
Homepage of Berkshire Hathaway, 17th biggest company in the world - hop
http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/
======
JimmyL
I'd assume that Buffet's thought process - correct in my opinion - is that
having a fancy website won't get him anything, and will only cost him money to
create and maintain.

Unlike most companies, Warren Buffet doesn't care if you buy his stock. The
last close of BRK.A is at $99,000 and has an average volume of about 800 -
meaning that if you hold that stock, you're almost certainly an institutional
investor who's in it for the long run, and who know perfectly well what the
company is like. For similar reasons, he doesn't need to project any images of
modernity or customer-friendliness, if for no other reason than BRK has no
real customers.

Most companies make fancy web pages to appeal to customers and inform them, to
project a positive image for investors, or to provide a service. All
Berkshire's web page is there for is to distribute some documents, most of
which are updated annually or so. Hence no need for something fancy.

While you're there, have a read of the Owner's Manual and one of the annual
reports, which are written as if you're friends with Warren Buffet and he's
having a casual conversation with you about how business is going. He tells
stories, he talks about individuals who have done well this year - but by the
end you have a very good idea about how the company is doing, and you've
probably learned something about finance (I don't have any shares in the
company and I always read them). Also funny is the descriptions of the BRK
annual meetings - known as _Woodstock for Capitalists_ - and the associated
sales events from all the Berkshire companies.

~~~
gry
In addition, Buffet likes consumer monopolies -- brands people recognize with
a product or service. GEICO and Dairy Queen, Orange Julius, The Pampered Chef
-- all recognizable brands and ones people don't associate with BH. This is a
good thing. To make Berkshire Hathaway the center of attention dilutes a
consumer monopoly.

When holding companies take it on as a strategy, it's a flash in the pan. Yum!
Brands' (KFC, Pizza Hut, Long John Silver's) Kentucky Derby sponsorship is a
great example.

I'm not going to Pizza Hut to be Yum!'s patron. I'm going there for pizza and
I don't like Domino's.

Likewise, I'm not going to Dairy Queen because I like Berkshire Hathaway.

Berkshire Hathaway has no business building a consumer brand. And yet
Berkshire's consumer brand is Warren Buffet.

~~~
adammichaelc
Why did this get down-voted? It makes a good point, & one that is well known
among followers of Buffet's trading philosophy; namely the bit about Berkshire
investing in consumer monopolies or well-known brands. Buffet took this
philosophy from Graham, the author of the Intelligent Investor.

~~~
eru
Yes. Though he heavily modified Graham's methods.

------
hop
"linking to this website without written permission is prohibited." -
<http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/disclaimer.html>

~~~
jrockway
Reading this text without written permission is prohibited.

(What I mean to say is that the word "prohibited" has no meaning. The use of
the passive voice does not make something a legal requirement.)

~~~
kevindication
I don't think that's an example of passive voice.

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jrockway
If the rest of the web was like this, my web browser wouldn't need 600M of RAM
or weekly security updates.

~~~
stanleydrew
And you would never use it for anything besides reading documents.

~~~
borism
Yeah, there was no eBay, no Amazon, no Excite, no Hotmail, no Viaweb etc.
before Web 2.0 came.

~~~
potatolicious
I work for one of the above - you have no idea how much functionality we
wouldn't be able to have (or at least wouldn't be reasonably easy to use)
without "Web 2.0".

~~~
borism
I work in subsidiary of one of the above too. I do have some idea what kind of
functionality you couldn't have, the question is how much money would your
company not get if this functionality was missing ;)

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babul
The BBC had a documentary on Warren Buffet last week that is worth watching
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00nn7vs/The_Worlds_Gre...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00nn7vs/The_Worlds_Greatest_Money_Maker_Evan_Davis_meets_Warren_Buffett/)
(website is discussed at 00:32:37)

Berkshire Hathaway run a $150BN business with a staff of just twenty, and
Buffet often points out having a fancy website is not a priority as long as it
is functional.

In many ways their website is analogous to the likes of Google in providing
just enough to make it useful and not much more.

~~~
loganfrederick
This is a little deceiving. Berkshire Hathaway might run on only twenty, but
its holdings, both wholly and partially, total to much larger numbers of
staff.

It's still a pretty efficient and lightweight operation, but it's not an exact
20-people-to-$150-billion comparison.

