This is sort of strange (but great) because at least once at every single Berkshire Hathaway meeting someone asks Buffett and Munger what they're favorite books are, and I have never heard them mention this one. There is 20 years of in in-depth content about Buffett in books, articles, meetings, and interviews. "What's your fav book" must be one of the top 5 questions he gets and I've never heard about this book. This is great.
Buffett is an investor though right? Whereas Gates built a company. The two closely related but not the same? So it doesn't surprise me they turn to different books.
Investors usually recommend books on security analysis, which would hardly have been useful for Gates in the 90's.
Actually it's a little known fact that Buffet built a company too. Yes He did invest in other publicly traded companies, and he's also acquired quite a few too.
You can think of those as acquisitions. It's sort of a lesser known fact that he made the majority of his money in insurance. Before anyone else thought of it, Buffett developed a Homeostatic operation that collected insurance premiums and then invested that float in other companies who had a history of spinning off large amounts of free cash flow. He'd suck off that free cash flow and buy up more companies. All while keeping a larger and larger amount of free cash on hand in the event that he had to pay out any large claims.
This is all easier said than done because if you price your premiums wrong you can blow up the whole business. He priced his premiums conservatively and sold odd insurance in the back of newspapers and trade magazines, covering things and making policies that no one else dare take on.
There's a lot more gun slinging and pivoting in the Buffett story than you'd read about today. He raised cash manually from groups of Doctors in the 60's for his first investor partnership (he was 26). It was no different than a 26 year old kid going out today and raising cash for a startup. And incidentally, he delivered. There's one story in the excellent Alice Schroeder bio about him (http://goo.gl/nZGrIX) He was around 30 years old living in suburban Omaha. One afternoon he casually asks his next door neighbor if he's ever thought about how he'll pay for his children's college then goes into a sales pitch asking him for $10,000 (in the 60's). The neighbor declined. Can you imagine? He had hustle, and street smarts, and swagger. That's a businessman. In fact he's one of the best businessmen. Even Gates would tell you that.
Before anyone else thought of it, Buffett developed a Homeostatic operation that collected insurance premiums and then invested that float in other companies...
That's exactly what I mean. Buffett is famous & successful for being a finance wizard. They are both businessmen, of course, but different sorts. At least, so it seems to me.
