Warren Edward Buffett was born August 30, 1930, in Omaha, Nebraska. His father was a local stockbroker. Buffett was always fascinated by numbers and at the age 8, he began reading his father’s stock books. At age 11, he marked the board at the brokerage house where his father worked. From that age, Buffett began to think in a very entrepreneurial way. In fact, Buffett did not want to go to college, instead he wanted to go directly into business. His father convince the young Buffett to attend the University of Nebraska where Warren Buffett would end up reading a book that would change his life, our lives and investing as we know it. This book is the still famous Intelligent Investor by legendary investor Benjamin Graham. Buffett was so intrigued by his writings that he applied to receive his MBA in economics at Columbia University in New York where Benjamin was teaching. Some people who were in the class in which Graham was teaching and which Buffett was a student, described the classes as a conversation between Buffett and Graham with the rest being an audience. Eventually, Buffett was asked to join Graham’s company, the Graham-Newman Corporation. After two years, the company disbanded. Buffett went back to Nebraska.
Upon return to Nebraska, Buffett had only $100 of his own money to invest. He was able to convince six investors to put in a total of $100,000 and, in time, Buffett would make billions. Now, many people see him as a stock picker. Warren Buffett is not a stock-picker in the traditional sense. Instead, he is the type of person who goes into a company and makes it better through fresh, innovative ideas which are entrepreneurial and make money. That is why Warren Buffett buys so much stock in one company like he did in Geico, he can step in and make them better. Most people think of entrepreneurship as just starting a small business and hoping it does well. Warren Buffett’s version is just on a much more grand scale. If Buffett did not have an entrepreneurial spirit, Berkshire Hathaway would have never been.
Warren Buffet is known as one of the best, if not the best investor of our time. Though, if you look a little closer at his ventures, they are quite entrepreneurial.
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