Warren Buffett’s Best Investment

As much as I advocate for doing good by doing business, there are some problems of the world that can’t be solved by for-profit companies, or at least not completely solved by for-profits, which instead need government aid and philanthropists.

The 2017 letter from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation showcases five areas where the foundation has made incredible progress: vaccines, newborn mortality, malnutrition, family planning, male dominance leading to poverty in women.

The letter is entitled “Warren Buffett’s Best Investment“, as back in 2006 Warren Buffett made what Bill Gates called, “the biggest single gift anyone ever gave anybody for anything“. Ten years later, this letter reflects on what that gift has “bought”.

Than you Warren for making the world better through your gift, and thank you Bill and Melinda for giving even more than Warren, and thank you to the whole staff of the Foundation for your incredibly difficult work turning the dream of these philanthropists into actual impact.

www.gatesnotes.com/2017-Annual-Letter

Beyond the obvious lesson, my takeaway from this is one we talk about all the time in impact investing, that the return on investment can be the impact on the world, rather than the fiscal bottom line.

You have a decision to make. If you have seconds to decide, you go with your gut. If you have minutes, you might take that minute to weigh Plan A with Plan B. If you have weeks you might create a pro-con list to help decide between those two – or even three – options. If you have months, you might take the time to brainstorm for some out-of-the-box options. What most people overlook is that there...

A few months ago I was interviewed on a podcast where the key question was “What is your superpower?” Sounds innocuous and simple, but it was one of those moments to reflect on life and not just provide a truthful answer, but something interesting and thought provoking. My answer was “If only”. What if _____? I’ve been an entrepreneur for over thirty years, founding or co-founding 10 companies. I...

Back in the dot-com bubble, my second-ever startup filed the paperwork to go public, but the NASDAQ topped off before we were able to complete that process. It’s long been a life goal to be part of a company to finish that process. That goal was not only achieved today, but by Africa Eats, my eighth startup. I’m now CEO of a public company. 🙂 Africa Eats is an investment company...

There are a lot of great posts buried in this blog’s archives that are still quite apt. Today is another reprise, this time revisiting the (often invisible) tradeoff between efficiency and resilience. Last time I explained that tradeoff with the case study of electricity blackouts in Texas and how that related to Google’s monopoly on search and Amazon’s dominance of eCommerce...

I’m in a reprise mood this season… recently thinking about a blog post from 2015 with a lesson learned in an old movie on how to blow up a dam. A lesson about the expectations when making a big change to the world. The lesson comes from Force 10 from Navarone, starring Harrison Ford and Robert Shaw. This is a movie I first saw on a Sunday afternoon on TV as a pre-teen, and then dozen...