants, gas stations, etc.
Peter Thiel Graph of Technology vs Globalization

This post focuses on chapter 6, You Are Not a Lottery Ticket, which develops different visions of societies. A society can have two types of visions:

  1. Definite: the future is clear, allowing you to craft a plan and try to build it.
  2. Indefinite: the future is unclear, preventing you from crafting a vision.

Building an ambitious vision makes sense if the future is definite. But if you think it is indefinite, you cannot visualize the future; you will give up trying to modify it, attribute changes to luck, and watch others make history.

Society also has two other perspectives:

  1. Optimistic: which looks forward to a bright future.
  2. Pessimistic: which is afraid of a worse future.

Combining these four definitions in a 2×2 matrix generates four quadrants of society’s visions.

Peter Thiel Graph (Optimistic, Pessimistic, Determinate, Indeterminate)

Now I will explain each quadrant using the examples from the book. Then I will explain Panama’s past, the present, and the road to an optimistic and definite future.

Pessimistic and Indefinite

All cultures have a myth of a decline from a golden age. A society with a pessimistic and indefinite vision foresees a worse future and does not know what it looks like or what to do about it. Historically this is the most common quadrant.

This is Europe’s quadrant since 1970, when the continent was subjected to a visionless bureaucracy, increased socialist policies, and enacted too many laws creating a straitjacket to innovation. From the inside, they know that they have unsustainable policies that will lead to hard times.

Pessimistic and Definite

A society with a pessimistic and definite vision foresees a worse future, has a clear idea of what it looks like, and is prepared to face it.

China is pessimistic and definite. Its growth strategy is to copy what has worked in the West without regard for innovation. In China, the middle and upper classes, which consume far more resources than the lower class, have expanded dramatically. China has 1.44 billion people (at the end of 2020) consuming natural resources. They are in trouble because demand is increasing, and natural resources are becoming scarcer, resulting in a higher cost of living.

From the outside, everyone thinks that China has a great future, but internally they are terrified of the brain drain and desperate to invest in other countries to get their money out of China.

Optimistic and Indefinite

A society with an optimistic and indefinite vision foresees a better future but only builds more of the same, so it does not make ambitious plans. Instead of working for years to invent something, optimistic and indefinite people like bankers, lawyers and consultants improve the processes of existing companies. In this quadrant, a few new startups are founded.

An indefinite person exclusively values money per se. In contrast, a definite person perceives money as a means to build ambitious goals.

Peter Thiel Graph on types of careers

Indefinite Finance: The financial industry represents indefinite thinking because it is one of the most significant ways to make money when you don’t have a concrete plan.

Indefinite Politics: Voters are more interested in how a politician reacts to an event or if he says something controversial than in their 20-year vision.

The US government used to coordinate solutions to big problems like nuclear technology and space exploration. Today, it focuses primarily on insurance and money distribution.

In politics and business, debating marginal processes or improvements has become the way to avoid working on ambitious master plans.

Indefinite Companies: Entrepreneurs are told to listen to the customer, make a minimum viable product, and iterate on that product until success. But, the lean methodology process has to be accompanied by a daring vision to get from 0 to 1.

Let’s take Apple as an example of an ambitious plan. Everyone has experienced good Apple product design. However, the most important thing that Steve Jobs designed was his company. He devised a multi-decade master plan to create products and distribute them. Steve Jobs changed the world by planning and understanding human needs from first principles.

A company with a definite master plan will consistently be underestimated by companies with an indefinite master plan — which are the majority.

Optimistic and Definite

A society with an optimistic and definite vision can imagine a better future, plan to achieve it, and work together towards a clear north.

From the 1800s to the 1960s, the optimistic and definite led the West. Scientists, engineers, doctors, and merchants built richer, healthier, and more productive societies. Each generation had more inventors and visionaries than the previous one.

Examples of feats they executed:

  • 1843: A tunnel was built under the River Thames in London.
  • 1869: The Suez Canal was built.
  • 1889: The Eiffel Tower, the tallest building in the world for 40 years, was built in 793 days.
  • 1914: The Panama Canal was built.
  • 1931: The Empire State Building was built in 410 days.
  • 1937: The Golden Gate Bridge was built in 4 years.
  • 1945: The Manhattan Project produced the first nuclear bomb.
  • 1942: The Alaska Highway, consisting of 2,700 kilometers, was built in 234 days.
  • 1965: The United States Interstate Highway, consisting of 32,200 kilometers, was built in 9 years.
  • 1972: NASA put 12 people on the moon. The Apollo program started in 1961.

You can study more examples of optimistic, definite, and fast projects on Patrick Collison’s website, co-founder of Stripe.

In that era, the government did not only propose daring plans. Around 1940, John Reber, a school teacher who taught himself engineering, designed and promoted the Reber Plan — which consisted of constructing two giant dams in San Francisco, California. Building this would result in gaining 20,000 acres of land. Newspapers promoted this plan, and it went all the way to the United States Congress to discuss its feasibility. The army even built a 1.5-acre model. Unfortunately, they concluded the plan was not viable, so it was not built.

Nowadays, if a teacher designed and proposed such a vision, no one would take it seriously. If the vision came from someone powerful, they would tell him that his arrogance had clouded his sight. Until the 1950s, society welcomed big visions. Bold and grand visions of the future have become curiosities of the past.

You Are Not a Lottery Ticket

We must return to an optimistic, definite world, and startups are the most powerful tools to achieve that change. It starts with rejecting luck and daring to invest many years of effort into a clear and ambitious master plan.


Societies have shifted quadrants over the years. We must strive to move and stay in the optimistic and definite quadrant. Therefore, as a Panamanian citizen, the question I ponder is:

What quadrant is Panama in?

Before 1990, during the military repression of the dictatorship, the vision was pessimistic and definite. During this time, corruption was widespread, businesses could not operate freely, and there was a lot of oppression. It was clear Panama would become a shithole if it continued in the direction it was heading.

From 1990 to 2014, it was optimistic and definite. During that time, Panama expanded the Canal, built the first metro line, founded Panama Pacifico, increased immigration greatly, facilitated the creation of many new companies, and enacted a special regime for the establishment of multinational headquarters (Law SEM), which resulted in intense economic growth.

An important caveat is that at any given moment, some countries, like Panama, can fall in any quadrant, depending on the state of mind of the person giving the opinion. I’ll make a brief argument of opposite quadrants.

From 2014 to 2022, Panama had a pessimistic and indefinite vision. A big concern is that Panama might catch the «left-wing virus» and demagogues seize power, leading to a «second Venezuela.» I know many friends and business leaders investing internationally or taking out passports abroad «just in case.» Panama also has too many bankers, lawyers, or consultants and too few computer engineers or scientists.

From 2014 to 2022, Panama had an optimistic and definite vision. Panama can execute big plans. Let’s think about the organization and collaboration that took place to receive the Pope in 2019. Churches were renovated, thousands of new temporary homes were created, the biggest event ever in the country was executed, the subway expansion was accelerated, and much more.

In addition, Panama has a lot of entrepreneurs per capita; it is one of the fastest growing economies in Latin America; it is building out a multi-decade master plan of metro lines and roads; it just built a cruise terminal in Panama City, expanded the airport, immigration is increasing, and every year we have more startups accepted to Y-Combinator.

Sometimes the quadrant depends on the eye of the beholder.

How can Panama become more optimistic and definite?

Building new companies and startups, growing tech, engineering, and scientists workforce, and betting on government leaders with bold master plans. The first step is to recognize that change is in our hands. We must create and work on concrete, ambitious, and aspirational master plans for our lives.

Those with the ability and desire to take business risks should dare to undertake them. Those of us who graduated from good universities should avoid the comfort of optimizing processes of the companies of yesteryear and help improve education for the rest.

My first job after college was within the old guard — a process consultant. I knew that path was not for me. So, inspired by some friends who founded a company, I ended up working in a Venture Capital fund in Panama. I learned about Silicon Valley from Paul Graham’s Essays and founder mentality during that time.

Founders are contemporary philosophers dedicated to changing the world with their companies. I tell recent graduates that getting a job at a big company or getting an MBA aren’t the only alternatives — you can start a startup or work for one. In his essay A Student’s Guide to Startups, Paul Graham explains this in-depth.

