16 Nov 2009
I Wrote Something That’s Not Homework
A short recap of last Thursday’s town hall with Warren Buffett and Bill Gates for the Columbia Business School blog.
I was really impressed with 1) how quick on his feet and funny Buffett is and 2) how much energy both Buffett and Gates still have. It was both inspiring and encouraging.
Also, I was on CNBC for about .3 seconds.
My favorite quotes from the hour, from the unofficial transcript —
On motivation:
Buffett: So don’t be driven where you think the last dollar is presently or anything of that sort. And then also go to work, if possible, for an organization or an individual that you admire. I mean I offered to go to work for Ben Graham because there was nobody I admired more in the business than him. I didn’t care what he paid me. When he finally did hire me in 1954, I moved from Omaha to New York and I didn’t know what I was getting paid until I got my first paycheck. But I knew I wanted to work for Ben Graham. And I knew I would jump out of bed every morning and be excited about what I would do and I would go home at night smarter than I was in the morning. Go to work at a job that turns you on …
On luck/opportunity (see also Gladwell’s Outliers):
Gates: Well, I was lucky in many ways. I was lucky to be born with certain skills. I was lucky to have parents that created an environment where they shared what they were working on and let me buy as many books as I wanted to. And I was lucky in terms of the timing. The invention of the microprocessor was something profound. And it turned out only if you were kind of young and looking at that could you appreciate what it meant. And then I had been obsessed with writing software. It turned out that was the key missing thing that would allow the microprocessor to have this incredible impact. So in timing and skill set, in some of the people I was lucky enough to meet, you know, meeting Warren and talking to him, learning from him, it is unusual to have so much luck in one life, I think. But it’s been a major factor in what I have been able to do.