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staunch
<meta name="Template" content="C:\Program Files\Microsoft
Office\Office\html.dot">

~~~
borism
Well, they're good friends with Gates (who's also on the Board and sometimes
touted as Buffet's successor). Bill probably installed that one himself :)

~~~
uriel
> and sometimes touted as Buffet's successor

Are you on crack?

There is lots of speculation regarding succession, but nobody has been
insane/stupid enough to suggest Gates as an option.

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tptacek
Uh, right. Now visit the page and click on "Borsheim's", which is the
furniture store Berkshire owns. Compare web designs.

Berkshire Hathaway spends a lot --- probably hundreds of thousands annually
--- on web design. They just don't use it for the Berkshire Hathaway corporate
site.

A single Berkshire B share costs over $3000. Nobody buys them on a whim. There
is zero business value spiffing up their web presence.

~~~
borism
_There is zero business value spiffing up their web presence._

Here, something a lot of start-ups can learn. True, they need good design more
than Berkshire, but it feels like form completely overtook function.

~~~
dzlobin
I dont know about 0, for startups. If I came to a page for a new service I
hadn't heard of and it looked like THAT, I'd instantly question it, hard.

~~~
tptacek
Which is why BRK's "retail" businesses (like Borsheims, or See's candy, or
Geico) or, hell, even the Fechheimer Brothers uniform company, all have top-
shelf web presences.

I get the sense that a lot of people commenting here don't really understand
how BRK works.

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jagjit
The page gives all the information they want to share. Adding fancy stuff or
Warren's pictures do not add any value. They follow similar philosophy at
Berkshire's world headquarters where they have just about 20 odd people and
Warren doesn't use a computer or even a calculator. World would be so
different if we all could get by with only stuff that adds value to our lives.

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Shooter
I actually like the simple site design, but I hate the fact that they expect
you to have IE if you want to order from their online store. I've tried
ordering a Berkshire Hathaway shirt as a gift multiple times, and have been
denied each time because I use Firefox and Safari. I will use the phone or
snail mail (or even carrier pigeon) before I install IE.

~~~
blhack
Well...you could forge your user agent string in firefox :).

here: <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59>

It isn't very polite, but neither is not letting you in.

(That said, I really doubt they care if you buy a shirt or not).

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hop
Have to love Warren Buffett's frugality.

~~~
jakarta
there's this funny bit in The Snowball, where Buffett suggests to his wife
that they let their daughter sleep in an old dresser drawer versus buying a
new crib.

~~~
hop
Snowball was great, there will ever be another Buffett.

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stanleydrew
_If you have any comments about our WEB page, you can either write us at the
address shown above..._

I wonder whether anybody actually does this...

~~~
easyfrag
I remember reading about someone who wrote letters and mailed them to
companies (sorry I have no link to offer). He found a better response from the
snail-mail variety and figured it the volume of written mail in a corporation
was so low that it reached decision-makers more often then email.

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NathanKP
That plaintext site is PR 6 of 10, so apparently Google likes it.

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zandorg
I like how the (c) is from 1978!

~~~
quizbiz
His website couldn't have possibly exhausted then... (?)

~~~
byrneseyeview
The content dates back to that time. Check the Chairman's Letters and Annual
Reports.

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Sthorpe
I have been thinking a lot about striping away all superfluous pixels and
limiting the area of function. Especially with the latest idea's of fast
development patterns and feedback loops. I am developing a strong
understanding of what we could consider a web foundation. Just as if we were
building a structure or a machine.

Every time I find websites like this, I immediately think its simple and
limited, yet efficient. But I do dislike this website. This company/website
doesn't align with my idea of a new communication tool. However, the latest
"web 2.0" site doesn't give me inspiration either. It is full of a bunch of
pretty lights and distracting content.

Some times I wonder if the web needs a paradigm shift. Starting to think we
are over engineering it when we should be focusing on specific function.

~~~
dan_the_welder
Yes yes yes.

Anything more than necessary is too much.

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goodkarma
Their website is functional and actually has quite a bit of content on it -
including many years worth of letters from Buffett to Berkshire shareholders.