After meeting many entrepreneurs and learning about them, I decided to undertake a new venture myself. In 2014 I co-founded Porta Norte, a new-urbanist solarpunk master-planned community of 650 acres (262 has.) with a multi-decade master plan. The mission is to expand Panama City so that the residents of Panama can live in walkable neighborhoods connected with nature and with public spaces full of culture. It is a definite and optimistic vision.

We should applaud, support, and invest in startups like Cuanto and Panadata, the first two startups to go to Y-Combinator in Panama — which is harder than getting accepted to Harvard. I am honored to be an angel investor in both startups in their first round.

Let’s encourage entrepreneurs and governments to think big. Let’s brainstorm, support, and bet together on daring, definite, and optimistic plans such as:

  • Building Startup Cities.
  • Building a beach in Avenida Balboa.
  • Creating a ferry system to connect the coasts.
  • Developing a top Computer Science university.
  • Producing local energy to achieve energy independence.
  • Building energetic self-sufficient buildings and neighborhoods.
  • Connecting America with a highway between Panama and Colombia.
  • Connecting Panama, Colombia, Central America, and America through a high-speed train.
  • Increasing immigration of scientists, engineers, doctors, artists, entrepreneurs, and builders.

What other plans can you think of? Which startups, companies, or existing plans are worth supporting? How can we help build a definite and optimistic society?

If you have an ambitious, definite, and optimistic plan for Panama or the world, please share it in the comments, talk about it among friends, help it become a reality and ideally execute it. Let’s become optimistic and definite to build a better future together.

Book Summary: Making it in Real Estate

Starting out as a (real estate) developer

Real estate development is a cross-disciplinary field where you need to orchestrate various professionals to build infrastructure and buildings. This book provides strategic advice for becoming an effective real estate developer.

The author, John McNellis, founded and led a commercial development firm focused on retail and shopping centers since the 1980s.

This book has two parts. The first has 40 chapters and focuses on lessons learned in real estate development. The second, chapters 41 to 46, are about philosophy and life decisions. The second part was nice, but it seems out of context. I rather read Alain de Botton or Seneca instead if I want life advice.

The following is John’s advice I liked most:

Starting Out

New developers typically need to pull off their first deal playing every instrument in the orchestra: investment broker, contractor, day laborer, property manager, janitor, lawyer, accountant, leasing, mortgage broker, etc. There is a benefit to this extra effort: just as a conductor of an orchestra must know how all his musicians should sound, a developer should understand what your service providers do, and doing it yourself is a quick way to get it.

New developers should ask themselves where they want to be in 20 years. Would you want to be a media darling running a big company and doing the splashiest deals in town? Or would you prefer smaller projects that help you slowly build assets and increase free cash flow?

You’re better off deciding the big picture question before your first deal because you might be unable to make the right decisions without a defined strategy to guide you. In other words, unless you plan ahead, the sell or hold decision may be a luxury you cannot afford. The fastest projects take at least two years before you can cash in and more likely three to five years from when you saw a property to the day you sell.

If we oversimplify, there are two types of real estate developers: investment builders and merchant builders. Investment builders build to hold assets for the long term as a portfolio investment, while merchant builders build to sell; they do more deals and profit much sooner.

If you want to run a giant development firm, become a merchant builder. If you want the luxury of deciding which deals to keep and slowly building your cash flow, consider investment building. If you go the investor route, choose the properties you keep carefully: many have their finest hour when inaugurated.

The best, but uninspiring strategy, might be the build to hold approach.

Choosing a Focus

If you don’t specialize, your specialty will be failure.

«We started in apartments like almost all new developers, but they didn’t work for us. Richer in experience but little else, we decided we had no wish to own buildings where anyone slept. Since, we have developed neighborhood shopping centers in cities that fight new developments, thus limiting supply.»

John’s development projects are «necessity retail» (supermarkets, drugstores, and discount department stores); they range from 25,000 ft² (2,300 m²) to 150,000 ft² (14,000 m²), located within a two-hour drive of San Francisco.

John’s firm’s strategy: accumulate fewer but higher-quality properties with lower debt rather than amassing a portfolio that requires a big overhead.

Growth

Grow your deal size slowly.

The big-picture risk management for developers is the classic tactic of using other people’s money, taking fees upfront, and never signing recourse (personal guarantees).

The long-term investment approach is investing enough equity to survive any recession and avoid building speculative projects. Spec buildings are those with a build it, and they will come mentality—without having sold to a customer.

It’s hard to hit a home run paying all cash, but it’s also impossible to strike out, and since even the best in our business lose money, you might seriously consider being conservative. Slow and steady wins the race.

Market 

What you do doesn’t matter as much as where you do it.

As Warren Buffett said, «I’d rather be a mediocre developer in a high-growth city than a brilliant developer in a mediocre city.»

Market timing is a scarce talent. Buying in a down market requires a cast-iron stomach and a prophet’s certainty of the future, and the ability to raise patient money when few others can. It might be easier to buy and sell on an established pattern, say, two to three deals a year, and then stick with it like a farmer with his annual plantings.

Challenges of Retail

Overbuilding

According to Forbes, the United States have roughly 50 ft² (4.6 m²) of retail space per capita, while Europe has just 2.5 ft² (0.23 m²).

Inexperienced developers often talk themselves out of acknowledging market conditions.

E-commerce

The internet has driven some merchants and retail categories out of business. Its most significant effect has been to reduce retailers’ overall profitability and shrink their store sizes. They’re doing so to pursue a combination of physical and online strategies. This is a major concern for commercial developers because their clients need less space.

Until e-commerce and bricks&mortar finally merge, retail will be suffering from a debilitating, but not deadly, internet-spawned flu.

Private Equity

«Since the end of the Great Recession, retailer after retailer has been similarly killed. Payless Shoes, Toys’ R’ Us, PetSmart, Gymboree, Sears, Mattress Firm, and Radio Shack—all companies owned by private equity—have gone bankrupt since 2012. Debtwire, a financial news service, calculates that about 40% of all U.S. retail bankruptcies in recent years were private-equity backed.»

How do private equity firms do it? Simple: the Leveraged Buyout (LBO). An LBO is the acquisition of another company using a significant amount of borrowed money (bonds or loans) to meet the cost of acquisition. The assets of the company being acquired are often used as collateral for the loans, along with the acquiring company’s assets.

The LBO is a highly effective play that is difficult to counter. In short, the private equity firm pays top dollar for a given retailer, often even overpaying, but using little equity and a lot of debt using the retailer’s assets as collateral. The private equity then improves the company’s profitability through excessive cost-cutting and rewards itself with a significant dividend, often recovering their entire initial investment and a substantial profit. Then they let the companies drown in debt.

Private equity has a toxic effect on retail. An episode of The Sopranos is a perfect illustration of how private equity destroys retailers.

«Bust Out» (season 2, episode 10)

Mobster Tony’s boyhood friend, Davey, borrows money from him to pay gambling losses. He didn’t repay Tony. In retaliation, Tony takes over Davey’s sporting goods store. Knowing he will never pay a single bill, Tony orders ten times the store’s inventory and then sells it all at a discount for cash–which he keeps. Consequently destroying Davey’s credit and forcing him into bankruptcy.

The Retailers

Wall street force retailers to grow or die. When a company has slow growth, private equity goes for the jugular. The company will be bought and chopped up for parts, the CEO and his management team will lose their jobs, and the new real estate managers will receive big bonuses.

You can do everything right in retail and still lose because of conditions beyond your control. How do you mitigate the risk of a tenant’s bankruptcy or being killed by private equity? You diversify: develop multitenant properties in which the loss of a single-tenant is merely painful, not lethal.

Retail is a tricky business. The threats from e-commerce, changing tastes, and ever-more-nimble competitors are real.

Retail’s safe harbor against those headwinds is what we now call essential retail—goods and services people cannot do without, even during a societal shutdown.

Should you consider retail development? Only if you start with an established company that knows the business and devote yourself full time to it. It is a highly specialized area of development that punishes those who merely wet their feet.

Finding Deals

Finding great deals among existing buildings is much more complicated than starting with undeveloped land.

«The bad deals came early in our career, the good deals came late. Why? Because great deals usually start with a great purchase. And how do you pull that off? You pay cash and use an escrow account—a tactic beyond a beginner’s reach.»

Veteran developers advise you to build in good times because you can’t find decently priced existing buildings and buy in bad when projects sell for less than replacement cost.

There’s no such thing as bad real estate, only bad pricing. Maybe it works for you at some number.

