I bought a company in the mid-'90s called Dexter Shoe and paid $400 million for it. And it went to zero. And I gave about $400 million worth of Berkshire stock, which is probably now worth $400 billion. But I've made lots of dumb decisions. That's pa...
I could count my modeling jobs on my hands and toes. When I graduated from college, I moved to New York specifically to study acting, and I needed to pay the bills, and it's better to make a couple thousand dollars in one day than to wait tables six ...
Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it’s true. If you hire somebody without [i...
If you're one of the fortunate few on this Earth with a pass to enter the gates of Augusta National on Masters Sunday, you don't leave early. You just don't. If it's a Masters Sunday when Tiger Woods is near the top of the leader board, you really do...
Kanye is going to have to decide early whether or not he's a Baby Bjorn guy, because the minute you put on that Baby Bjorn, there's no turning back. It's like buying a minivan. You lose a little piece of yourself when you get that Baby Bjorn.
People are different. People choose different criteria. But if there is a better way among many alternatives, I want to encourage that way by making it comfortable. So that's what I've tried to do.
Story was that human civilization started to develop with first social network. Emerged where population concentration was high. Helped propel to where we are now. Facebook is next step of creating a huge human brain to embrace hundreds of million, p...
The problem is that modern fundamental physics is so far from you and me. The mathematics has become so much more complicated that you need at least 10 years to understand it. Fundamental physics has advanced so far from the understanding of most peo...
We have never considered our brand superior or inferior to any other one, and we have never spoken about our work in comparison to anyone else's. We are ourselves; we have never had the presumption to please everyone, but we believe in the utmost lib...
I regret the 1998 - 99 lockout. I regret that we didn't work harder to educate our players and our owners about what the damage would be. I never can quite come up with the answer on what else we should have done, but I always blame a part of the pro...
I would say, as an entrepreneur everything you do - every action you take in product development, in marketing, every conversation you have, everything you do - is an experiment. If you can conceptualize your work not as building features, not as lau...
Every day I get to 'Think' and work on everything from digitizing electric grids so they can accommodate renewable energy and enable mass adoption of electric cars, helping major cities reduce congestion and pollution, to developing new micro-finance...
The general manager is kind of like the step into darkness when you reach the top of the league. As GM, you're responsible for everything, including the maitre d's and the sommeliers - all these people who have their own agendas. But you probably mak...
I developed acne when I was about 19, at the beginning of my modeling career. I didn't have the huge cystic-type of acne, but a lot of little bumps all over my face. They were small, but you could see them in photographs. You can't have acned skin an...
Hire people who are smarter than you, and don't be afraid to work with them as partners. Make it clear that you plan to learn from them, not just the other way around. The right, smart, motivated people respond very well to that approach, particularl...
I am not surprised that this is a longer bit of work than many of us would have hoped. It is not where any of us would have hoped it is. And I think we need to give credit to the Republicans in Congress who have done everything they can to defeat eve...
Every bad joke, every endorsement deal, all of the things that a typical host would normally get creamed for, people don't mind, because they know I don't cheat when it comes to the work I actually try. I'm a lab rat. I'm a perpetual apprentice. The ...
My mum brought me to my first job when I was 12. I started electrical work at her plant. She was an engineer, a technical expert, at one of the plants in the south, and in the summer she brought me in and I learnt how industrial things work: casting,...
Square is turning informal, cash transactions, like you would do with a taco truck, into card swipes. Stripe is more for the Internet, it's focused on the kinds of transactions that weren't possible years ago. We think about how you would buy things ...
From Clara Barton's tireless work founding the American Red Cross to the first female Medal of Honor winner, Dr. Mary Walker, to our first female combat fighter pilot Lt. Kara Hultgreen, no list of American heroes is complete without the names of som...
I faced a number of challenges whilst I built Biocon. Initially, I had credibility challenges where I couldn't get banks to fund me; I couldn't recruit people to work for a woman boss. Even in the businesses where I had to procure raw materials, they...
