The Porta Norte Charrette

Versión en Español

On August 11, 2015 we held the final presentation of the Charrette for the Master Plan of Ciudad Porta Norte at the American Trade Hotel.

The evening opened with Henry Faarup Mauad, President of Grupo Colonias – the master developer of Porta Norte. It continued with Henry Faarup Humbert, General Manager of Grupo Colonias, and closed with a presentation of Ciudad Porta Norte by Andrés Duany, leader and co-founder of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU).

Henry Faarup Mauad:

Henry Faarup Mauad, President of Grupo Colonias
Henry Faarup Mauad, President of Grupo Colonias

I founded Grupo Colonias in 1984 and since then we have built more than 1,000 homes in Panama City. I lived in France between 2009 and 2014 as ambassador. I came back thinking I would retire and play golf; instead I found my son, Henry James, full of energy, and we started talking about new ideas. We got excited and decided to join forces to create our most ambitious project.

After many conversations about real estate development ideas, we met the Rojas Pardini family, who own a large stretch of land on Vía Panamá Norte, near the Golf Club.

I want to take this chance to thank the Rojas Pardini family for all the support they have given us, and for the vision they had 30 years ago to acquire this beautiful land.

Once we got to know them well, we negotiated, and this megaproject called Ciudad Porta Norte was born.

At the start my son kept talking to me about new urbanism. He told me we should do a charrette, and I kept asking myself: what is a charrette? I lived five years in France, I speak French, and I had never heard that French word. I did not really understand the concept. But after thinking it over and debating it with the executive committee, they convinced me.

I have to admit I am impressed with the result. This is about creating a walkable community inspired by Casco Viejo.

A few years ago our great friend Bobby Motta, may he rest in peace, used to describe a relative of his as «the corrected and expanded edition». In this family, «the corrected and expanded edition» is Henry James Faarup Humbert. Please welcome him.

Henry Faarup Humbert:

Henry Faarup Humbert, CEO of Grupo Colonias
Henry Faarup Humbert, CEO of Grupo Colonias

Thank you for those words, Dad. Good evening and welcome.

From our very first meeting with the executive committee we talked about the experience we wanted to build. Little by little we concluded that the experience was walking the streets of Casco Viejo, or of Europe. We were not clear on how to proceed, so we started researching online and sharing ideas with architects.

We had one special conversation with Jeff Speck, the speaker of the TED Talk «The Walkable City» and the author of the book «Walkable City». Jeff showed us the best route to implement new urbanism and pointed us to four urban design firms to interview. Among them was Duany Plater-Zyberk (DPZ), and he told me that if Andrés Duany led the charrette, that was the best option.

Following that direction, a few months ago representatives of the executive committee traveled to the Congress for the New Urbanism in Dallas, Texas. There we took courses, interviewed the urbanists, and used the chance to have philosophical conversations with the best urban designers in the world about how to build the ideal city.

At the end of the congress we chose DPZ and its founder, Andrés Duany, to design the Master Plan of Ciudad Porta Norte. Today, after working together, I can confirm we made the right decision.

Now let me tell you a bit about Andrés.

Andrés is an architect and urban planner who has devoted his professional life to designing walkable communities. Andrés Duany and his wife, the architect Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, founded the firm Duany Plater-Zyberk in 1980.

Their first project was Seaside in Panama City, Florida, which became the epicenter of the new urbanism movement.

Andrés has been recognized with many awards, among them the Richard H. Driehaus Prize, the Thomas Jefferson Medal and the Vincent Scully Prize. He is also the author of several books, notably Suburban Nation, the Smart Growth Manual and Garden Cities.

Now I leave you with Andrés Duany, who will present the Master Plan of Ciudad Porta Norte. Please give him a warm round of applause.

Andrés Duany:

Andres Duany, Father of New Urbanism
Andres Duany, Father of New Urbanism

Thank you very much to the Henrys. In my presentation I will explain the following concepts:

  • What is a charrette?
  • What is new urbanism?
  • What is Ciudad Porta Norte?

What is a charrette?

A charrette is a working workshop where experts from different fields come together to produce a design.

In the case of Ciudad Porta Norte we have 10 international experts working hand in hand with 10 Panamanian experts. Our firm is expert in new urbanism, but not in Panama. The developers are experts in Panama, but not in new urbanism. Together we are experts in new urbanism development in Panama.

The developers took part in the charrette for all eight working days, making sure the design is efficient and viable. The charrette also included financiers, engineers, lawyers, brokers, government officials, prospective lot buyers and residents, among others.

The result is a project that looks utopian for Panama; however, we have experience turning this kind of urbanism into reality.

What is new urbanism?

New urbanism is urban design focused on the pedestrian.

Let us use Casco Viejo as an example. There you have the chance to walk to supermarkets, banks, restaurants, shops or a friend’s house. This neighborhood, like many cities of its era, is the best place to live in Panama if you want to be a pedestrian. It has the best urbanism if you want public space to socialize, unlike the modern projects being built in Panama.

That said, we have to admit Casco Viejo is not perfect: it has outdated infrastructure, it lacks parking and it has some elements of neglect.

A new urbanist design adapts to local needs. In this case, we have designed a place similar to Casco Viejo, but making sure to fix its problems.

Porta Norte is a place where you can walk or ride a bike to meet your daily needs. But if you want to, you also have the option of getting around by car.

Shops in a tourist neighborhood like Casco Viejo grow organically and end up all offering the same thing. Here in Casco Viejo there are more than 16 identical shops selling identical little hats. There is no variety of stores or options.

Shops in a new neighborhood like Porta Norte are chosen. Different businesses that can benefit residents are invited in, turning it into a place rich in options. In new urbanism we combine the street experience of an old neighborhood with a varied offering of services.

There are closed-minded people who oppose new urbanism. They tell us, “the problem is that you are irresistible because you copy the good ideas”. I say, “Exactly!”. As long as an idea is good and works, we have no problem copying it.

In Panama and Latin America there are many people who like traditional architecture like Casco Viejo’s. There are also people who like modern architecture with more glass. The answer in new urbanism is to use both.

Someone can build a mixed-use building with a ground floor of retail with plenty of glass to improve visibility, and traditional architecture on the floors above. There is room for institutional buildings to be modern and iconic. We do not think one style is superior to the other.

One problem of conventional urbanism is the pedestrian experience. Nobody likes walking along a deserted sidewalk with blank walls at street level. Because little attention is paid to it, this experience ends up with narrow sidewalks, interrupted by posts or full of cars.

In new urbanism we focus on giving the pedestrian an interesting, comfortable and fun experience. That is why ground floors must have shops and homes with windows and doors. They must be paired with wide, tree-lined sidewalks.

To achieve this, we hide the parking behind or underneath the buildings. This improves the pedestrian experience. There are many cars in this project, but you will not see them parked.

New urbanism adapts to the local context. Now let me show you in detail how we do it with Ciudad Porta Norte.

What is Ciudad Porta Norte?

Let us look at the presentation of what we have designed. This design will keep being refined over time as better ideas come up.

Site Visit

Grupo Colonias and DPZ team at Porta Norte
Grupo Colonias and DPZ team at Porta Norte

When we landed in Panama the first thing we did was visit the land. It is very important to know the site well. There I found land with a lot of character that lifted my spirit. It is a large property with hills, rivers, creeks and old trees.

Location

Porta Norte sits on the new Vía Panamá Norte. Its proximity to the Corredor Norte gives it good connectivity. The area is full of amenities.

