During the 2012 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting, Warren Buffett discussed what he would have done differently if he had the chance to start over. Here’s an excerpt from the meeting:
WARREN BUFFETT: Oh, I think you have all kinds of opportunities.
I would probably do very much what I have done in life, except I’d do it — I’d try and do it a little earlier, and I would have tried to be a little bit better when I was running a partnership, in terms of aggregating the money faster.
I used to work with $5,000 contributions from partners and, you know, I would try to develop an audited record of performance as early as I could.
I would try to attract some money, and then when I’d build up a fair amount of money out of investing, I would try to get into something much more interesting, which would be buying businesses to keep.
You mentioned private equity, which very often is buying businesses to sell. I don’t want to be buying and selling businesses. I mean, if I establish relationships with people that come to me with their business, and they want to join Berkshire, I want it to be for keeps.
And that’s been enormously satisfying. But it takes some capital to get into that business, and I didn’t have any capital when I started out, so I built it through managing money for myself and other people, combined.
And like I say, I would get us through that process as fast as I could and then into a game where I could buy businesses of significance and interest to me. And I’d spend the rest of my life doing it, just as I’ve done.
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