Deal Structure

Manage risk by investing a lot of equity and little debt, growing your portfolio slowly, and using the classic structure for developments: use other people’s money, take fees upfront and never give a personal guarantee to a bank (non-recourse loans).

Suppose your partner invests 90% of the equity (the usual arrangement) into a partnership in which you have no personal liability and that partnership’s external borrowing is also non-recourse. In that case, you can make real money while having minimal risk.

For example, you will develop a project that costs $10 million and will be worth $13 million on completion. It requires $4 million in equity. A bank will lend your partnership the remaining $6 million on a non-recourse basis. Your partner puts up $3.6 million, and you write a check for $400,000, a mere 4% of the total project cost. If the project tanks—some do—your loss is only $400,000, but truth be told, you probably charged that much in development fees during construction. Even as a loser, you’re home free.

Why would you develop with your own money? Because with no outside partners, you control your decisions. You can personally decide to keep a property as long as you like or sell it overnight on a hunch. You also avoid quarterly reports and explanations to investors.

«No Partners, fewer problems, more control.»

It is reasonable to forgo the glamour of owning a little equity in a high-rise and instead buy a corner store of your own. Having control over your life might outweigh the benefits of financial partners.

«We left the financial partner world in the early 1990s, moving from large deals in joint ventures to projects one-10th the size without financial partners, using our limited capital. That decision has worked out.»

«Over time, we have averaged a couple of projects a year. We have typically sold two out of three completed properties to generate capital for our next project. To our surprise, we found we had netted as much from these small, 100% owned projects as from joint ventures. But with much fewer headaches.»

Always calculate every deal’s «Net To Me» (NTM). An entrepreneur, someone who risks what little capital they have and years of their life on a project, should know what they earn if the deal works out.

In considering your NTM, solve for your hourly rate. How long is this going to take? How much of my life must I devote to this project? In doing so, ponder the advice a sage contractor gave a homeowner about her idea to remodel: «It will cost twice as much and take three times as long as you initially believe.»

We have heard many times easily anticipated disappointments in career-launching projects. The typical problem is that the profit share was not well structured from the beginning. You can mitigate this risk by calculating the NTM before making the deal. Make sure the prize is worth the effort.

Team Building

If you desire to tackle big projects, you will need help with the skills you lack. The question is, should your help come from consultants, employees, or partners?

As long as you can rent any profession—legal, architectural, engineering, etc.—and still get first-rate work on the day you need it, you will be better off renting rather than buying. Outsource everything you can. Nothing runs up a tab like employees.

To get the highest-quality output from consultants, hire the most experienced person you can afford who will do the work themselves. Remember, you are always hiring an individual, not their company or firm. Hiring the fanciest firm in town does you no good if a junior associate is assigned your work. A fantastic hack is to hire well-seasoned solo practitioners.

You need two at least two providers for each service—two contractors, two architects, two engineers, etc. And they should know about one another. Why? Because you want them to compete, and it is healthy to have a backup plan. Eventually, your favorite consultant will be unavailable to you.

We hire an independent consultant to act as our owner’s representative for our construction. But here’s the point: he’s paid by the hour, and should we ever cease building, we would have no ongoing financial obligation to him.

The partnership of a skilled developer and a top architect may prove wonderful, often producing glorious offspring: a building, an entire neighborhood that fits well with its surroundings, is embraced by its community, and is profitable from the beginning.

Construction

You can handle construction in three different ways:

  1. Bid to three contractors: If you decide to bid out your project to multiple general contractors, be careful of low outlier bids. Dishonest contractors will bid low intending to make it up in change orders (especially if you are perceived as inexperienced). If three bids are close to one another at $10 million while a fourth is $8 million, and you accept the lower bid, you will likely be buying yourself more than $2 million’s worth of trouble.
  2. Build yourself: Once developers reach a certain size, they are tempted to align vertically and take construction in-house. Fee-driven merchant builders have a higher incentive to control the entire construction process to keep the contractor’s fees. Developers ignore a thousand ways a contractor can go broke and ask themselves, «How hard can it be?» And jump into the construction business. Developers that do everything in-house—from entitlements to architecture to construction—are often successful in bull markets. In a recession, they can’t keep up with overhead, consequently forced to lay off workers or go broke.
  3. Work from the start with one contractor: This means choosing a contractor from the moment a deal seems real and sticking with them to the end. Having a practical contractor early helps prevent your architect from designing a monument for themselves. The contractor is the yin to the architect’s yang: they will point to what part of your architect’s vision can be optimized. For example, that curved lines in buildings are more expensive than right angles or that there can be such a thing as too much glass in a building. In short, the value engineering—the reality check—a contractor provides to your design early on can be invaluable, especially if you’re new to the game. The downside to this approach is losing the ability to bid out the project. If this is a concern, you can still select your preferred contractor at the outset but agree that you will pay him a fair «walk away» fee if they don’t win.

Thick contracts won’t help with a crooked or inept general contractor. A handshake suffices 90% of the time with an honest, competent one. The contract is just a reminder of everyone’s responsibilities.

We stopped bidding out our projects nearly 20 years ago, relying on a couple of top contractors with whom we do business almost every year, making them part of our team.

Our general contractors work with us from day one—before anyone knows if a project will be built. They provide us with value engineering and cost estimating on one plan iteration after another, all without charge, because they know that if the project proceeds, the work is theirs. This is the right way to relate with general contractors.

Consider not issuing insurance construction bonds. They are expensive, and you will learn that insurance companies pay off infrequently if you ever do claim them. It is better just to verify that your contractor is “bondable.”

Buying

Whenever someone pitches you a deal, an excellent question is: «Why are they selling?» Be extra skeptical if the answer doesn’t involve a compelling need to sell (e.g., death, disaster, dissolution, or divorce).

The best time to find a motivated and realistic seller is when no one else is buying. «Buy when there’s blood in the streets.»

When confronted with an unrealistic seller, we usually advise the broker that teaching market values to a seller is not our business. Thus, we lose deals.

Try to meet the seller and become their new best friend. You will learn a lot only by visiting them at their office.

Vast land and easy approvals lead to overbuilding. The doom formula is:

easy zoning + easy money + many developers = death spiral of overbuilding

Smart money loves core properties because developers are more likely to generate cash in central locations where all the land is already built out. The best defense is to own properties where the zoning and approval process is challenging.

Sellers tend to be smart enough, and when they are dumb, their stupidity more often lies in overvaluing their holdings than in wanting to give them away.

Never buy unzoned property.

Actual off-market property may be a worthy prize, but brokers are seldom involved because principals deal directly with other principals.

A great deal is rarely great on the first day it is offered to you; no one consciously gives anything away in business.

If a property stays on the market for a long time, a frustrated seller may become reasonable. You don’t want a building at a $10 million asking price, but at $6 million, the property might work. And then you wait…and wait. The seller will pull his property off the market, or someone will outbid you. But if you bait enough hooks, a fish will come along.

Financing

If you develop or invest in property, you’re in the business of borrowing money.

The Family & Friends (F&F) profit-sharing formula: The equity gets a preferred return a few percentage points higher than Treasury bills from the project’s free cash flow. Once that’s paid, any remaining cash is split 50/50 between equity holders and the developer.

Two basic loans predominate in real estate: 

  1. Permanent loans: They are for stabilized assets like a leased office building. They have a lower risk and usually have a long-term duration (> 10 years).
  2. Construction loans: They are for constructions like building a new high-rise. They have a higher risk and usually have a low-term duration (~ 2 years).

It is impossible to predict real estate prices ten years from now. Be careful with those long-term proformas.

High-end sales brochures and investment committee reports routinely contain impressive Argus (commercial real estate software) spreadsheets that magically produce the IRR the buyer or investment committee desires. The magic is easy; keep raising the anticipated 10th-year sales price until you hit the desired IRR. Who will be around in 10 years to tell the analyst they were wrong?

Alternative interpretations of the Internal Rate of Return (IRR) are «Inflated Rate of Return» or «I Rationalize Risk» should come to the mind of anyone confronted with spreadsheets predicting rising rents, falling expenses, and zero vacancies.

There are two kinds of lenders: those who’ll admit they’re not lending a dime and those who pretend they are.

A banker is a successful developer’s best friend. But beware because your banker will want a committed, monogamous relationship.

