I'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.
They discussed his website on a recent BBC documentary (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nn7vs) at 00:32:37 (transcribed below). The whole documentary is certainly worth watching.
Davis:
"Berkshire Hathaway is a massive company which feels like a family firm.
All the usual corporate vanities are absent and not a cent is wasted. Take a
look at the Berkshire Hathaway website here. To call it low key would be to put it
kindly, it looks though it's from about 1994, no-frills. All the financial data
is here but they haven't even got around to even uploading a photo. And
that's all very much Warren Buffets style - why waste money on a designer.
Buffet insists his website does the job."
Buffet:
"I think it's what we are, I mean, it's factual."
Davis:
"You could put a little picture of something on there perhaps, or."
Buffet:
"I want people to get facts about Berkshire and, you know, I don't
really think it makes any difference what I look like."
---
Davis:
"Buffets idiosyncratic style is not just charming, it's a financial asset,
it saves time and money..."
In 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.
Sure 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.
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.
This 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.
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"
Well, 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 :)
Uh, 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.
The 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.
I 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.
I 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.
there'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.
I 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.
I 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.
Their 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.
A 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?
hehe, it does look like an affiliate link now that you mention it.
Logically, BRK should also link to Coke, American Express, and all the companies it holds share in/owns outright. Not only as advertising, but also to give them some google juice. It would look horrifically crassly commercial, of course.
Did 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.
[+] [-] JimmyL|16 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] babul|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gry|16 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] hop|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hop|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrockway|16 years ago|reply
(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.)
[+] [-] dc2k08|16 years ago|reply
http://www.google.com/search?q=linking+to+this+website+witho...
[+] [-] gry|16 years ago|reply
And their design does too...
http://web.archive.org/web/19970530212007/http://www.berkshi...
[+] [-] afiske|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrockway|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stanleydrew|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kyro|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] babul|16 years ago|reply
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|16 years ago|reply
It's still a pretty efficient and lightweight operation, but it's not an exact 20-people-to-$150-billion comparison.
[+] [-] staunch|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NathanKP|16 years ago|reply
<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
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"
[+] [-] unknown|16 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] borism|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tptacek|16 years ago|reply
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|16 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jagjit|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shooter|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blhack|16 years ago|reply
here: 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).
[+] [-] hop|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hyperbovine|16 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] wgj|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jakarta|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stanleydrew|16 years ago|reply
I wonder whether anybody actually does this...
[+] [-] easyfrag|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|16 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] NathanKP|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zandorg|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quizbiz|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sthorpe|16 years ago|reply
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|16 years ago|reply
Anything more than necessary is too much.
[+] [-] goodkarma|16 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] blhack|16 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] Shooter|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] evansolomon|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hop|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bbsabelli|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vaksel|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tptacek|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CapitalistCartr|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrischen|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aaronsw|16 years ago|reply
http://www.geico.com/about/corporate/corporate-ownership/
[+] [-] 10ren|16 years ago|reply
Logically, BRK should also link to Coke, American Express, and all the companies it holds share in/owns outright. Not only as advertising, but also to give them some google juice. It would look horrifically crassly commercial, of course.
[+] [-] suhail|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|16 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jeromec|16 years ago|reply