Location of Porta Norte in Panamá Norte
Location of Porta Norte in Panamá Norte

The property is at the center of the city’s growth. I saw a lot of activity in the area, with neighbors building streets. Our project is without a doubt the right one to sit at the center, because it will be the Casco Viejo for our residents and for all the neighbors.

The property has good access from Vía Panamá Norte, where a vibrant Town Center can be built.


Silhouette of the Porta Norte Master Plan overlaid on Panama City.
Silhouette of the Porta Norte Master Plan overlaid on Panama City.

Casco Viejo

After visiting Porta Norte we went to the American Trade Hotel, where we worked for the following eight days. Every night we walked around and had dinner together to share the day’s ideas. Working in this neighborhood was a fantastic idea, because it has been a great source of inspiration.

The contrast between Casco Viejo and the rest of the City is radical. Casco Viejo is the kind of place that the more you know it, the more you like it. The rest of the City has no street life, and the more people know it, the more bored they get.

The Master Plan of Ciudad Porta Norte has both traditional and modern style. The first area to be developed is the South Parcel, a traditional little town. The North Parcel will be developed last, with tall buildings framing a central park. We do not want to lose the people who like views from up high. It is a viable market in Porta Norte.

The Casco Viejo neighborhood is different, and somewhat mysterious for most urbanists, because this kind of urbanism is no longer taught in universities. We have 35 years of experience designing walkable urbanism and we know how this experience is achieved.

For us it is no mystery, because we have new urbanism for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We can guarantee it will be similar to Casco Viejo, but better. In this design we respect essential aspects of Casco Viejo such as the balconies, the architecture, the plazas and the heights.

Here you do not feel threatened by cars, unlike in the new part of the City. To achieve this we included design elements that slow cars down so the pedestrian feels comfortable walking: cobblestones, narrow lanes, raised pedestrian crossings and trees.

Narrow streets with plenty of shade are the best. This type of street is sometimes illegal in other parts of the world. We have talked with public officials, who are here with us tonight, and we have found ways to do it within the rules.

The Process

It was a charrette with a lot of energy. Everyone wanted to weigh in and would grab paper and pencil to draw their concepts. Everyone was an expert on Panama. It was a bit exhausting; still, the active role of locals is necessary to give the design its context.

This afternoon I talked with César, who is an expert on the nature of Porta Norte because he has cared for the farm for a large part of his life. I was explaining to him the characteristics of the tree we want: a vase-shaped tree whose branches grow upward, so they do not hit the buildings, and whose roots grow symmetrically downward, so they do not break the sidewalks or the pavement. César knew exactly which tree we wanted and that it grows in Porta Norte. It was fantastic. That kind of conversation is necessary to give the design its context.

To arrive at the Master Plan we started by forming three isolated working teams. One team’s result was a master plan made of superblocks, which we called Concept #1. The other two teams produced very similar master plans made of regular blocks, which we merged and called Concept #2. Participants liked both concepts, so we designed both in depth.

Concept #1 is made up of main streets, similar to those of Casco Viejo, that run along the perimeter of four or five blocks forming a superblock. Next to the plaza with the fountain there are three- to five-story buildings that together frame the superblocks. After the plaza, at the first intersection, you turn left and enter the superblock. Inside you find a residential area full of single-family homes, trees, parks and a lake you can cross on pedestrian bridges. In one same place you can live in an urban area on the outside and a suburban one on the inside.

Superblock Master Plan Draft #1
Superblock Master Plan Draft #1
Superblock Master Plan Draft #2
Superblock Master Plan Draft #2
Superblock Master Plan Draft #3
Superblock Master Plan Draft #3
Superblock Master Plan Draft #4
Superblock Master Plan Draft #4
Superblocks in 3D
Superblocks in 3D

The Vision

After debating the merits of each master plan we chose to continue the process with Concept #2, the one with blocks, because it was more walkable and more flexible. Small blocks generate a grid of streets that gives the pedestrian more options for walking.

Concept #2 is much closer to Casco Viejo. It is made up of small blocks of about one hectare. Each block has interchangeable uses. The same block can hold houses, or residential or commercial buildings of 4, 6 or even 10 stories. That flexibility lets us respond to the market faster.

Block Master Plan Draft #1
Block Master Plan Draft #1
Block Master Plan Draft #2
Block Master Plan Draft #2
Block Master Plan Draft #3
Block Master Plan Draft #3
Block Master Plan Draft #5
Block Master Plan Draft #5
Block Master Plan Draft #6
Block Master Plan Draft #6
Block Master Plan Draft #7
Block Master Plan Draft #7

In the next image you can see the entrance to Ciudad Porta Norte. Right as you come in there is a walkable Town Center. The parking is hidden behind. It is not like a shopping mall where the parking sits out front, because that would be uncomfortable for the pedestrian.

In this drawing of the entrance you can see three-story buildings with retail on the ground floor and offices or homes on the two floors above. At the top, on the other side of the river, you can see a civic building – it could be a church or the town hall – that includes the project’s administration.

Entrance in 2D
Entrance in 2D
Entrance in 3D
Entrance in 3D

After entering, you turn right and find a bridge that crosses the María Prieta River to reach the first plaza.

Bird’s-eye view of the María Prieta River in 2D
Bird’s-eye view of the María Prieta River in 2D

On the left of the drawing you can see blocks like those of Casco Viejo, but with parking in the middle. In the center of the drawing you can appreciate the María Prieta River and how the plaza opens up and invites people toward the river. This is a perfect example of how the urbanism of Porta Norte integrates with nature.

María Prieta River in 3D
María Prieta River in 3D

Coming down the hill you can see the buildings with Canal Zone architecture. Then you come to the iconic bridge, which can be appreciated in profile. At the upper right there are residential blocks that vary between single-family houses and four-story buildings.

Bridge in 3D
Bridge in 3D

In this image you can see the plaza after the bridge, which is focused on residents. It has direct access to the river and includes an open-air market, leafy trees, a simple fountain and a kiosk.

Plaza in 3D
Plaza in 3D

We are urbanists, but not local architects. That is why we invited several local architects to participate. The following design is by Ricardo Arosemena. It was based on the plaza near the river. You can see the parking behind, the open-air market next to the plaza, the shops, and the town hall on the left. This gives us a good idea of how it could be.

Town Center section
Town Center section
Town Center designed by Ricardo Arosemena
Town Center designed by Ricardo Arosemena

It is normal to reach this level of detail a year later. With this exercise we were able to verify that what we designed works, and Ricardo confirmed it. This is a building that works, with its elevators, stairs, circulation, parking, retail area and so on.

Something curious I learned in Panama is the obsession some participants have with minimizing the effects of the rain and maximizing the breeze because of the heat. They pushed for narrow streets to get shade, to protect from the rain and to give the breeze more force.

In this diagram you can see the narrow streets and the tall buildings with private interior courtyards full of trees for the children to play in. You can also see the parking underneath the buildings. This is a new invention with no precedent in Panama. This design allows for incredible views and cross ventilation, responding to the local context.

Cross section of a typical block
Cross section of a typical block

This week we also talked about schools. There will be one or two private schools in Porta Norte. Instead of the schools you build here which, and I say this with great respect, look like factories or prisons, these are schools with a campus full of nature, where the buildings are separated by interior courtyards for the children to play. To reach this design we invited potential clients who own schools, and they approved it with a lot of enthusiasm.

School in 3D
School in 3D

Porta Norte is not just a project; it will be a town that in 20 years governs itself. We are building a community that will need its own administration and town hall. This is a concept for the town hall, which will house the administration and the Visitors Center. It has a tower you can climb to appreciate the views of the town under construction.

Those interested in living in Ciudad Porta Norte can study the model and the information on homes for sale or rent.