Despite the best intentions, your banker is only as good as the last loan she committed to you. She may even become a friend. Eventually, she will be on vacation, quit, retires, or be in the hospital the week you need a loan commitment. Or, her bank will be merged out of existence (this has happened to us three times), be taken over by the feds, or stop making real estate loans.

The solution? You need an open relationship with three bankers at three different banks. That way, the lights are always on somewhere.

Appraisals

Valuing property is subjective. Think about it: appraisers use three different approaches to evaluate a commercial property:

  1. Replacement cost.
  2. Comparable sales.
  3. Income capitalization.

Appraising is still as much art as science.

Selling

We sell if:

  • Our return on cost is too low either because our construction costs went over budget or we failed to achieve anticipated rents.
  • The barriers to entry for our project’s future competitors are low.
  • We have concerns about our tenants’ longevity or the quality of our location.

We keep our high-yielding properties in competition-constrained environments.

Brokers

Wise principals spend quality time with their favorite brokers. Why? Because they are genuinely friends, and it doesn’t hurt when it comes to getting the «first call, last look» on deals.

Beyond treating agents with respect, choosing the right one matters because the best agents are as specialized as the best principals.


This book is written under the Urban Land Institute (ULI) umbrella in the U.S. The ULI comprises real estate developers and related professionals who share best practices.


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Book Summary: I Will Teach You To Be Rich


I recently saw the interview of Ramith Sethi and Tim Ferriss and decided I wanted to read his book.

Personal finance is taboo. People avoid talking about finance, making it tough to learn. That’s why I decided to read this book. After finishing it, I realized there were still many financial decisions I had not optimized for. I hope it can help you optimize your finances too.

Would you rather be sexy or rich?

  1. Being fat is similar to having debt. How do you lose weight? By eating less and exercising. How do you lose debt? Cutting costs and earning more.
  2. Not counting calories is akin to not tracking spending.
  3. Invest early to take advantage of the power of compounding interest. The best time to start investing was 20 years ago. Today is the second-best time.
  4. Start by automating your payments and opening investment accounts.
  5. Buy-and-hold investing wins over the long term, every time.

Optimize your credit cards

  1. The majority of people haven’t formally learned about personal finance before. Many don’t even look at their finances for whatever reason. Therefore, most people are playing the financial game wrong.
  2. Being in debt is normal, but do not accept the status quo; pay it off as fast as possible. More people than you imagine don’t even know how much they owe.
  3. Debt is almost always manageable if you have a plan and take disciplined steps to reduce it.
  4. An advantage of using credit cards instead of cash is that you automatically create your transaction history to track, organize and analyze your spending later.
  5. Credit cards are great if you consistently pay them on time.
  6. They can have great perks. Make sure to know what they are.
  7. Keep track of the rewards you earn and use them.
  8. Set up automatic payments for your credit card.

Beat the banks

  1. The critical difference between checking and savings accounts is that savings accounts technically pay more interest, but the difference is too little to matter.
  2. People lose money when their money is sitting idle in their savings accounts. Inflation erodes the real purchasing power of your cash.
  3. Banks are allowed to gift you money if you complain. Fees can be negotiated. Call your bank to negotiate terms.

Get ready to invest

  1. Albert Einstein said, «Compounding is mankind’s greatest invention because it allows for the reliable, systematic accumulation of wealth.»
  2. You should invest your cash to fight inflation.
  3. Open an investment account to access the most significant money-making vehicle in the history of the world: the stock market.
  4. Full-service brokerages are usually traditional banks that advise and manage your portfolio and offer other services like estate planning, retirement advice, tax optimization, etc. They charge high fees for transactions.
  5. Discount brokerages are nearly synonymous with online brokerages. They don’t advise. The only service they tend to offer is trading through them, but they don’t advise you. It is built for the masses. They charge low fees.
  6. Open an account with discount brokerages (I opened mine with Interactive Brokers) because you can invest in the same stocks but with lower fees. To learn, open an account and invest a low amount, maybe $1,000, and invest it in the Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (Ticker: VTI). Open it even if you cannot invest high amounts right now.
  7. Set up automatic monthly contributions to your investment account.
  8. Dollar-cost averaging is investing regular amounts over time (let’s say monthly) rather than investing all your money at once. This is a hedge against any drops in the price. If the fund drops, you’ll pick up shares at a discount price. By investing over time, you avoid trying to time the market.
  9. If you live in the US, invest through a 401(k) or an Individual Retirement Account (IRA) for tax advantages.
  10. Beware of the added fees of robo advisors.
  11. If you want a financial adviser, pay them by the hour, not as a percentage of assets under management.

Conscious spending

  1. Plan your expenses ahead of time.
  2. Make conscious decisions on what you want to spend money on. For example, I like spending money on low leverage tasks that save me time, like cleaning and cooking.
  3. Cancel your subscriptions and pay «á la carte.» For example, don’t pay for a gym subscription if you can pay for one-time use. When you do the math, you end up paying less. Beware of monthly subscriptions.
  4. Make a spreadsheet with all your income and expenses.
    1. Start adding your income.
    2. Then add the monthly costs (annual costs divided by 12).
    3. Categorize them. Include rent/mortgage, groceries, restaurants, vacations, utilities, medical insurance, car payment, transportation, debt payments, subscriptions, entertainment, clothes, internet, gifts, taxes, etc. Make sure to review your historical expenses to cover all categories. Have a line item with 15% of all expenditures for unexpected, unforeseen expenses.
    4. Analyze your expenses and write the next steps to reduce expenses, especially the biggest items.
    5. Organize them in order of magnitude.
  5. Income – Expenses = Free Cash Flow (FCF). FCF is the most important metric to follow. Use it to save and invest.
  6. Track your spending weekly.
  7. There’s a limit on how much you can cut, but no limit on how much you can earn.
  8. When you gain more income, try not to increase your standard of living and bank the rest.
  9. Increase your income by adding value to your company and asking for adjustments in your compensation.

Save while sleeping

  1. If you invest a little now, you don’t have to invest a lot later.
  2. Make all your expenses decisions, and stick to the plan every month.
  3. Your transactions should occur automatically.
  4. Try to get all your bills on the same schedule to easily track them.
  5. Build up a buffer of 3 to 6 months of expenses in your savings account.

The myth of financial expertise

  1. It is easy to get overwhelmed by all types of investments you could make in an investment account. Don’t frown.
  2. Most people can earn more than «experts» by investing on their own in low-cost funds.
  3. Over the long run, the stock market has consistently returned about 8% after inflation.
  4. The best long-term solution is to invest regularly in low-cost, diversified funds.
  5. “Focus on time in the market, not market timing.”
  6. Financial consultants, paid on commission, usually direct you to expensive funds to earn their commission.
  7. Higher fees and lower returns are correlated.
  8. Over 30 years, a 1% fee can reduce your returns by 28% and a 2% fee by 63%. You should be paying 0.1% to 0.3%.
  9. A safe assumption is that actively managed funds will often fail to beat or match the market.
  10. Investors would be better served by investing in passively managed funds than more expensive active funds. You could do better, for cheaper, on your own.

