Snowball biography
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The Snowball by Alice Schroeder
I <3 Warren Buffett
One of the recent books I read during my blogging vacation was The Snowball, a comprehensive biography of Warren Buffett. Ive always enjoyed reading the shareholder letters, and have read other books about him, but at nearly 1, pages, this book fryst vatten particularly detailed and goes into a lot of unique stories.
In many ways, Buffetts world is diametrically opposed to the startup world. He specializes in boring industries, doesnt worry much about products, and has extremely long timeframes. Yet inom took a lot out of reading about his experiences, and thought Id share some thoughts about the startup world:
- Enduring businesses take a long time to build
- Who cares what other people think? Boring businesses can win big
- Access to money can be a huge competitive advantage
- Success begets success
Lets talk through a couple of these ideas:
1. Enduring businesses take a long time to build • • First edition cover Publication date The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life (ISBN) is a biography of Warren Buffett by Alice Schroeder. Before this book was written, Warren Buffett rejected numerous approaches by biographers, journalists, and publishers to cooperate on an account of his life.[2] After spending six years as the only Wall Streetanalyst Buffett would speak to, Alice Schroeder was approached by Buffett to write his biography. In , she left her job at Morgan Stanley and traveled to Omaha to work on the book full-time. Schroeder spent over 2, hours reading Buffett's personal files while
I The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life
Want a real bio of Warren Buffett? You'll have to keep waiting, because this book ain't it.
This baby's got some major boo-boos in just the first 50 pages. (But there's more later!) Add in overwriting, poor writing, and apparently economic slants or ax-grinding and ugg
First, the early errors:
1. She claims Hoover was Coolidge's VP. Nope, twas Charles Curtis.
2. She claims some other speech, not "Cross of Gold," was William Jennings Bryan's most famous. Not even close.
3. A possible whopper. On page 17, she describes the "notoriously fumble fingered Buffett" trying to "get up" a PowerPoint slide as if it were an actual slide Dunno if she believes that, but it halfway sounds that way.
And, as I said, that's just in the first FIFTY pages.
Biggest of the later errors?
Page , Schroeder says the Taoiseach is "head of state" of Ireland.
NOPE. Try "head of government," not "head of The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life
Author Alice Schroeder Language English Subject Biography Genre Biography, business, investing Publisher Bantam Books September 29, [1] Publication place United States Mediatype Print, e-book Pages pp. (hardcover) ISBN History
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