Visitors Center sections
Visitors Center sections

North Parcel

The North Parcel sits 150 meters above sea level. So we have to take advantage of the panoramic views of the sea and the city. That elevation also comes with a cooler climate.

In this concept we have tall, slender buildings surrounding a lake and a large park, like Central Park in New York. This park can hold a school, shops, clubs and so on. This area is sunken in the center, forming a valley shaped like an amphitheater that opens toward the city center.

These buildings will not be like the ones you find in Panama, which are poorly coordinated and block each other’s views. These will be like Vancouver’s, where the buildings are far apart. They have two to four apartments per floor so they get plenty of light and panoramic views.

First ideas for the urban layout of the North Parcel
First ideas for the urban layout of the North Parcel
Drafting the North Parcel
Drafting the North Parcel
North Parcel draft with 10- to 20-story buildings
North Parcel draft with 10- to 20-story buildings
North Parcel Master Plan
North Parcel Master Plan
North Parcel section
North Parcel section
North Parcel in 3D
North Parcel in 3D
North Parcel in 3D
North Parcel in 3D

Diagrams

One way to verify the plans is by making diagrams. They help you analyze the most important features of the Master Plan from another perspective.

Neighborhood Diagram
Neighborhood Diagram. The small circles represent the center of each neighborhood. From these points a pedestrian can reach anywhere inside the circle on foot in less than five minutes.
Public Space Diagram
Public Space Diagram. In dark green are the rivers and creeks, bordered by wide, wooded green strips fitted with trails, benches, tables and barbecues. Everything built with natural materials. In light green are gardens, sports areas, plazas, parks and interior courtyards. Green areas add up to roughly 40%. That is extremely high.
Developable Area Diagram
Developable Area Diagram (yellow).
Boulevards and Avenues Diagram
Boulevards and Avenues Diagram
Secondary Streets Diagram
Secondary Streets Diagram
Diagram of pedestrian streets and nature trails
Diagram of pedestrian streets (light green) and nature trails (dark green). The project has many pedestrian streets that lead to the natural waterways, inviting people to connect with nature.
Bus Diagram
Bus Diagram. In red you can see the bus route along the Boulevard. The red dots are the bus stops. Each stop serves a different neighborhood center so residents can get around easily. This helps people who do not want to or cannot walk, such as adults with children, the elderly and people with reduced mobility. In Porta Norte you can have a car, but you will not need it every day.
Civic Space Diagram
Civic Space Diagram. Ciudad Porta Norte is a large place where between 25,000 and 30,000 people will live. These people need their places of worship, their clubs and all the civic components we know and that do not exist in conventional developments. In Porta Norte we set aside civic lots so future residents can build them.

Street Design

Street design is very important because the street is a public space. The City’s streets are very hostile to pedestrians. The streets of Casco Viejo, by contrast, are pleasant, and that is why we are recreating them.

We have created a complete catalog with all the street sections. The wider the streets, the taller the buildings have to be in order to give the pedestrian shade and to put distance between neighbors.

Porta Norte Boulevard
Porta Norte Boulevard
Secondary Streets
Secondary Streets
Secondary Street in 3D
Secondary Street in 3D
Pedestrian / Vehicular Streets
Pedestrian / Vehicular Streets
Pedestrian Street in 3D
Pedestrian Street in 3D

Architecture

The architecture of Porta Norte is traditional, inspired by Seville, Cartagena de Indias and Panama’s Casco Viejo. We created a catalog of architectural typologies for houses and buildings. The typologies assume a minimum of two cars per home and four cars per 100 meters of commercial space.

What is interesting about the typology catalog is that each block can be offices, or low-, mid- or high-density residential. It all depends on the market. Block uses can be swapped. What they all have in common is that they help create pedestrian urbanism.

Porta Norte will be built by developers who will build vertically. Below you can see a draft of the Porta Norte Code that developers will have to follow.

Draft of the Architectural Code
Draft of the Architectural Code

There will be an enormous variety of architects, which will result in the architectural variety of the town. They will use the code, which has simple but precise rules, and the result will be a set of buildings in harmony.

If you look up our website, www.dpz.com, you will see at least three or four dozen towns we have designed that have grown in harmony. Some have been designed by as many as 70 architects, but the designs come together coherently because of the codes.

In Porta Norte we are bringing back the Hispanic interior courtyard, a lost art in Panama City. When you walk into an interior courtyard with plants, stone, running water and the sky as the roof, it is a magical experience. On top of that, this architecture is private and secure.

We have created a catalog of courtyard houses in many sizes to encourage their construction.

Porta Norte Courtyard Housing
Porta Norte Courtyard Housing
Mid-rise Typology #1
Mid-rise Typology #1
Mid-rise Typology #2
Mid-rise Typology #2

We also created a catalog of architectural elements inspired by Casco Viejo to include in the code. You can build an efficient, economical box-shaped building and still have the option of 15 or 20 different façades.

We know these elements work and that people love them, because residents enjoy the balconies and pedestrians like them too, since they offer protection from the rain and create shade, encouraging street life.

Architectural elements for façades
Architectural elements for façades

A New Vision

To execute this vision we need the developers and the users. The developers build the hardware, which is the infrastructure, the streets, the plazas and so on. The pioneering residents and businesses develop the software, which takes shape in the culture of the neighborhood.

One good thing about Porta Norte’s leadership is that they are young. It is a new generation of developers executing a new lifestyle with passion. They are the ones responsible for delivering Porta Norte. This may take between 15 and 20 years.

porta norte executive committee
Porta Norte Executive Committee in 2015

I want to stress that we are not proposing anything radical, nor are we reinventing the wheel. This is not an experiment; it is something we know works, because we have lived through the evolution of the projects we have designed. We are confident that in the future Ciudad Porta Norte will be the new model for development in Panama.

What we are proposing today is a new way of living with new ideas, and that requires the mindset of a new generation. From here on out this is your project, it is no longer mine, so get ready for what the new generation brings you.

I invite you all to join in and build this new way of living in Panama City.

Henry Faarup Humbert:

To close, I would like to thank the Duany Plater-Zyberk team, especially Andrés and Judith, DPZ’s project manager; our partners; the Rojas Pardini family; and our executive committee, made up of my father Henry Faarup Mauad, José Alejandro Rojas Pardini, Juan Antonio Rojas Pardini, Manuel Arias, Mario Pérez and Rafael Sabonge. The architects Ricardo Arosemena, Tony Way, Marcus Sabonge, Edward McGrath and David Rodríguez. The engineers of the Langan firm, engineer Carlos Arango and engineer Luis Campana. Please come up on stage.

Charrette work team
Charrette work team


Charrette video:


Photos from the launch:

Anchors in Master Planned Communities

Versión en Español

In this article, I’ll explore the role of «anchors» within a Master Planned Community (MPC).

What is a Master Planned Community?

Master planned communities are large-scale real estate developments where residents can live, work, and play. They are usually found on the urban periphery, where strong growth is expected. You can think of them as the game «Sim City,» but in real life. For a deeper look at what they are, you can read this article I wrote here.

What is an Anchor?

Let’s start with the dictionary definition:

«A device usually of metal attached to a ship or boat by a cable and cast overboard to hold it in a particular place by means of a fluke that digs into the bottom.» (Merriam-Webster)

In everyday language, the word «anchor» refers to the device on a ship that is dropped to the bottom of the sea so the vessel can hold a fixed spot where the crew wants to stay, without drifting away. You normally anchor in a place because it has good attributes: plentiful fishing, safe swimming, calm waters, good weather. And then you get the benefit of the place.

