He lands at 4:40. I have until 4:40.
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You have to understand the pressure I was under. For years the Berkshire Hathaway cash pile just sat there, $340 billion, breathing quietly in the corner like an old dog nobody wanted to be the one to put down. Every quarter somebody would say the word “discipline” and everyone would nod and go get a steak. Then they hand me the keys, the man goes out of town, and I’m supposed to be disciplined? In this economy? With that much money in the room?
I started small. I bought a railroad we already owned, just to see if anyone would stop me. Nobody stopped me. So I bought a second one, a bad one, a railroad that mostly hauls gravel between two towns that hate each other. Forty billion. Gone. My hands were shaking so hard I had to use voice-to-text on the wire instructions.
After that it got easier. I acquired a company whose entire product is an AI that reads your emails and tells you they seem fine. I bought all of the pickleball. Not a league — the sport. I own the rules now. I purchased naming rights to a hurricane season, seventy-one ghost kitchens in Phoenix operating out of one dumpster-adjacent Sbarro, and a controlling stake in a wellness brand that sells mushroom coffee to men who are, medically speaking, already awake.
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There was a moment around lunch where I felt something like clarity. I had $12 billion left and I thought: put it back. Just put it back and say the market was choppy. Then a guy from a family office called and offered me a Series A in a startup that puts protein in water, and reader, the water already had protein in it. It was seeded from a lake. I wrote the check standing up.
Do I think this was value investing? I think value is a feeling and I felt it fourteen times today. I think a wonderful business at a fair price is nothing compared to a mediocre business at 4:15 p.m. on a Thursday when the man who built the whole thing is somewhere over Nebraska with the shades down.
The cash pile is at $180,000 now, which is roughly the balance of a decent orthodontist. I’ve asked the interns to hold the elevator. I’ve had the annual letter rewritten in a font that suggests confidence. I have practiced saying “we deployed” in a voice that does not go up at the end.
Somebody is pulling into the lot downstairs. It’s 4:38.
The lights are off. I’m sitting very still. Maybe he goes to bed.