Investing isn’t only for rich people

  1. Invest automatically the most you can monthly.
  2. Do not sell when the market goes down. Keep your regular monthly investments.
  3. Financial Independence (FI) is the crossover point when your investments earn enough to fund your expenses automatically.
  4. Retiring Early (RE) is when you achieve FI and choose not to work anymore.
  5. Together, they form the FIRE movement. Financial Independence + Retiring Early = FIRE.
  6. LeanFire is for people who have decided they can live on a «lean» amount of money, often $30,000 to $50,000 a year. They reject materialism and embrace simple living.
  7. FatFire is for people who want to spend a lot, but they can because their assets generate so many cash dividends to finance their lifestyle.
  8. When you achieve Financial Independence, you’re being paid because of decisions made years ago.
  9. Don’t associate investing only with picking individual stocks of a company.
  10. Overall, stocks provide excellent returns of around 8% per year. Stocks as a whole generally give excellent returns over time. Individual stocks are less clear.
  11. Try not to invest in individual stocks; it’s tough to choose winning stocks.
  12. Bonds are safer than stocks, thus with lower returns.
  13. Rich and older people like bonds because they want to know exactly how much money they will get next month.
  14. If you are wealthy, you’ll accept lower investment returns in exchange for security and safety.
  15. The Rule of 72: Divide your 72 / return rate by = the number of years to double your money.
  16. Make sure to create a pie chart of your portfolio in a spreadsheet.
  17. Have cash in your savings account for emergencies or have very liquid stocks.
  18. Cash is the safest part of your portfolio, but it offers the lowest reward. You lose money by having idle cash when you factor inflation in.
  19. Use a small part, up to 10% of your portfolio, for «high risk» investing—but treat it as fun money, not as money you need.
  20. What about crypto? It is a very high risk. First, get out of debt, then build a solid portfolio and six months of emergency funds. After having all of the above covered, venture into high-risk assets like crypto.
  21. Asset allocation
    • It is important to diversify within stocks, but it’s even more important to allocate across the different asset classes — like stocks and bonds.
    • Your portfolio should move gradually from riskier to safer as you age.
    • It is reasonable to have a portfolio made up of primarily stock-based funds in your twenties. It is reasonable to have a sizable portion of your portfolio in stable bonds in your sixties.
  22. Types of stocks
    • Small-Cap: companies with a market capitalization («market cap») < $1 billion.
    • Mid-Cap: market cap between $1 billion and $10 billion.
    • Large-Cap: > $10 billion.
    • Value: stocks that are cheaper than they should be.
    • Growth: stocks that may grow more than the market.
    • International: companies outside the US.
  23. Types of bonds
    • Government: backed by the government. Ultra-safe investments.
    • Corporate: issued by a corporation. Riskier than governments but safer than stocks.
    • Short-Term: less than 3 years.
    • Long-Term: mature in 10 years or more. They offer higher yields than shorter-term bonds.
  24. REITs: Real Estate Investment Trusts are public stocks that let you invest in real estate through a single ticker symbol, just like a stock.
  25. Mutual funds
    • They are primarily great for investment bankers, not for the buyer of the funds, since they have high expense ratios (management fees).
    • They have the advantage of a hands-off approach because you are diversified within the fund.
    • 75% of mutual funds do not beat the market.
    • Actively managed mutual funds are, by definition, expensive. You have to pay for the salaries of all the operations. Active management can’t compete with the passive management of index funds — the more attractive cousin of mutual funds.
  26. Index funds
    • In 1975, John Bogle, the founder of Vanguard, introduced the world’s first index fund. These simple funds buy stocks and match the market. Specifically, they try to match an «index» of the market, such as the S&P 500. In contrast, traditional mutual funds employ an expensive staff of «experts» who try to predict which stocks will perform well, trade frequently, incur taxes, and charge you high fees.
    • Bogle argued that index funds would offer better performance than active mutual funds since mutual funds haven’t beat the market.
    • When you invest in index funds, you typically have to invest in multiple funds to create a comprehensive asset allocation. If you buy numerous of them, you should rebalance your investments to maintain your target asset allocation — usually every 12 to 18 months.
    • With their low fees, index funds are far superior to buying individual stocks, bonds, or mutual funds.
    • Most index funds at Vanguard, T. Rowe Price, and Fidelity offer excellent value. Ramith invests with Vanguard. Learn more with the late founder, Jack Bogle on Index Funds, Vanguard, and Investing Advice.
    • To find index funds, you might try using Vanguard’s screener of funds.
  27. Target date funds
    • They are simple funds that automatically diversify between stock and bonds. They also rebalance your investments based on your target retirement date.
    • Target date funds are different from index funds, which are also low cost but require you to own multiple funds if you want a comprehensive asset allocation.
    • These funds have mainly stocks in your twenties and gradually add bonds as you age.
  28. Another model that may be interesting to imitate is the Swensen model of asset allocation. David Swensen has managed to get a 13.5% annualized return with his asset allocation.
Investing Options: Target Date Funds, Index Funds, Mutual Funds, Stocks, Bonds, Cash
Pyramid of Investing Options

How to maintain and grow your system

  1. Use www.bankrate.com and www.personalcapital.com for more resources and guidance on personal finance.
  2. If you choose to create your custom asset allocation instead of target-date funds, you will need to rebalance your portfolio periodically.
  3. It’s great that one of your investment areas is performing well. Still, you want to keep your allocation in check to diminish your risk that one sector isn’t disproportionately larger or smaller than you intended.
  4. Rebalancing your portfolio protects you from being vulnerable to a specific sector’s ups and downs.
  5. The best way to rebalance is to put more money into the other underperforming assets areas until your allocation is back on track. Another way is by selling the outperforming equities and investing that money in other areas.
  6. Pay your taxes, but make sure to use every legal tax advantage you can.
  7. Annual financial checklist
    • Review insurance needs.
    • What is your net worth?
    • Revisit your debt payoff plan.
    • Reassess current subscriptions.
    • How much are your fixed costs?
    • Are you revising your expenses?
    • Find ways to create more income.
    • If you have dependents, create a will.
    • Make a plan to use your credit card rewards.
    • Are you investing at least 10% of your income?
    • Negotiate bills and fees: phone, car, internet, bank.

A rich life

  1. «For me, a Rich Life is about freedom—it’s about not having to think about money all the time and being able to travel and work on things that interest me.»
  2. Investing shouldn’t be dramatic or even fun—it should be methodical, calm, and as fun as watching grass grow.
  3. Log in to your investment account no more than once a month.
  4. Try not to talk to others about your successes in finances. It creates tensions.
  5. Talking money with your significant other
    1. Moving together and getting married are key moments where a financial conversation might come in handy.
    2. You and your partner should agree that financial health is important and agree to help each other improve your finances.
    3. Should we sign a prenup? Most people don’t need a prenup unless one of you has a disproportionate amount of assets or liabilities relative to the other — or there are complications like one of you owning a business or having an inheritance.
    4. The Big Meeting: it is the meeting when you and your partner are transparent about all your finances. Both of you should prepare:
      • A list of your accounts and their balance.
      • A list of debts and their interest rates.
      • Monthly income and expenses.
      • Money people owe you.
      • Your short and long-term financial goals.
      • Ask questions.
        • Are we saving for our wedding?
        • What lifestyles do you expect?
        • Do you need to support your parents?
        • Look at your monthly expenses and ask: what could I be doing better?
        • What is your philosophy on money?
        • How did your parents behave with money?
        • How will we divide expenses?
        • Are we saving for kids?
  6. Cars
    1. Calculate the total cost of ownership (including maintenance, insurance, etc.).
    2. Buy a car that will last you at least 10 years.
    3. Study the resale value.
    4. Don’t stretch your budget.
  7. House
    1. Do a spreadsheet and analyze everything about the deal: competition, closing fees, insurance, maintenance, taxes, renovations, etc.
    2. Buying a home might not be an excellent investment when you factor in costs like maintenance and property taxes — which renters don’t pay for, but homeowners do.
    3. Begin with a starter house, which are houses that require you to make trade-offs but allow you to get started.
    4. Buy only if you are planning to live there for ten years.
    5. Buy or rent calculator of the New York Times.
    6. Usually, renting makes sense when you add all the random fees to own a home.

This book details a comprehensive step-by-step guide to improving your personal finances. Read it to move further along the path of Financial Independence.

Be aware of your numbers.


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Bob Iger’s Masterclass

Bob Iger is the executive chairman of the Walt Disney Company. In his Masterclass, he discusses his philosophy on leading one of the most prestigious companies in the world.

He begins by detailing his routine. He always takes advantage of the mornings and carves time to sit down and think. If you are a morning person, that’s the time when you have the highest energy. He likes to wake up extremely early, around 4:30 AM, and exercise. He listens to music and thinks about his day. It is a very creative moment for him.

He arrives at the office around 6:30 AM before anyone arrives and makes coffee. Bob lives by the saying: «The early bird catches the worm.» He goes home early, about 5:30 PM, joins his family for dinner, and around 8:00 PM works a little more. He needs alone time without interruption to think better. Every night he tries to reflect on his days and his accomplishments.

Before starting work, he makes a checklist of the day’s tasks. Then, he ponders about the priorities of the company. Usually, the focus of the majority of the companies is how to make the products or services better.

In the 2000’s he was a candidate to become the company’s CEO. He consulted with friends and realized he was in a political campaign. He concluded he had to define the company’s priorities and sell his ideas with a clear message to all board members. At that level, most of your work will involve communications skills, so make sure to develop them.

Before meeting the board members, he developed a strategy centered on creating great content. He found a way to correlate the company’s success with the success of the content creation engine of the company.