A ship's anchor holding a vessel in place

In real estate, the term «anchor» is used as an analogy for something that attracts other things. That «something» is usually a desirable institution or a natural attraction that captures the interest of people, businesses, or investment. Anchors help drive the real estate development of a site.

Shopping malls use the term extensively. To a large degree, a mall’s success depends on the success of its anchor. Mall developers look for land with favorable characteristics: high traffic, a large nearby population, strong purchasing power, among others. Then they look for an anchor for the project, usually a retailer that draws a large number of visitors, like a supermarket. The anchor is essential to getting the development done, because it brings the foot traffic that makes the other businesses inside the mall work. Without an anchor, there is no project.

At the scale of a Master Planned Community or a city, there have to be many anchors to meet residents’ needs. So what kinds of anchors should exist?

A few important questions: What culture and values do we want to foster in the community, and what kind of anchor best serves them? Given the context of the site, which anchors are easiest to develop and will have high demand? Where is the gap in the market?

I have thought about these questions for Porta Norte, and I always land on the same conclusion: the answers apply equally well to Panama City. The order in which the anchors get developed matters. First comes nature, then urbanism, and finally buildings.

1. Nature

Anchors can be natural elements, like beaches and mountains. Nature acts as a magnet that draws residents and visitors who want to enjoy natural beauty. On beaches, you can build marinas, enable water sports, and develop resorts, among other options. In the mountains, you can create trails, ski runs, and mountain biking routes, among other activities.

Natural elements should be promoted first, because every human being has a need to connect with nature. On top of that, nature is already there, so depending on what you want to do, you can take advantage of it with relatively low investment.

Panama is known for its biodiversity and its fertile land. We should make the most of these resources. At Porta Norte, the first thing is to highlight the river, the trees, the views, and the high points.

2. Urbanism

In a home, the members of a family have their own bedrooms and come together in common spaces like the living room and the kitchen. In a city, citizens have their own homes and come together in common spaces like plazas and parks. At the urban level, it is essential to have public spaces designed so that citizens can gather to celebrate, to have fun, and to exercise.

In Panama City, Casco Viejo, with its plazas and its pedestrian-oriented design, is the most beloved neighborhood in the city. It is no coincidence that it is the most walkable urban fabric and the one with the most music, art, and community events. So it makes sense to use this urban approach to build a new kind of neighborhood that people will love. One possible improvement would be to include more trees and greenery in the streets.

3. Buildings

Usually the most common building type is residential. But the more diverse the buildings are, and the more they attract culture and life, the better. That can include universities, schools, temples, public spaces, shopping centers, gyms, sports centers, and much more. My theory is that one of the best anchors, both for Panama and for Porta Norte, would be a great university. A vibrant community is built with families and with young people who want to better themselves, and these educational institutions are the raw material of universities.

In Panama, there is a big opportunity because of the shortage of quality universities. At Porta Norte specifically, a great university would be ideal, since it sits in the largest school hub in Panama, with more than 15 schools within a few kilometers and thousands of students graduating every year, but no university nearby to serve them.

Universities as Anchors

There are many cities that have thrived thanks to the best universities in the world, like Harvard, Stanford, Notre Dame, and the University of Texas at Austin. All of these cities were much smaller decades ago, and the universities have been key engines of their growth.

In short, a university focused on technology, especially on computer science, could be an excellent option. In Panama City there is no university offering world-class technology education, despite growing global demand and the advance of technologies like artificial intelligence.

This conclusion is inspired by a Paul Graham essay titled «How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub.» In it, Graham reflects on the characteristics that made Silicon Valley what it is today and how they might be replicated elsewhere. Here is a representative excerpt:

So suppose cool old neighborhoods and cool little restaurants make this the next Portland. Will that be enough? It will put you in a way better position than Portland itself, because Pittsburgh has something Portland lacks: a first-rate research university. CMU plus little cafes means you have more than hipsters drinking lattes. It means you have hipsters drinking lattes while talking about distributed systems. Now you’re getting really close to San Francisco.

— Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator

A technology-focused university would have the potential to produce talent that can earn significant income in the tech industry, or even start new companies, which would create a virtuous cycle. Other top-tier universities can also be good for urban growth, because universities and urban development have a symbiotic relationship in which both sides benefit.

When you design a new community, you need a clear vision. In the case of Porta Norte, we want a community that is vibrant, healthy, and close-knit. A place where kids can run through the streets, where people can exercise, where there is a thriving economy, and much more. All of these elements together create a place that people love, that they protect, and that lasts over time. Incorporating anchors is one of the key strategies for making that vision real.

To close, here are a few thoughts worth considering: What kinds of anchors do you think Panama City is missing? Where do you see opportunities in the market? Which anchors could improve everyone’s quality of life? Which ones do you think would work well in places like Porta Norte? And how do you imagine the universities of the future?


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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 Annual Meeting 2026: la primera junta sin Buffett al mando

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Acabo de regresar de Omaha, Nebraska, de mi segundo Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting. El plan original era llegar el jueves para aprovechar el viernes entero recorriendo charlas y el famoso ecosistema que se arma en paralelo al evento. El sábado caería el plato fuerte —la junta de accionistas— y en la tarde una conferencia más, antes de cerrar con la cena tradicional de los panameños en Gorat’s.

No salió exactamente como pensaba. Tuve un problema con la visa que me obligó a atrasar el vuelo, y entre tantos retrasos terminé llegando el viernes en la tarde. Adiós a las charlas del viernes. Me dijeron que estuvieron buenísimas y eso me dolió, porque lo que más quería confirmar este año era si el ecosistema paralelo —las side conferences, los grupos pequeños, los meet-ups de inversionistas— seguía vivo. Por lo que escuché y vi después: sí, sigue con energía.

El hotel con vista privilegiada

Me quedé en el Kimpton Cottonwood, sobre la famosa Farnam Street. Resulta que justo al lado quedan las oficinas de Warren Buffett, en Blackstone Plaza —el histórico Kiewit Plaza, sede de Berkshire Hathaway desde 1962, que cambió de nombre cuando lo compraron en 2019—. La casa de Buffett queda en esa misma calle, a cinco minutos. Por algo el magnífico podcast de Shane Parrish se llama Farnam Street: se dedicó a aprender y publicar sobre la sabiduría de Warren Buffett y Charlie Munger, y lo bautizó con la calle de la oficina.

En el Kimpton se congregaron celebridades todo el fin de semana. Una noche había un evento privado de Berkshire en el lobby, y por la cantidad de guardaespaldas trajeados afuera, pensamos que Buffett estaba adentro. Otro día, en la entrada, tenía al lado mío a Bill Murray —sí, el actor—, que resulta ser accionista de Berkshire desde los años 70. Y para rematar, Li Lu, el «Warren Buffett de China», hacía un evento privado en el piso 8. Tres panameños intentamos colarnos, pero nos pararon en la puerta: era con invitación. Para los que no lo conozcan, Li Lu es la única persona a quien Charlie Munger le confió su dinero personal para que se lo administrara.

Blackstone Plaza de noche en Farnam Street, Omaha, sede de las oficinas de Warren Buffett
Blackstone Plaza de noche —el histórico Kiewit Plaza, donde están las oficinas de Warren Buffett en Farnam Street.

La era Greg Abel: menos carisma, más operación

El sábado fue, en una palabra, transición. Greg Abel lideró su primera junta como CEO, con Buffett (95 años) sentado en la audiencia por primera vez en 60 años. La jugada se parece mucho a la de Apple cuando Tim Cook reemplazó a Steve Jobs: cuando se va el fundador-leyenda, el nuevo CEO realza al equipo ejecutivo para demostrar la profundidad del management y que la empresa va más allá de una sola persona.

