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Homepage of Berkshire Hathaway, 17th biggest company in the world
- hop 17y agoHave to love Warren Buffett's frugality.
- wgj 17y agoAgreed. Success is demonstrated in knowing exactly what you want to achieve with something and sticking to it.
- jakarta 17y agothere'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 17y agoSnowball was great, there will ever be another Buffett.
- hyperbovine 17y agoI don't think it's anything to do with being frugal. Buffet said many times during the dot-com boom that he wouldn't touch a tech stock with a 10 ft. pole owing to the fact that he had no clue what any of them did. When the bubble burst he had one of his best years ever by investing in brick and paint companies, IIRC. So, it's not that he won't spring for a post-1992 web site because he's cheap. It's because he couldn't care less about the internet. He doesn't even have a computer. In a way I'm shocked that berkshirehathaway.com even exists. I assume they bought it to keep some idiot from hocking Viagra under that name. To me, the world's richest man completely ignoring something to which many of us here devote our lives is a great reminder of the whole other physical world out there which will always be equally, if not more, as important as tech. Microblogging, blah blah will come and go, but people will always need to build brick walls and paint them.
- flipbrad 17y agoIt's not really frugality - think how many HN users would redesign the page (even just to fix the broken tags!) for free!
- ebrenes 17y agoJust because the developer is offering his services free of charge doesn't mean it's free to the company receiving said services. Just one meeting with Warren Buffet to approve the website redesign would be the equivalent of thousands of dollars (people pay in the hundreds of thousands for lunch with him). Additional disruptions in the already small corporate office would incur additional costs.
- stanleydrew 17y agoIf 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...
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- easyfrag 17y agoI 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.
- goodkarma 17y agoTheir 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 17y agoHe uses a computer to play bridge...but that's about it.
- pbhjpbhj 17y agoI 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; ...
- blhack 17y agoA good friend of mine is the same way. He is a brilliant brilliant investor worth many many many times what I will likely ever make in my lifetime, yet his office consists of a desk, 1 other employee (his accountant), and a computer from the 90s that he uses to play solitaire. I offered to get him a new one, but he declined because the one he has does everything he needs. My first reaction was horror, but after having thought about it a while, it makes sense. The guy has been doing this since before I was ever a thought in my parents head, and he is very successful, why change?
- vaksel 17y agoI think the funniest thing is that they have a Geico affiliate link on their front page
- CapitalistCartr 17y agoThey own Geico.
- aaronsw 17y agoI didn't know this, but "GEICO is an indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc." As are a surprising number of others: http://www.geico.com/about/corporate/corporate-ownership/ http://www.geico.com/about/corporate/corporate-ownership/
- chrischen 17y agoAlso the letter from Warren Buffet says I can save money if I switch to Geico.
- tptacek 17y agoI think the funniest thing is that you called a link to GEICO from Berkshire an "affiliate link".
- vaksel 17y agoit's http://www.geico.com/geicobrk.htm http://www.geico.com/geicobrk.htm so there is probably some tracking involved
- zandorg 17y agoI like how the (c) is from 1978!
- quizbiz 17y agoHis website couldn't have possibly exhausted then... (?)
- byrneseyeview 17y agoThe content dates back to that time. Check the Chairman's Letters and Annual Reports.
- jrockway 17y agoIf the rest of the web was like this, my web browser wouldn't need 600M of RAM or weekly security updates.
- kyro 17y agoWell, 640K ought to be enough for anybody really.
- allenbrunson 17y ago... except bill never said that. this is a false meme that really, really needs to die. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Gates http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Gates "I've said some stupid things and some wrong things, but not that. No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time."
- dpcan 17y agoI didn't even think of the meme. Personally, I thought of Norm. You don't know Norm, but he's the guy who sold my family our first 386 with a 40MB hard drive and said it was more than we'd ever use. He also sold me a copy of Sim Earth and said it was the best game ever made. The bastard.
- malkia 17y agoHe didn't say Bill. Or it might've been someone with the same name as The Bill Gates. And 640K is enough for everyone, at least it was enough 30 years ago :)
- allenbrunson 17y agothe 640k barrier was a major pain in my butt for almost a decade. first we had expanded memory, then extended memory, both of which could only be used by some programs. then there were add-ons like qemm, which could remap physical ram into unused areas of the 384k add-on space. for a long time there, computers that had more unused rom space than others were more valuable to people like me who ran a bunch of memory-hungry apps. what a nightmare! i should have gotten on the unix bandwagon from the beginning. at the time i just didn't know any better.