Bob set out to improve the content by acquiring Pixar. Unfortunately, the previous CEO did not have a good relationship with Steve Jobs, Pixar’s CEO at that time. His first task as CEO was to repair that relationship, and he did.

He talked to Steve, visited Pixar, and one day he called Steve Jobs and said, «I got a crazy idea.» It was Disney’s buying Pixar. Steve invited him to Apple’s headquarters and wrote down the pros and cons on a whiteboard. The cons outnumber the pros by a lot, and Bob thought the deal would not happen, but Steve said the few pros were much more important than the cons. 

Steve was preoccupied that the acquisition would kill Pixar’s culture. Bob assured him he would not let it happen. He was acquired many times before while working at other companies and knew how to maintain a culture. It is essential to respect the value of the culture.

You need to explain clearly what do you expect from people. Always strive for perfection and improve the product consistently. Have face-to-face meetings with the leaders of the company. The job of a leader is to define, share, reinforce, and repeat the company’s strategic priorities. Clarity is of utmost importance.

You should be keenly aware of the evolution of the market. A company that maintains the status quo in this dynamic world is bound to become obsolete. Gather data of what is happening and take big swings towards the future.

Identify problems and develop solutions. Talk to people at every level of the company, and let them pour their hearts out. Trust your instincts when leading the company. Enable your team to do their best work.

Bob was excellent at making acquisitions. He details how Disney acquired major brands and gives some tips. 

Deals must close quickly. Act fast to prevent the other side from developing cold feet. Leave stuff at the table to make others feel good and focus on closing the deal. The value created from an acquisition must be much larger than what you left on the table. You must fully understand the desires of the other parties. Make the other side feel like a winner. In a deal, you must both win.

Think deeply about brands. The brand must stay true to the core principles but adapt to the change.

A great example is Disney’s princesses. In the past, princesses were not happy unless a prince charming came to defend them. Now with frozen, for example, the princess is helped by her sister, staying strong by themselves.

Be skeptical about data; they always give an incomplete picture. People don’t know what they want. You need to trust your instincts. Listen to your gut.

Immerse yourself in the marketplace. Meet your customers. Interact and ask tons of questions. Listen with focus.

Taking significant risks is the surest way to success. If you fail, fail while daring greatly. Make sure to not withdraw and hide after failure.

Pay attention to new technologies and find a way to help your business grow. Always try to disrupt yourself. Change is inevitable. Experiment at the forefront constantly.

Curiosity is essential for growth. Make sure to separate time for meeting new people, going to new places, and trying new things. Curiosity is the root of innovation.

Give credit when people own their mistakes. However, if they show a massive lack of judgment, do not give them a second chance. Instead, punish harshly and fast.

A great leader is authentic, direct, optimistic, and decisive. However, they don’t take themselves too seriously. Indecisiveness lowers everyone’s morale. Great leaders talk about a brighter future. Optimism is contagious.

Bob was on the board of a company with Warren Buffett, and Warren argued a leader must have: brains, energy, and integrity. If they didn’t have integrity, that would mean a lot of problems.

I highly recommend Masterclass to improve various skills. It is an online platform of curated courses given by the highest performers globally.


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Leverage

A lever is a tool used to increase power with low effort. Using a physical lever, you can easily lift things that weigh much more than you —like a car— with minimal effort.

Leverage is the use of tools for your maximum advantage. It can multiply the outcomes from your effort, skill, and judgment. Leverage can help you achieve your life goals like financial independence, creating a movement, or a massive business with fewer competitors.

Archimedes, the most famous mathematician and inventor in ancient Greece, once said:

«Give me a place to stand and a lever long enough, and I will move the world.»

Archimedes using a lever to move the world
Archimedes lever, from Mechanics Magazine, published in London in 1824

A bicycle is a form of leverage for movement; you can move much farther and faster with it. In this video of Steve Jobs, he explains a study of the world’s species and their ability to move from one place to another. In the study, humans ended up in the bottom half, but if you gave them a bicycle, they ended up #1 in the world. He uses this example to explain: «For me, computers have always been a bicycle for the mind. Something that takes us far beyond our inherent abilities.» Computers are a form of leverage for the mind.

Now let’s detail the types of business leverages in chronological order.

Labor: It means other people working for you. Labor is the predominant form of leverage since the dawn of man. 

Arguably labor leverage is the worst form of leverage. Managing other people is incredibly messy because it requires tremendous leadership skills, and it is hugely competed over. 

You want the minimum number of people with the highest output, working with you to use the following forms of leverage that are more powerful and interesting.

Money: It means using money to work for you. It has been around for only thousands of years, so society understands them less well than labor. 

This leverage converts to other types of leverage. It scales very well; if you can manage money well, you can handle more money better than manage more labor. It is an excellent form of leverage, but it is hard to obtain because you need to build up a reputation first.

Money has been the predominant leverage for wealth creation in the last century. Those who control the infrastructure of money have benefitted the most. 

Products with no marginal costs of replication —media and code— are the newest forms of leverage.

Naval Ravikant

Media: It got started with the printing press, and then it grew stronger with broadcast media. Now the internet and code had made this leverage explode.

Media means using the internet to spread content through social media, books, blogs, podcasts, or videos to gain influence and power.

A couple of hundreds ago, to spread a message by voice, you had to give a lecture at a University, now you can buy a cheap microphone, a computer and reach millions of people through the internet.

Code: It means programming and using computers to create products and services.  

We have an army of robots at our disposal on the internet; we need to learn how to use them. Hence the importance of learning to code to speak their language. 

Media and code help create the new fortunes of the world. They are permissionless; you can do it by yourself without the approval of anyone. They even enable labor and money to be more permissionless with the rise of communities and crowdfunding.


The older the leverage, the more time society has had to learn it, thus higher the competition —which you want to avoid. This is why it is essential to invest in the newer ones —digital leverage.

Jack Butcher Diagram on Digital Leverage
Jack Butcher’s Diagram of Digital Leverage

Pick Business Models with Network Effects

When choosing a business model, you should be aware of leverage that arises from network effects.

A network effect is when each additional user adds value to the existing user base. Network effects come from computer networking. Bob Metcalfe, who created the ethernet, famously coined Metcalfe’s Law: the value of a network is proportional to the square of the system’s number of connected users. If a network of size 10 has a value of 1,000, then a network of 100 would have a value of 10,000.

Metcalfe's Law
Diagram of Metcalfe’s Law

The classic example of network effects is language. Let’s say that there are 100 people in a community. There are 10 languages and 10 speakers per language. Now the community has to incur the cost of translation. If all 100 spoke the same language, it would reduce friction and eliminate the translation cost, thus facilitating value creation.

Let’s say one of those languages is English, and 1 additional person learns English. Now 11 people know English. The next person who wants to learn a new language will probably choose English —the most used language. Then this reason becomes stronger, and eventually, the majority end up speaking English, and the rest of the language will vanish slowly. The network effect is why the whole world will probably speak English or Chinese in the long term —at least as a second language.

The internet is a significant lever, and people who want to communicate on the internet are forced to learn English because it is the most used language. If you don’t know English, you will have a severe disadvantage in your education because there are so many internet resources that have not been translated. On top of that, translations are usually worse than in the original language. If you want to be technically competent in computers, you need to know English because it is the language of the best sources.

In business, network effects often have scale economies: the more you produce something, the cheaper it gets to make it, thus increasing margins, creating barriers to entry and monopolies. An example of scale economics can be Google, which has the biggest market for search and a monopoly.

Technology and media products have zero marginal cost of reproduction: additional consumers add no additional costs. For example, a famous podcaster can have 100 million more listeners without any additional costs.

When thinking about businesses, think about how each additional customer could add value to each other. Pick a business model where you benefit from network effects, scale economies, and low marginal costs. 