El año pasado Buffett fue muy general —casi no habló del negocio; fue todo sabiduría de vida, anécdotas, filosofía—. Este año, con Greg, el tono cambió 180°:

  • Métricas y rankings, sin filtro. BNSF pasó del 5.º al 4.º lugar entre las seis Class I railroads. El margen operativo subió 250 puntos básicos en 2025. Union Pacific, el líder, está en 39.5%. Brecha clara, plan claro. A Warren probablemente le habría dado pena hablar así de un activo propio en público; Greg lo dijo sin pestañear.
  • Tecnología in-house. El mantra: ser builders de tecnología, no compradores. Movieron al líder técnico de GEICO a un rol senior en Berkshire Hathaway Energy y BNSF para replicar el playbook.
  • «Narrow AI». Greg detesta el término «AI» a secas. Tres principios: humano siempre en el loop, reproducibilidad como salvaguarda, y que la AI sea aditiva al negocio (nada de «AI por AI»).
  • Subieron a los gerentes generales de GEICO, BNSF y NetJets/Consumer Products al escenario. Por primera vez vimos a esos operadores en vivo, defendiendo sus negocios.

¿Tiene Greg el carisma de Warren? No. Y nadie pretende que lo tenga: él es un operador, no un comediante. Y me parece lo correcto: si no eres carismático, mejor enseñas cómo piensas como negocio. Las preguntas también lo reflejaron. A Buffett le hacían cosas tipo «¿qué harías si pudieras pasar un día más con Charlie Munger?». A Greg nadie le pregunta eso: le preguntan de AI, sucesión en seguros, autonomous trucking, descentralización, tarifas. Es mucho más sobre el negocio. Hasta cierto punto, uno termina conociendo mejor la empresa este año.

La arena del CHI Health Center durante la junta de accionistas de Berkshire Hathaway 2026
El CHI Health Center en la primera junta con Greg Abel como CEO.

El homenaje a Buffett —y la realidad

Lo más emotivo del día: izaron oficialmente el «jersey» de Warren —el número 60, por sus 60 años como CEO— hasta las vigas del CHI Health Center, junto al de Charlie Munger. La arena explotó en aplausos. Después Warren tomó el micrófono y, hablando de Greg, dijo: «Está haciendo todo lo que yo hacía, y un poco más, y lo está haciendo mejor en todos los casos.» 100% Buffett.

Banner BUFFETT 60 1965-2025 izado en las vigas del CHI Health Center
El banner «BUFFETT · 60 · 1965-2025» izado a las vigas, en homenaje a sus 60 años como CEO.

Warren volvió al cuento de Apple —los 35 mil millones que invirtieron hace diez años se convirtieron en 185 mil millones pre-tax, «y no tuve que hacer ni una maldita cosa»— y aprovechó para reconocer a Tim Cook (también retirándose) que estaba en la audiencia. Más tarde Becky Quick lo entrevistó en vivo y soltó frases ya antológicas: «el mercado es una iglesia con un casino al lado» y «los mejores tiempos para comprar son cuando nadie contesta el teléfono.»

A lo largo del día, Warren trazó varias veces el paralelo entre él y Steve Jobs, y entre Greg Abel y Tim Cook: el visionario que crea, el operador que escala. La comparación no la inventé yo —la hizo él mismo desde el escenario.

Retrato de homenaje a Warren Buffett en el exhibit hall de la junta 2026
El homenaje en el exhibit hall: «With Gratitude, Warren Buffett, Chairman».

Pero te voy a ser honesto: Buffett me dio tristeza. Se ve muy viejo. Cuando habla le cuesta modular, le cuesta reírse, hay momentos en que no se le entiende del todo. Le queda poco tiempo, y eso me lleva al elefante en la sala.

Warren Buffett, 95 años, al micrófono con su sudadera azul en la junta de Berkshire 2026
Warren Buffett, 95 años, al micrófono con la sudadera azul que se hizo viral.

¿Qué pasa el día que Buffett no esté?

Este año la energía estaba claramente más baja. Mi estimado a ojo: 30-40% menos asistentes que el año pasado (la prensa habló de unos 25,000, contra 40,000 en 2025). El exhibit hall estuvo más mudo a la hora de comprar. Y la pregunta que me persigue es: ¿qué pasa el año en que falte Warren?

Ya se empiezan a ver movimientos para llenar el vacío, y se nota que va a haber competencia por ser la sede de los inversionistas value el próximo año:

  • Tom Gayner (Markel) quiere armar un fin de semana entero parecido al de Berkshire.
  • Bill Ackman dijo que va a ser mucho más activo en redes y conferencias públicas, en parte promocionando sus nuevos fondos.

¿Alguno le va a llegar a los talones a Buffett? Lo dudo. Warren combina algo casi imposible de replicar: track record de seis décadas, comunicador legendario y figura cultural más allá de las finanzas. Pero está claro que se está formando un vacío de poder en el liderazgo simbólico de los inversionistas value, y van a ser varios los que intenten agarrar la batuta. Mi apuesta: no habrá un sucesor único, sino una fragmentación —cada gran inversionista tendrá su propia «junta» en distintos pueblos—.

El after: Kanbrick y la cena de los panameños

Saliendo de la junta principal, fui al exhibit hall a hacer mi compra anual: zapatillas Brooks (gracias, Dan Sheridan), una taza de café, una bola de béisbol firmada. Es uno de los espacios más bonitos del fin de semana: uno camina entre las marcas de Berkshire conociendo productos y servicios que de otra forma no vería.

Después tuve la fortuna de meterme a una sesión muy buena de Kanbrick, la firma que armó Tracy Britt Cool (ex–financial assistant de Buffett, ex-CEO de Pampered Chef) con su socio Brian Humphrey. Lo que están haciendo me parece brillante: un «Berkshire para empresas más pequeñas» —long-term home, capital paciente, hold de 10+ años, leverage conservador (~2.5-3x, contra 4-6x del PE tradicional), filosofía idéntica pero a una escala más manejable—. Su tesis: el mundo no necesitaba otro middle-market PE; necesitaba un home de largo plazo con ADN de operador.

Tres ideas que me llevé y que aterricé directo a Porta Norte:

  1. La ecuación del compounding. 20% anual durante 20 años se convierte en ~38x. Es la matemática que cualquier builder de largo plazo debería tener escrita en la pared. En real estate solarpunk con horizonte de 50 años, esa disciplina es nuestra ventaja competitiva.
  2. Las 4 Ms para evaluar contrapartes (developers, instituciones, comerciantes que entran a Porta Norte): Market, Moat, Management, More potential. El «more potential» es su versión personal del margin of safety: no en el precio, sino en lo que pueden co-crear con el partner.
  3. Patience compounds. Tracy y Brian llevan cinco años invirtiendo en su comunidad de CEOs (~4,000 personas), y dos de sus portfolio companies salieron de ahí. La lección: construir comunidad antes de necesitar el deal flow. Aplicable directo a cómo cultivamos relaciones con inversionistas, residentes y operadores en Porta Norte.

Ya en la noche, la cena tradicional en Gorat’s, el steakhouse que Buffett popularizó. Éramos como 12-14 panameños en la mesa (algunos ya se habían ido cuando tomé la foto), y ese es un número alto para cualquier conferencia en Estados Unidos: el viaje desde Panamá toma mínimo 12-14 horas con escalas, casi tanto como ir a Madrid. La pasión que hay que tener para hacer este viaje cada año es muy alta, y dice algo del grupo de gente que lo hace.