- staunch 17y ago<meta name="Template" content="C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\html.dot">
- borism 17y agoWell, 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 17y ago> 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.
- NathanKP 17y agoI found: <META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Adobe PageMill 2.0 Win"> Edit: According to Wikipedia that dates back to 1997: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_PageMill http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_PageMill At the time one review of Adobe PageMill 2.0 said that it "adds more features than I have fingers and toes… PageMill with its tables, frames, graphics, and support for form interfaces, makes it easy to lay out a page"
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- evansolomon 17y agoTry following the link to "Charlie Munger's Letters to Wesco Shareholders."
- hop 17y agoLooks 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...
- JimmyL 17y agoI'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.
- hop 17y agoSure right about his thought process and his disinterest of allocating capital to a snazzy website. BRK.B is a little more accessible at 1/30th the price of A shares, $3283 now. In his book Snowball, he talks about the waste of money to do share splits.
- gry 17y agoIn 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.
- clistctrl 17y agoMy 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 17y agoNot bad... but how the story ends? Did he ever take those paper profits? BRK haven't been stellar performer lately.
- sfnhltb 17y agoFrom 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.
- Shooter 17y agoI 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 17y agoWell...you could forge your user agent string in firefox :). here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59 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).
- suhail 17y agocaches well.
- tptacek 17y agoUh, 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 17y agoThere 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.
- stanleydrew 17y agoIn a web-application form and function blur together, especially when what you're offering isn't exactly rocket science.
- dzlobin 17y agoI 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 17y agoWhich 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.
- mechanical_fish 17y agoI love it, except... align = center? Must we? I guess everyone has their pet peeves...
- hop 17y ago"linking to this website without written permission is prohibited." - http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/disclaimer.html http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/disclaimer.html
- jrockway 17y agoReading 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 17y agoI don't think that's an example of passive voice.
- dc2k08 17y agoThis legalese seems to be common: http://www.google.com/search?q=linking+to+this+website+without+written+permission+is+prohibited&pws=0&gl=US http://www.google.com/search?q=linking+to+this+website+witho...
- voidpointer 17y agoWhat are these people thinking? Some of them put language there like "please read these terms and conditions carefully before using this web site...". How detached from reality can you become? If they find themselves in a lawsuit and want to argue that the other party should have read the T&C. Wouldn't any court throw out that argument immediately because there is now way to expect a normal person to read some terms and conditions linked in a footer of a webpage before reading/using it?
- pyre 17y agoIt's a way to cover their asses. "We put it in the Terms & Conditions! It was just that stupid judge that wouldn't let us exercise them!"
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- joeycfan 17y agoThis 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 17y agoI 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!
- hop 17y agoI might not say tremendously because GE and GS came to him in desperation looking for capital. Buffet probably would have done bigger deals with even better terms if they didn't get any bailout money. But his much bigger holdings in Wells Fargo sure benefited! GS especially was buying Buffett's credibility more so than they needed a cash infusion in the wake of the financial meltdown.
- joeycfan 17y agoYes but... He's like a very good baseball fielder who moves to where the ball will be. It's not his doing that the govt. is doing all this bailout crap. He just positioned himself under the rain of money. He got rich BEFORE it, remember that.
- gaius 17y agoGS 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 17y agoTrue. 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...
- Sthorpe 17y agoI 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 17y agoYes yes yes. Anything more than necessary is too much.
- jagjit 17y agoThe 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.
- jeromec 17y agoDid 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.
- eli 17y agoShrug The site isn't for you.
- bbsabelli 17y agohttp://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.berkshirehathaway.com http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.berkshire...
- Tichy 17y agoNot sure what I am supposed to learn from that.
- cpach 17y agoMaybe 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 :)
- babul 17y agoThe BBC had a documentary on Warren Buffet last week that is worth watching http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00nn7vs/The_Worlds_Greatest_Money_Maker_Evan_Davis_meets_Warren_Buffett/ http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00nn7vs/The_Worlds_Gre... (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 17y agoThis 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.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- NathanKP 17y agoThat plaintext site is PR 6 of 10, so apparently Google likes it.
- kloncks 17y agoWow, 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.
- wrinklz 17y agoIt'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.
- wrinklz 17y agoYeah, 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.