From Laborer to Real Estate Tech Startup

Now let’s go concrete. The following are examples of how leverage increases in the real estate industry:

  1. Laborer: Someone orders them around in a construction site to carry things around. A laborer with more leverage uses tools like a bulldozer to gain more power and get paid more.
  2. General Contractor: They hire and coordinate a team of laborers. They are accountable to the results, thus having more risk if things go wrong but a higher reward than laborers if things go right.
  3. Property Developer: This might be a general contractor who did a bunch of remodeling, and now they search for run-down places to fix and sell them. They might even raise money from investors. To do this, they need more skills like understanding markets, neighborhoods, government approvals, and more.
  4. Famous Developer or Architect: They gain a reputation for doing great projects, and that by itself increases the value of a project without much additional effort.
  5. Urban Real Estate Developer: They build entire master-planned communities like Porta Norte. They need to understand, construction, infrastructure, greenfield development, earth movement, urbanism, market dynamics, marketing, politics, financing, management, architecture, and a bunch of other skills.
  6. Real Estate Fund: They invest in property developers, real estate developers, hotels, malls, etc. They understand the financial markets, raising money, corporate governance, and real estate. They may not want to manage workers or operate a project.
  7. Real Estate Technology Startup (aka proptech): They understand real estate, the industry’s inefficiencies, technology, how to recruit developers, write code, build the right product, and raise money from Venture Capitalists. A proptech would combine all types of leverages:
    • Labor of the highest output: computer engineers, product managers, and designers.
    • Money from venture capitalists and their own.
    • Media using the internet for distribution.
    • Code to create software.

This venture is a very high risk, high reward that could end up with hundreds of millions or billions of dollars and an IPO.

Develop Leverage

If you want to be more effective, then you must arm yourself with leverage. Your impact becomes bigger by combining all types of leverages aligned towards a vision.

Ask yourself: Am I skilled in the newer types of leverages? What are my strengths in every kind of leverage? What is my rate in each leverage? Rate them from 1 to 10. Ask the people who know you best how they would rate you in each type of leverage. What came out of my exercise is the following:

It is much easier for me to improve 2 points in code or media rather than 2 points in labor, and it will help me improve my abilities to use newer and less competed types of leverage. I invite you to do this simple exercise.

Reflect on what type of leverage you need in your life. Right now, it is more important for me to learn about media leverage; that is why I have invested in my communication skills by creating my podcast, YouTube channel, and blog. I lead a project that benefits the most from this type of leverage. If I wanted to start a proptech startup or invest in them, I would invest in code leverage.

Make sure you pay attention to the most useful leverage for you right now and create a roadmap.

Learn about leverage to allocate time, money and effort well. It will help you be more effective, recognize trends and how things grow big. As Charlie Munger once said:

«What helps everyone is to get in something that’s going up, and it just carries you along without much talent or work.«


  1. Some concepts in this blog post came from the extended tweetstorm of Naval Ravikant:

Book Review: Developing My Life

The book, Developing: My Life is about the life of real estate developer William «Bill» Zeckendorf Jr. He was a pioneer who helped revitalize neighborhoods in New York and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

He developed many New York projects until 1987, when the stock market crashed and left him in a terrible financial situation. After that, he moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he continued real estate development. In Santa Fe, he was involved in community affairs with universities, hospitals, performing arts, and more.

Bill’s strength and focus was in structuring the project, which means envisioning a project, buying the land, choosing an architect, securing financing, hiring contractors, and placing a team that would follow through.

This book talks a lot about generations. His father, William Zeckendor Sr. was one of the biggest and most famous developers in the United States. His two sons have a billion-dollar real estate development business. His grandchildren are almost all involved in real estate.

Real estate development is a craft where the most common path to get in is by apprenticeships through family businesses. It is tough to get into the business because you need a lot of capital, expertise, and connections.

Development is slow, and having many projects under your belt might take decades. This book helps you identify some patterns and learn from someone who was once the most active developer in New York—one of the world’s most sophisticated markets. I recommend this book to people who want to improve their judgment on real estate development or better understand how cities get built.

Bill’s life story is full of warning tales. It demonstrates how someone so knowledgeable in real estate can make small fortunes in many projects but lose their shirt when a deal goes sour or when the market dries up. In the last chapter, «Summing Up,» Bill opened up on what happened to him and his father, explaining the concept of «developer’s disease.»

«After suffering with my father through the demise of his company and personal bankruptcy, I was determined never to let that happen to me. Still, many years later, I, too, succumbed to what ultimately took him down. I call it developer’s disease.

Developer’s disease is a rare but highly contagious condition that afflicts certain developers. They hire the best architects. Their projects are the most admired. They’re financially very successful. They start with one project at a time. Then one project grows into another and another until they have many projects—some would say too many—underway. They begin to take on the most difficult projects, not just to put up buildings but remaking whole neighborhoods. Their goal is no longer making money; it’s being a savior. And they are treated royally for their pains. Based on their sterling records, financial institutions rush to provide money, and investors clamor to partner on their projects. And then, just as these developers are riding high, invincible, a deal goes sour or the market turns, and their luck runs out. Developer’s disease mows them down.

That’s pretty much what happened to me. After a cautious start in the 1970s, by the middle of the 1980s, I was the busiest developer in New York City, with a full plate of deals in progress and a full-blown, if undiagnosed, case of developer’s disease…

…Were I to make my career over, I might undertake fewer projects, juggle fewer balls, and steer clear of personal guarantees. But I wouldn’t for a second choose another field. I can’t think of anything more challenging, more satisfying, more frustrating, and more fun than real estate development.»

Favorite quotes:

«Bill would chase a deal, secure financing, and then pore over the plans with the architect. But as soon as the first shovel hit the ground, he moved on to the next deal.»

«One of the challenges in a renovation is something most people don’t think about: you have little control over the construction workers. When a new building goes up, construction proceeds in an orderly fashion, floor by floor. The floors’ sides remain open, so you can readily see who’s doing what, and where and when. But in renovations, workers are hard to track; they are all over the building at any given time. We found that some of them were hiding in rooms, literally sleeping on the job.»

«These things happen: projects that look good on paper for one reason or another don’t pan out.»

«Big is key for turning around a decaying neighborhood. A small building won’t change anything; the infusion of high-quality new apartments must be sufficient to upgrade the available housing stock.»

«As a further amenity—one not offered before in a New York apartment building—the one and two-bedroom units were laid out so they could be combined easily into larger apartments. This provided to be an effective marketing tool, and designing interiors so the apartments could be readily joined became a Zeckendorf trademark.»

«For me, the thrill of developing was not in watching a building go up: I seldom spent any time on job sites, leaving construction supervision to my project managers. My passion was putting together the deal. I loved every aspect of it: finding a property, assembling a site, securing financing, hiring an architect, and working on the plans. Once we broke ground, I was happy to turn over day-to-day supervision, only stepping back in if a problem arose or we needed more financing.»

«Most developers like to hold on to commercial buildings, leasing out the office space as an ongoing source of income. However, I didn’t want to be a landlord any more than I wanted to be a hotelier and preferred the business model of our residential condos: sell off the individual units as quickly as possible and get out.»

«With apartment sizes ranging from studios to two bedrooms, the Vanderbilt was aimed at younger buyers. To attract this market, we put in a state-of-the-art health club with a swimming pool, sauna, and basketball and squash courts.»

«Building apartments near a hospital center is good for business: doctors welcome the convenience, and buyers find it reassuring to have a top-flight medical care close at hand.»

«Big projects take more time and money and involve more parties. All of that ups the ante. In executing the four biggest projects of my career, I discovered the many ways a project could go right—or horribly wrong.»

«The terms were stiff, however, and we had to make personal guarantees on the loan. I always tried to avoid personal guarantees: if you put up personal assets as collateral and the project runs into trouble, you risk losing your assets.»

«Negative opinions come with the territory: developers automatically get a bad rap because what we do inevitably means change.»

«A complicated project can easily take ten or more years to come to fruition, exposing the developer to uncontrollable changes in market conditions.»

«The key to a successful assemblage is to keep your intentions quiet. You don’t want to tip your hand and have other developers swoop in and tie up parcels you’re after. Nor do you want the owners of the lots to jack up the prices, or rent-controlled tenants to stick you up for exorbitant relocation fees.»

«And we were a full-service organization, not merely developing our own properties as a managing partner with equity but also offering our expertise as project managers.»

«Between New York and Santa Fe, I had more than a dozen projects in the works when the stock market crashed in 1987. I was leveraged to the hilt, and it was only a matter of time before I ran aground.»

«Unless a developer has very deep pockets or a large portfolio of properties, leverage is the only way to finance a deal. I seldom financed a project alone. Having multiple partners allowed me to share the risk, but also meant sharing the returns. And often, it meant taking my money out to invest it in my next venture before I could reap the profits.»

«Inevitably, if a project is going to make a big impact on a community, somebody is bound to oppose it.»

«I learned a long time ago not to assume that anything is impossible.»