Cena de los panameños en Gorat's Steak House durante el fin de semana de Berkshire 2026
La cena tradicional de los panameños en Gorat’s, el steakhouse que Buffett popularizó.

Al día siguiente regresé temprano a Panamá. Sigo lamentando haberme perdido las charlas del viernes, pero la jornada del sábado —aún con la energía más baja— valió cada hora de vuelo.

Reflexión

Es mi segundo año yendo, y cada vez veo más este viaje como práctica de inversionista, no como turismo financiero. Las juntas de accionistas son una forma poderosa de:

  • Conocer mejor las empresas en las que uno está invertido, y decidir si subir o bajar la exposición.
  • Supervisar al management: verle la cara, escuchar cómo piensa, evaluar cómo está envejeciendo (literal y figuradamente).
  • Recargar la pasión rodeándote de gente que valora estos temas. Seamos honestos: muy poca gente en el mundo sabe —o quiere— hablar de combined ratios, capital allocation y moats con profundidad.

Cuando estás en una sala con miles de personas que volaron 12-14 horas para escuchar a un CEO hablar del 10-Q, te das cuenta de algo: hay una tribu de gente que piensa así, y rodearte de ellos te hace mejor inversionista. Más que cualquier libro o curso.

Me quedo con ganas de ir a otras juntas —Markel, Constellation Software, Fairfax, tal vez—. Si uno quiere aprender a pensar como dueño de largo plazo, este tipo de eventos son la mejor educación que existe.

Hasta el año que viene, Omaha. Espero que Warren todavía esté ahí.

¿Y qué pienso de BRK?

Me lo preguntan seguido, así que voy directo. Hoy BRK-A ronda los $750,000 y BRK-B unos $500. Depende de qué busques y del precio al que entres, pero mi lectura es esta: Berkshire está fairly valued y el S&P 500 está, para mí, overvalued. Por eso ahorita me gusta bastante más Berkshire que el índice.

No esperes retornos altos a mediano plazo —yo apuntaría a algo como 6% anual—. Lo veo casi tan seguro como un T-Bill, pero con mejor rendimiento: diversificación de país, balance de fortaleza y un descuento de puro sentido común. Súper conservador.

Por eso le sigo invirtiendo junto a mis padres. Para mi portafolio personal tengo una posición, pero hoy prefiero cosas menos conservadoras y con mejor expectativa de retorno. Caballos distintos para carreras distintas.

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.

Casi muero atragantado

Casi muero el 5 de mayo de 2024. Era el día de las elecciones de Panamá. Esa mañana fui a votar alrededor de las 10:00 am. Luego fui a un café para comer con mis suegros, que estaban de visita en Panamá, mis padres, mi esposa y mi hijo. El restaurante estaba lleno ya que los camareros estaban votando y la gente no se había ido para el interior. No pude comer ni tomar café — tenía hambre.

Este era el último día de mis suegros en Panamá, así que el plan era llevarlos al aeropuerto como al mediodía y luego ir a casa de mis padres, donde estaría mi familia para almorzar y supuestamente bañarnos en la piscina. Dejamos a mis suegros en el aeropuerto e íbamos de camino a la casa de mis padres cuando Gloria me recalca que no llevábamos vestido de baño para el día de piscina. Le dije que de seguro la gente no se metía en la piscina ya que se meten muy poco. Estaba equivocado.

Llegué a la casa de mis padres y estaban todos en la piscina. Literalmente no había nadie afuera. La piscina tiene una mesa central donde justo habían colocado una enorme y suculenta pata de cordero recién sacada del horno. Mi mamá me ofreció y me sirvió un plato de cordero. Estaba comiendo parado, incómodo. Me senté en el piso a comer, incómodo. Entonces pensé, mejor me voy adentro a comer rapidito, cómodo en una silla y regreso para estar con todos. Me fui a comer solo a la sala sin decirle a nadie. Me senté en un sofá individual con el plato encima de mis muslos. Estaba apurado porque quería regresar rápido.

Comencé a comer. Como en el tercer bocado me serví un pedazo que en efecto era muy grande y con mucho pellejo. Me acuerdo haber pensado que estaba muy grande. No sé por qué, pero no mastiqué lo suficiente y fue bajando hacia la garganta. Mientras bajaba el pedazo pensé: uy, eso está grande.

Me comencé a atorar y como primera instancia metí mi mano para sacar el pedazo. Para mi sorpresa el pedazo se encajó casi perfecto en mi garganta. Pensé, bueno, no pasa nada, con una buena tos lo saco. Respiro profundo, toso, y ahora sí el pedazo encaja a la perfección en mi garganta. Comienzo a hiperventilar solo que sin flujo de aire.

Traté de seguir tosiendo, pero no podía. No había intercambio de oxígeno. Me estaba asfixiando. Me paro solo en la sala, trato de pujar un par de veces — nada. Comienzo a paniquear horrible. Me doy cuenta de que no puedo solo y enseguida decido salir a buscar ayuda, así que me fui corriendo afuera a la piscina.

Llego corriendo al borde de la piscina y trato de gritar para pedir ayuda. No sale ningún sonido. Comencé como a tratar de vomitar y solo caían babas a la piscina. Una hermana me decía que no fuera tan cochino y que vomitara afuera de la piscina. La gente estaba confundida, se comenzaron a poner inquietos y otra hermana después de unos segundos se dio cuenta de que me estaba ahogando, salió corriendo de la piscina y comenzó a hacerme la maniobra Heimlich inmediatamente. Trató un par de veces con toda su fuerza. Nada.

Mi cuñado, que tiene más fuerza, le dice que él lo hace e intercambia posiciones rápido con ella. En ese momento probablemente tenía como dos minutos y medio sin oxígeno. En los primeros apretones lo hace como en mis costillas y como a la tercera yo le acomodé las manos para que estuviera empujando justo debajo de las costillas. Fue instinto.

En todo este proceso estaban adultos gritando diferentes soluciones, mis sobrinos gritando, los perros ladrando, los adultos cuidando niños y tratando de ver cómo ayudaban. Unos decían que me montaran al carro, otros que llamaran al seguridad de los vecinos, otros que llamaran a la ambulancia.

Como al intento número 10 de la Heimlich de mi cuñado estaba perdiendo consciencia — me estaba desmayando. Mis pujes se volvieron débiles. Se me estaban cerrando los ojos cuando pensé: Henry, te estás muriendo, DALE.

Me entró un rush de adrenalina y me prendí. Comencé a pujar fuerte nuevamente. Mi cuñado siguió haciendo la Heimlich ahora sí con toda su fuerza. Yo también estaba empujando con absolutamente toda mi fuerza. No salía. Pensaba que no iba a salir pero al fin salió como a veinteavo intento y me desplomé al piso. Genuinamente pienso que no me quedaban más de dos pujes para perder consciencia y luego…

Mi otro cuñado vio el pedazo de carne salir y gritó que había salido. Salió con un poco de vómito. El ambiente estaba lleno de gritos y lágrimas. La gente me daba espacio para respirar. Yo no estaba seguro si había salido el pedazo de carne. Asumo que no estaba pensando bien por la falta de oxígeno y estrés. Luego de unos segundos en el piso respirando alcé una mano señalando que ya todo había pasado y que ya podía respirar. Me quedé acostado en el piso un buen rato recuperando consciencia.