I'm sure the site would be fancier if Warren Buffett actually used a computer
- but as far as I know he doesn't even have one in his office.

~~~
Shooter
He uses a computer to play bridge...but that's about it.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I bet he uses a general purpose computer for email, for keeping accounts,
etc., just by proxy. That is, he's rich enough that he has other people do the
input/output and report back to him.

Doesn't he have a cell-phone, probably a computer; use a PBX, a computer;
drive a car, a computer; ride in an elevator, a computer; ...

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evansolomon
Try following the link to "Charlie Munger's Letters to Wesco Shareholders."

~~~
hop
Looks like it got high-jacked. If you google Wesco Financial, its the first
result and its redirected too. I bet no one renewed the domain...

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bbsabelli
[http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.berkshire...](http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.berkshirehathaway.com)

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vaksel
I think the funniest thing is that they have a Geico affiliate link on their
front page

~~~
tptacek
I think the funniest thing is that you called a link to GEICO from Berkshire
an "affiliate link".

~~~
vaksel
it's <http://www.geico.com/geicobrk.htm> so there is probably some tracking
involved

~~~
tptacek
I'm pretty sure the marketing departments from "both" companies can get each
other's logs verbatim with a phone call.

------
suhail
caches well.

------
jeromec
Did anyone actually view the source on this? Besides deprecated Font tags
there are incorrectly nested tags and Div tags with nothing in them. He must
have literally asked the neighbor's junior high school kid if he'd put it
together for $15. Talk about being frugal.

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Tichy
Not sure what I am supposed to learn from that.

~~~
cpach
Maybe that if you're as brilliant an investor as Buffett (one of very few to
make it really big by investments) you don't need to care about having a
snazzy web site :)

~~~
Tichy
I'll try to remember that if I ever become a brilliant investor.

~~~
cpach
Be sure to remember who said it first ;-)

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mechanical_fish
I love it, except...

align = center?

Must we?

I guess everyone has their pet peeves...

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joeycfan
This is what capitalism is supposed to be about.

Profits, not mountains of debt. secure jobs, no govt. bailouts, etc. etc. old
school.

Buffet will be studied for generations to come.

~~~
borism
I agree that Buffet is an excellent (and rare?) example of Good Capitalism.

But Berkshire has tremendously benefited from bail-outs of it's holdings like
GE and GS!

~~~
gaius
GS had a deal with Buffett squared away before the Feds _ordered_ them to take
TARP money, which they repaid at 20% interest! It's unreasonable to lump them
it with the others.

~~~
padmapper
True. Too bad the media is on a witch hunt, and finds it convenient to gloss
over facts for the sake of generating indignation over Tax-Payer Funded
Bonuses Of Inconceivable Magnitude, so most people don't know this.

The GS employees I know are not happy about this...

~~~
gaius
They should include in their annual report "this year our corporate tax paid
for x nurses and income tax on our employees bonuses paid for y teachers".

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clistctrl
My coworker bought some BRK.B shares a few months ago, he was making hundreds
of dollars a day for a few weeks... I think he had 8 shares :)

~~~
borism
Not bad... but how the story ends? Did he ever take those paper profits?

BRK haven't been stellar performer lately.

~~~
sfnhltb
From Warren's own words, if you are looking at the price of an asset from day
to day, you aren't an investor - you are a speculator, and a speculator
generally shouldn't be interested in his company as his investment philosophy
is completely at odds with theirs. Obviously this statement applies just as
much to the person referred to in the comment you replied to as to your
comment.

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eli
_Shrug_

The site isn't for you.

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wrinklz
Yeah, right, and Warren Buffet hand writes his annual reports, which his
secretary mimeographs and sends by carrier pigeon to stockholders. Give me a
fucking break.

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wrinklz
It's a crappy website. The navigation sucks. It's a hodgepodge of inline and
external style sheets. Links to pdfs with no warnings of such. Sure he knows
how to invest money, but that doesn't mean his website isn't crap. It's just
to show how "frugal" he is. Sure I bet they spend more money on bottled water
on any given day than what they spent to produce this unmaintainable piece of
crap.

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kloncks
Wow, seriously?

I don't get how such popular websites (Drudge, Craigs) can be so
underdeveloped. It almost seems like they don't deserve their amount of
success.

~~~
sfg
I actually prefer BH's website to any corporate site I have seen. everything
is there, is easy to find and there are no pictures cluttering the screen.

