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I think that a life properly lived is a is just learn learn all the time. And I think Bergkshire has gained enormously from these investment decisions by learning through a long long period. Every time you appoint a new person that's never had big capital allocation experience, it's like rolling the dice.
And I think we're way better off having done it so long and and but the decisions blend and the one feature that comes through is the continuous learning. If we had not kept learning, you wouldn't even be here. You'd be alive probably, but not here. There's nothing like the pain of being in a lousy business to make you appreciate a good one.
Well, there's nothing like getting into a really good one. That's a very pleasant experience and it's a learning experience. I have a friend who says the first rule of fishing is to fish where the fish are and the second rule of fishing is to never forget the first rule. And and we've gotten good at fishing where the fish are.
Yeah, that's only metaphorically. I went I went to fish with Charlie. Too many other boats in the damn water. But [clears throat] but the fish are still there. Yeah, we we bought a department store in Baltimore 1966. And there's really nothing like being in the experience of trying to decide whether you're going to put a a new store in a area that hasn't really developed yet enough to support it, but your competitor may move there first and then you have the decision of whether to jump in.
And if you jump in, that kind of spoils it. Now you got two stores where even one store isn't quite justified. uh how to play those games, those business games, uh is you you learn a lot by trying and and what you really learn is which ones to avoid. I mean, if you just stay out of a bunch of terrible businesses, you're off to a very great start as far because we we've tried them all.
But you can really learn because the experience is a little like eating cockle burgers and it really gets your attention. Well, we won't expand on that. Uh, [clears throat] Andrew Ross Sorin. Good morning, Warren. Uh, this question comes from a longtime shareholder who I should tell you accosted me last night in the lobby of the Hilton Hotel with this question.
Warren, for years, you stayed away from technology companies, saying they were too hard to predict and didn't have moes. Then you seemed to change your view about technology when you invested in IBM and again when you recently invested in Apple. But then on Friday, you said IBM had not met your expectations and sold a third of our stake.
Do you view IBM and Apple differently? And what have you learned about investing in technology companies? Well, I do view them differently, but you know, obviously when I bought the IBM, started buying it six years ago, I thought it would do better in the six years that have elapsed than uh it has. and [clears throat] uh Apple I I I regard them as being quite different business.
I I I think Apple was much more of a consumer products business in terms of the in in in terms of sort of analyzing uh modes around it and consumer behavior and all that sort of thing. It's obviously a a product with all kinds of tech built into it. But in terms of laying out what their prospective customers will do in the future as opposed to say on IBM's customers, it's a different sort of analysis.
That doesn't mean it's correct and we'll find out over time, but they are two different types of decisions and and and uh I was wrong on the first one and we'll find out whether I'm right or wrong on this on the second. But I don't I do not regard them as uh apples and apples and I don't quite regard them as apples and oranges, but there it's somewhat in between on that.
Charlie, well, we avoided the tech stocks because we felt we had no advantage there and other people did and I think that's a good idea not to play where the other people are better. But you know, if you ask me in retrospect, what was our worst mistake in the tech field? I think we were smart enough to figure out Google.
Those ads work so much better in the early days than anything else. So, I would say that that we failed you there and we were smart enough to do it and didn't do it. We do that all the time, too. Yeah, we were their customer very early on with with Geico, for example, and we saw I don't these figures are way out of date, but I as I remember, you know, we were paying them 10 or $11 a click or something like that.
And anytime you're paying somebody 10 or 11 bucks every time somebody just punches a little thing where you got no cost at all, uh you know that that's a good business unless somebody's going to take it away from you. And uh so we were close up uh seeing [snorts] the impact of that. And incidentally, if any of you don't have anything to do in your hotel rooms tonight, just just keep punching progressive or something and you don't really do that.
The thought just happened across my mind. But you know that is you know you've never seen a business almost never seen a business like it where and and I think for lasic surgery and things like that I I think the figures were you know 60 or 70 bucks a click with no incremental no cost. So and I knew the guys I mean they actually designed their prospectus.
They came to see me and they a little bit after the original one when they went public a little bit after Bergkshire even. So I I had plenty of ways to ask questions or anything of the sort, educate myself, but but I blew it. Uh and uh we blew we blew Walmart, too. [clears throat] When when it was a total cinch, we were smart enough to figure that out and we didn't.
Yeah. Yeah. Figuring out execution is what counts. So anyway, well, and I could be making two mistakes on IBM. I mean the the you know the it's harder to predict in my view uh the winners in various items or how much price competition will enter in uh to something like cloud services and all that it I will I made a statement the other day which it's really remarkable and I was asked Charlie whether he could think of a situation like it where one person has uh built an extraordinary economic machine in two really pretty different industries, you know, almost simultaneously as has happened
from a standing start at zero from a standing start at zero with other with competitors with lots of capital and everything else to do it in retailing and to do it with a cloud like Jeff Bezos has done. I mean I I I I mean people like the melons invested in a lot of different industries and all of that but he has been in the in effect the CEO simultaneously of two businesses starting from scratch.
Uh that if you know Andy Grove used to use at Intel used to say you know think about if you had a silver bullet and you could shoot it and get [clears throat] rid of one of your competitors who would it be? Well, I think that both in the cloud and in retail, there are a lot of people that would aim that silver bullet at Jeff and he's done a it's a different sort of game, but he's, you know, at the Washington Post, he's played that hand as as well as anybody I think possibly could.
So it's it's a remarkable business achievement where he's been involved actually in the execution not just bankrolling it of of two businesses that are are probably as feared by their competitors almost uh uh as any you can find. It's Charlie you got further thoughts. Well, we're sort of like the melons, old-fashioned people who've done all right, and Jeff Bezos is a different species. And we missed it entirely. Incidentally, we never owned a share of Amazon.
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