Mi mamá fue la primera que se acercó. Iba con el dedo en forma de gancho a tratar de sacarme el pedazo de cordero pero se dio cuenta de que ya todo estaba bien. Lo primero que dije fue que apagara el iWatch que me estaba volviendo loco porque había detectado la caída y estaba pitando desaforadamente. Lo apagó, me limpió el vómito de la boca, me dio un beso en la frente y me quedé descansando en el suelo.

Después de un rato me paré y me fui a sentar al sofá del patio de la casa. Allá estaba con mi esposa, mi hijo, mamá, hermanas y sobrinos. Poco a poco todos me vinieron a visitar. No paraba de llorar.

Luego de como media hora de contemplación y recuperación me paré, me quité la camisa y me metí a la piscina en pantalón largo para estar con todos. Mi papá estaba justo al lado y me decía que llorara todo lo que quisiera.

Lloraba y lloraba.

Me acuerdo mucho de mi sobrina mirándome fijamente mientras lloraba. Todos estábamos en shock. Comencé a tratar de normalizar la situación. Sonreía un poco de vez en cuando, me comí un tres leches, me tomé una cerveza, hablamos de las elecciones y de Cerro Azul. Después de como dos horas ya decidimos salir de la piscina e irnos para nuestras casas.

Post-atragantamiento

Luego del evento me comenzaron a decir las cosas que pensaron y pasaron.

Henry David estaba con mi mamá en todo momento. Él comenzó a llorar, probablemente era por los gritos de todos. Dice mi mamá que lo puso de espalda hacia mí para que no quedara traumado de ver a su papá morir.

Mi otra hermana y mi cuñado pensaban que cuando caí al piso, había caído muerto.

Mi papá me dijo que vio el momento en donde me estaba desmayando y dejando de pujar. Me dijo que tenía la cara roja y el contorno de mis ojos morados.

Ese mismo día pensaba mucho en lo que es importante en la vida y en la gran insignificancia de ciertos estreses del día a día. En realidad hay muy pocas cosas en la vida que son genuinamente importantes y por las que vale la pena estresarse. Estamos en tiempo prestado.

Los siguientes 4 días fueron difíciles.

El día siguiente, el lunes, cuando me desperté me di cuenta de que tenía los ojos con mucha sangre ya que los capilares se me explotaron por la asfixia y empuje. Ese día fui a la oficina. Tuve estrés postraumático violento. Me acordaba constantemente del evento. Esa mañana pude haber llorado solo en mi oficina como 10 veces. Para el almuerzo fui en familia al restaurante Mika. En la tarde regresé a la oficina y tuve una llamada con una psicóloga. Me fui a casa temprano. En la noche invité a un par de amigos a mi casa para tener un grupo de soporte. Organizamos un trip a Cerro Azul para ese mismo sábado donde terminamos yendo 6 parejas con nuestros hijos.


El martes seguí llorando esporádicamente. Para el almuerzo fui a bañarme en la piscina de la azotea del edificio donde vivo con mi esposa y pedimos comida del restaurante.

En la noche tuve reunión con amigos de un fondo de inversión que tenemos para mantener la mente ocupada.

El miércoles cuando llegué a la oficina alguien me dijo que no pasaba nada si me iba a la playa o la montaña a reflexionar. Que nadie me iba a juzgar. Me puse a llorar. No sé por qué seguía deprimido, pero lo estaba. En la noche estuve en un bote con toda mi familia celebrando el cumpleaños de mi hermana mayor.

El jueves estaba mucho más tranquilo. En la noche venía un amigo a la casa. Tuve mi día laboral normal y cuando llegué a la casa estábamos mi esposa, mi hijo y yo juntos. En eso le digo a Gloria que se hiciera una prueba de embarazo ya que tenía como una semana de retraso y… salió positiva! ¡Qué enorme alegría! Saltamos, gritamos y bailamos los cuatro. Llamamos a nuestra familia extendida y les dimos la gran noticia.

Desde ese momento y después del fin de semana con amigos en la naturaleza de Cerro Azul se esfumó por completo el estrés postraumático y el sentimiento de tristeza. Estaba y sigo super contento y emocionado con mis proyectos de vida.

En retrospectiva iba a ser una muerte poética. Me imagino la descripción de la noticia: Henry James Faarup Humbert, muerto a los 34 años atragantado por un pedazo de cordero (figura religiosa) al frente de su esposa, hijo, padres, hermanas, cuñados y sobrinos. Esposa viuda se entera que está embarazada a pocos días de la muerte de su esposo. Surreal.

Cosas que aprendí o internalicé más

Casi todo es insignificante. Hay muy pocas cosas que vale la pena enojarte o tener estrés. Lo más importante es mi familia, mis amigos, mis intereses y tiempo para disfrutarlos.

La muerte por atragantamiento es mucho más normal de lo que pensaba. Nunca consideré que eso fuese un riesgo. Conversando con gente me enteré de decenas de cuentos de sustos de gente conocida por atragantamiento y de muertes. Al escuchar esto busqué en internet y hay muchas más muertes por atragantamiento que por accidentes de tráfico. La siguiente gráfica me llamó mucho la atención:

Hablé con gente que había estado cerca de la muerte y sus perspectivas de vida luego. Se estresan mucho menos, son más ambiciosos en la vida personal, trabajan menos. O sea que en el balance de vida y trabajo le dedican mucho más a la vida. Son más agradecidos y le dicen que no a las cosas que no quieren hacer.

Aprendí la importancia de los primeros auxilios. Había 10 adultos en esa piscina y a la casualidad que mi hermana, la que se dio cuenta y comenzó con la maniobra de Heimlich, era la única que había tomado el curso de primeros auxilios. A raíz de esto tuvimos una sesión familiar un mes después donde nos la enseñaron a todos. Recomiendo fuertemente agarrarla recurrentemente con las personas con quienes más se rodean.

Mi hermana y mi cuñado me salvaron la vida. Casi muero ahogado a los 34 años.

En fin, escribo y publico esto por múltiples razones. Para estar consciente en un futuro que esto puede pasar y prepararme agarrando junto con mis allegados cursos de primeros auxilios periódicamente. Para transmitir a todos los que lean esto de que esto no es un riesgo tan atípico y que vale la pena prepararse. También para recordar este evento y recordar mi mortalidad — memento mori. Quiero cimentar esta memoria, poder acordarme de lo ocurrido y darme cuenta una vez más de lo frágil que es la vida. Tengo que estar agradecido por un día más de vida. Cualquier día normal nos vamos de aquí.

¡A vivir la vida! Carpe Diem.

P.D. Con profunda tristeza cuento que el embarazo no resultó ser exitoso. Tuvimos un aborto espontáneo a la séptima semana.

DNA of a Master Developer

Master Developers are real estate developers who build Master Planned Communities. This post expands on the ingredients needed to become a great Master Developer, outlined by Urban & Civic, a Master Developer, in their infographic.

Projects

Target big, complex sites in key growth locations

Study urban growth patterns and predict where new developments will happen. Acquire the most land you can afford to benefit from land appreciation created in the first phases.

Invest in the land for long-dated returns

Master-planned communities are like icebergs — they are massive and move slowly. MPCs require a lot of investments to transform undeveloped land into developed, functional, and aspirational for the first residents to move in. Recruit partners who have long-term investment horizons.

Work with like-minded partners

Attract high-quality shareholders, talent, and clients who share your values and add value to the project. Work hard to maintain and raise the quality bar in every aspect.

Recognize every site demands a customized approach

Every site has unique topography and engineering challenges. The market is always different. Learn to adapt to the context and attempt to understand the market. Highlight and incorporate natural environments into the master plan.

