3 ms·

Warren Buffett

• byrneseyeview 17y ago
  1) Doesn't use a ton of leverage, even considering the float. 2) Makes an excess return with or without float. 3) Made his initial money without using float. 4) Is a fairly unusual guy, which is why we've all heard of him.
• cperciva 17y ago
  Yes, but I'm not Warren Buffet. :-) A more useful comparison would be to Jeff Bezos: Even disregarding unearned income, tarsnap produces roughly 1.5 months of float due to AWS billing a credit card at the end of each month (0.5 months after usage, on average) which has a billing period ending 3 weeks later (0.75 months) and which has a long enough grace period that I can wait another week (0.25 months) before paying off the credit card bill. This "negative working capital" model is one of the reasons Amazon could grow so quickly in the early years -- and makes it very unlikely that I will ever need to raise capital to fund tarsnap's growth.