«And while my father and I usually had half a dozen or more projects underway simultaneously, my sons concentrate on one or two buildings at a time.»

Book Review: Elon Musk’s Biography

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

This book is a chronological story about the life of Elon Musk, one of the greatest businessmen of our generation. The book starts with his grandfather’s adventures. It follows on the family history up to Elon’s birth after the book zooms in every aspect of Elon, his childhood, his environment, his education, his relationships, and the founding of his companies Zip2, PayPal, SpaceX, and Tesla.

The author, Ashlee Vance, is an American business columnist focused in the tech world. He is the host of the Bloomberg series Hello Word, where he reports on the tech scene across the globe. For this book, he did many interviews with Elon, his family, friends, employees, ex-employees, investors, etc. The book is full of anecdotes and does not hold back when there is an adverse opinion, which, unsurprisingly, often comes from ex-employees and ex-wife. There are many quotes, stories, and emails straight from Elon too. Ashlee breaks down Elon’s motivations, action and then provides an excellent synthesis about why Elon Musk can do what he does.

This book is excellent for studying patterns of new innovative companies. It focuses on the chaos, drama, and uncertainty of a new venture. It also details Elon’s work ethic, his passion, resourcefulness, and the growth mindset necessary to execute essential things. 

Elon often reflects on past mistakes and explains his philosophies on company building. Some lessons learned are:

Summary

His grandfather, Haldeman, was an eccentric adventurer and a vital businessman who became a model for Elon. Haldeman had an airplane and was the first private pilot to get from Africa to Australia. After creating a fortune in Canada, he sold everything and moved to South Africa, where Elon was born in 1971. Elon says that he got his tolerance for risk from his grandfather. His grandmother was the first chiropractor in Canada. 

When he was young, according to his brother Kimbal, Elon usually read for up to 10 hours a day. Elon programmed and sold a space video game when he was 12 years old. There are some anecdotes of him being a strong advocate of solar energy. He has dedicated his life to the passions he had as a child. 

Science fiction and video games influence how he views himself, he says in the book, “Maybe I read too many comics as a kid. In the comics, it always seems like they are trying to save the world. It seemed like one should try to make the world a better place because the inverse makes no sense.”

At age 14, Musk had a full-on existential crisis, which is common amongst gifted people, but surprising in how young he was. He read a bunch of philosophies, and his conclusion was, “The really tough thing is figuring out what questions to ask. Once you figure out the question, then the answer is relatively easy. I came to the conclusion that really we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask. The only thing that makes sense to do is strive for greater collective enlightenment.”

He had a really tough childhood. He was severely bullied in school and at home by his father. He credits his ability to handle the pressure. This resulted in him wanting to leave South Africa as soon as possible. He regarded the United States as the land of opportunity, so he returned to Canada to find a way to go to the US. He arrived in Canada at age 17. He studied there for two years at Queen’s University and then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated from economics and physics. 

He interned in a startup in San Francisco and then moved there after graduation. He founded a company called Zip2, which was the first type of internet map. Subsequently, Compaq bought Zip2, and he got 22 million from the sale at age 27. With that, he founded X.com, which later merged with PayPal and ultimately took that name. He was fired as CEO while being the largest stakeholder. 

After that, he started to study Space and moved to Los Angeles because there was a mature aerospace industry with lots of talent, thus showing the importance of founding the right company in the right place with the right talent.

In the meanwhile, eBay bought PayPal for 1.5 billion, and Elon received 180 million of it at age 31. After that, he invested almost everything he had to SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity. Around 60% of this book is about the ups and downs of SpaceX and Tesla, where he was CEO and dedicated most of his time.

When Elon started to study the space industry, he was shocked about the low ambitions of NASA because they had no plan to go to Mars and old technology. Elon wanted to reignite their dreams and started to devise a project to send plants to Mars. After organizing many conferences with the top people in the industry, the plan evolved to create a company that reduced the cost of space exploration and eventually colonizes Mars.

SpaceX was founded in 2002. As expressed in their website, «SpaceX designs, manufactures and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft. The company was founded in 2002 to revolutionize space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets.» The book goes into detail on the first four launches, detailing the failure of the first three, the success of the fourth one, and how Elon managed the whole situation and pushed the company forward.

Tesla was founded one year later in 2003 with the mission to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. At the beginning of the company, he got some cofounders, which he later fired, and explains how he got the talent needed to create electric technology, the development of the prototype, the roadster, and the problems that arose from taking the prototype to market. 

He was also Chairman and the largest stakeholder of SolarCity, which became the biggest installer of solar panels in the country. His cousins started it. The book barely talks about SolarCity.

Conclusion

Elon’s life story leaves you reflecting on the impact you are doing with your life. He makes anyone feel small, but that is a good feeling because he inspires you to think bigger, be more ambitious, and excited about the future.

This is one of the fastest books I have ever read. I highly recommend it. If you buy it, it would probably be best to buy it on kindle so you can update it without additional costs. 

Quotes that made me ponder 

“He opened up about the major fear keeping him up at night: namely that Google’s co-founder and CEO Larry Page might well have been building a fleet of artificial-intelligence-enhanced robots capable of destroying mankind. ‘I’m really worried about this,’ Musk said.» — Ashlee Vance

“Each one of his businesses is interconnected in the short term and the long term. Tesla makes battery packs that SolarCity can then sell to end customers. SolarCity supplies Tesla’s charging stations with solar panels, helping Tesla to provide free recharging to its drivers. Newly minted Model S owners regularly opt to begin living the Musk Lifestyle and outfit their homes with solar panels. Tesla and SpaceX help each other as well. They exchange knowledge around materials, manufacturing techniques, and the intricacies of operation factories that build so much stuff from the ground up.” — Ashlee Vance

“One former SpaceX executive described the working atmosphere as a perpetual-motion machine that runs on a weird mix of dissatisfaction and eternal hope. ‘It’s like he has everyone working on this car that is meant to get from Los Angeles to New York on one tank of gas. They will work on the car for a year and test all of its parts. Then, they set off for New York after that year, all of the Vice Presidents think privately the car will be lucky to get to Las Vegas. What ends up happening is that the car gets to New Mexico — twice as far as they expected — and Elon is still mad. He gets twice as much as anyone else out of people.’” — Ashlee Vance

“The way Elon talks about this is that you always need to start with the first principles of a problem. What is the physics of it? How much time will it take? How much will it cost? How much cheaper can I make it? There is this level of engineering and physics that you need to make judgments about what’s possible and interesting. Elon is unusual in that he knows that and he also knows business and organization and leadership and governmental issues.” — Larry Page, Co-founder of Google

“I don’t think we are doing a good job as a society deciding what things are really important to do. I think like we are just not educating people in this kind of general way. You should have a pretty broad engineering and scientific background. You should have some leadership training and a bit of MBA training or knowledge of how to run things and organize stuff and raise money. I don’t think most people are doing that, and it’s a big problem. Engineers are usually trained in a very fixed area. When you are able to think about all of these disciplines together, you kind of think differently and can dream of much crazier things and how they might work. I think that’s a real and important thing for the world. That’s how we make progress.” — Larry Page

“I think there are probably too many smart people pursuing Internet stuff, finance, and law. That is part of the reason why we haven’t seen as much innovation” — Elon Musk

“I would like to die thinking that humanity has a bright future. If we can solve sustainable energy and be well on our way to becoming a multi-planetary species with a self-sustaining civilization on another planter — to cope with a worst-case scenario happening and extinguishing human consciousness — then I think that would be really good.” — Elon Musk

“There is a fundamental problem with regulators. If a regulator agrees to change a rule and something bad happens, they could easily lose their career. Whereas if they change a rule and something good happens, they don’t even get a reward. So, it’s very asymmetric. It’s then very easy to understand why regulators resist changing the rules. It’s because there’s a big punishment on one side and no reward on the other. How would any rational person behave in such a scenario?” — Elon Musk

“The objective of a company should be — what delivers fundamental value. I think it’s important to look at things from a standpoint of what is actually the best thing for the economy.” — Elon Musk

Post-publication

Many things have happened since the publication of this book in 2015:

Additional Links

If you want a deep dive on Elon Musk and his companies, I highly recommend The Elon Musk Post Series on waitbutwhy.com.

I also recommend Joe Rogan’s conversation with Elon Musk in Sept 2018 and May 2020.