Planning

Ensure senior team engagement with stakeholders and communities

Master-planned communities significantly impact the city. It is human nature to resist change. That is why the NIMBYism movement against development exists. Therefore, excellent relationships with public entities and surrounding stakeholders are paramount to minimize unforeseen setbacks.

Trust is earned by making and delivering on promises

Build what you say you will build and work to exceed stakeholders’ expectations. The job of a Master Developer is selling a vision, securing funding, and making it happen. Rinse and repeat.

Cut through jargon and complexity – explain, illustrate and guide

It is hard to transmit the idea of an unbuilt vision. Make sure to develop clear communication skills and invest in graphic materials, like renders, of what you will achieve. Make sure to align the design and construction with the marketing material.

With a 20-year consent – build in flexibility from the outset as things will change

The needs of the market change with time, and master plans must evolve to capitalize on those changes. That is to say you don’t need to have the last phase designed in detail from the beginning. Create space to incorporate lessons learned into future phases.

Delivery

De-risk issues at the earliest opportunity

Recognize all possible risks and have a strategy to mitigate them. For example:

  • Lower market risk by attracting anchor tenants like universities, schools, and town centers.
  • Lower finance risk by conducting feasibility studies, buying land at the right price, having wealthy shareholders, excellent relationships with banks, and having long-term financing.
  • Lower construction risk by hiring outstanding engineering designers, general contractors, and third-party inspectors.
  • Lower product risk by conducting market studies and understanding your customer.
Assume responsibility for the delivery of infrastructure to maintain momentum

The project should always be moving forward. Master-planned communities behave like a snowball rolling downhill; they start slow and small, but as you move forward, it moves faster and bigger. To clarify, more infrastructure and residents increase the market size for potential new businesses, thus increasing the value of the project and creating a virtuous cycle.

Work at scale to create efficiency

The headache and management costs of building a 1-kilometer road are almost the same as building 5 kilometers. As a result, you should build the most you can while maintaining a healthy percentage of sales (>40%) and keeping your debt in check.

Establish multiple points of sale to enhance absorption

Experiment with various markets to understand what works and double down on those who do. Make sure to understand which price points can have high absorption and differentiate your product. Experiment with age groups, price points, and interests.

Homes

Keep control by not selling off large parcels

Selling large parcels might make you lose control and put the vision at risk. All pieces of land must follow the code and add value to the project. The job of the Master Developer is to build out the vision from start to finish.

Package land consistently across phases and sites

Master-planned communities must be thought of as an assembly line. When building one phase, you must plan and sell the next one. Designing, financing, and building is a continuous endeavor. Build a constant supply of residences to keep the ball moving forward.

Create a level playing field for all sizes of housebuilders to compete

Help everyone involved in the project make money. This creates a virtuous cycle of repeat customers because they reinvest in the project. Especially help homebuilders. Their success is your success, and their failure is your failure. The Master Developer must orchestrate homebuilders, so they must enact equal rules and allow fair competition.

Be prepared to self-deliver the more difficult plots to maintain quality and values

There are always hard lots or residences to sell in every project. Not all properties can have the best views and locations. Acquire the skills to develop those lots.

Quality

Establish a quality benchmark from the start

The first project in the master-planned community sets the standard for the rest of the project. Make sure to control it and do the best job possible. This is a high leverage move.

Use planning, contracts, and the example of self-delivery to maintain standards

Develop a code to maintain the vision and build the first project according to it. Make sure to include the code in the purchase agreement contract.

Ensure your team cares about the details

The heart of the customer is in the details. Become customer-centric and ensure everything you build is functional, feasible, and beautiful. Architecture must get inspiration from local, vernacular architecture and respond to the climate. Public spaces and street trees must be exceptionally well thought out.

You don’t need to spend more; you need to spend it smarter

Some solutions might cost the same, but one is much more beautiful and aspiring. One example is brick roads vs. concrete roads. A misconception is that brick road are more expensive, but they might be cheaper depending on the market, materials chosen, and labor costs. Another example is to provide spaces early on for basic needs like convenience stores, access to urgent care, and education. These services offer outsized values to residents with marginal investment.

Funding

Patient, experienced capital, is required

Master-planned communities are often intergenerational endeavors. Investment returns might take more time to materialize than usual real estate development projects. Raise funds from investors with know-how who can provide advice and resources.

Investment needs to be aligned with a commitment to quality

Invest in great architects to generate great designs, especially the master plan. Invest in materials that stand the test of time, and that can be easily maintained. One example is investing in street trees; time makes those streets look better.

Actively use public funds to accelerate delivery

Use the financial markets to increase your leverage and build faster the master-planned community. Raising public funds creates more ambassadors and alignment with the community.

Maintain delivery throughout economic cycles

Master-planned communities are multi-decade ventures; therefore, they are bound to experience bearish economic cycles. Plan for them and make sure to keep the momentum strong.


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What is a Master Planned Community?


Master Planned Communities (MPCs) are urban-scale, mixed-use real estate developments where residents live, work, and play. They are built on undeveloped land, called greenfield development. MPCs are frequently located strategically on the edge of a city with strong projected urban growth. They are self-contained towns with clear boundaries, built for convenience, aiming to satisfy all needs within the community. You can think of them as the real-life version of Sim City.

MPCs usually have more than 1,000 residences and 247 acres (100 hectares); these numbers can be much more significant. Common amenities include cultural centers, golf courses, medical centers, parks, playgrounds, public spaces, restaurants, schools, sports facilities, temples, tennis courts, town centers, universities, walking trails, and more.

Private real estate developers typically develop master planned communities, in this case, called Master Developers. Master Developers must have the skills to craft a vision and coordinate a wide variety of real estate-related professionals that can help the project come to fruition.

Master Developers develop the infrastructure and public spaces. Using industry terms, they build everything “horizontally”; which includes basic infrastructure systems like sewage, stormwater, water, electricity, telecommunications, and roads. Master Developers sometimes decide to construct buildings or develop “vertically.”

The MPC standard business model is that the Master Developer buys a big plot of land, subdivides it; builds infrastructure and amenities; and sells land to anchor tenants like schools or universities. Some Master Developers choose a decentralized model where they sell to homebuilders to develop neighborhoods and commercial developers to build restaurants, shopping centers, etc. Others prefer a centralized model and align vertically to build residential and commercial buildings.

MPCs start by designing a Master Plan. Then it is built in phases throughout a multi-decade time horizon. They usually have a unified architectural vision encoded in the Architecture Code. All lots and buildings must be built according to it.

MPCs include a wide diversity of land uses, lot sizes, housing, and prices designed to attract multiple market segments. MPCs typically have private governance, such as a Homeowners Association, to regulate the relationship between owners, maintain public spaces, and enforce the vision.

Common marketing characteristics include great infrastructure, planned urbanism, housing for all age groups, a sense of community, a connection to nature, an active lifestyle, a healthy way of living, and convenience.

More often than not, urban development patterns are suburban and exclusively car-oriented. However, the New Urbanism movement has influenced MPCs making them more urban and walkable.

MPCs can grow very big and complex. Their evolution usually starts with a few residences, then to neighborhoods, then to a town, and then to a city. Company towns are prime examples of master planned communities.

Entrepreneurs who want to build ambitious Startup Cities can learn a lot from studying patterns of master planned communities and their Master Developers.

10 examples of Master Planned Communities

Cayalá

Celebration

City of Irvine

Las Catalinas

Porta Norte

  • Website: www.portanorte.com
  • Concept: Solarpunk new urbanist town inspired by Casco Viejo and designed by Andres Duany.
  • Location: Panama City, Panama

Poundbury

Seaside

Serenbe

The Villages

The Woodlands


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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.


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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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