What I learned over lunch with Warren Buffett

Investor Guy Spier is a self-described “disciple” of multi-billionaire Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and one of the world’s most famous money-makers. That places him among hundreds of thousands of Buffett acolytes — nothing so unusual there — but he’s one of the few to have spent quality time with the legend. In 2007, Spier, along with friend and fellow investor Mohnish Pabrai, won lunch with Buffett in a charity auction, paying $650,000 between them. The knowledge he picked up, as he reveals below, was priceless.

Spier started the Aquamarine Fund in 1997 — now worth $450 million — using Buffett’s “value investor” strategy of buying stocks at a price below their intrinsic value and holding them for a long time. Spier’s book, The Education of a Value Investor: My Transformative Quest for Wealth, Wisdom and Enlightenment, details the ups and downs of his career, and covers his early ambitions to become the king of Wall Street, and his move to Zurich, where he now lives and works.

Big Think caught up with him for a chat about that Buffett “buffet,” his Charlie Munger sculptures, the true usefulness of AI, and more.

Big Think: What did you learn over lunch with Warren Buffett?

Spier: I was so nervous: I was afraid he wouldn’t like me. I’d not been in a room with a guy who was a billionaire approximately 70 times over. Every time he looked at me, I wanted to kind of jump or pinch myself. He’s a very particular personality, and he was totally focused on making the lunch worthwhile for us. 

I think he has a pretty big ego himself. But smart people who have a big ego — who understand that it’s not good to have a big ego — have ways of master[ing] that and, in part, they mask it. But he was extraordinarily good at bringing attention to what our concerns were. The power of empathy — the power of being willing to set aside your agenda and just listen — blew me away.

It was around dessert when I realized that this guy was not trying to be the best investor of his generation. This guy was trying to live his happiest life, and it so happened that his happiest life was spent reading annual reports and 10-Ks and 10-Qs.

It was a kind of psychotherapy for me, because it really allowed me to give something up — which I didn’t want to give up — the dream of being better than Warren Buffett. I realized in that moment that he wasn’t trying to be the best investor. He was trying to be the best version of Warren Buffett.

Big Think: You have a couple of (sculptural) busts of Charlie Munger, Berkshire Hathaway’s late vice chair. Why?

Spier: Mohnish Pabrai has a charity called Dakshana and he named a building after Charlie Munger. And then Mohnish decided to have busts made of Charlie Munger. Warren’s getting enough attention in the world and Charlie’s not an egomaniac, but he wouldn’t mind getting a little more attention. I agreed to take six busts out of 12. I gave a number away and I kept a few for myself. I started to understand that all these [ancient] busts that you see if you go to the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, they were not just decoration, they were not just art. They were inspiration. I have [the Charlier Munger bust] in my home office in Zurich, along with a figurine of Marcus Aurelius. 

Big Think: Your LinkedIn profile has a list of things you are “confused about,” including AI, cyber security, and venture capital. Can you expand a little?

Spier: I’d read some other bio that had “confused about,” and I thought that’s really good, so I updated my bio. I really am confused about those things. Without providing any extra insight or wisdom or content, people get excited because, look, “Guy’s being so honest.” So, by setting people’s expectations of me low and being humble, somehow I’ve developed a following of people who like that about me.

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All of this generative [AI] — write me a poem or make me a photograph — I’m not interested. But to interrogate the existing base of knowledge [it can be useful]. I have an ongoing conversation with multiple different AIs about things I’m interested in. I use Perplexity, which is kind of like a research assistant. Any question that I have, it can come back to me in five minutes with the best answers. And what I like so much about Perplexity is that it’s sourced.

Big Think: You’re very honest in your book about your early career and what you learned from your mistakes. Can you talk about that?

Spier: The book did better than expected because I was very raw and honest. And I just find myself constantly confronted recently with this idea [that] I haven’t shown up in a real way to the challenge that has been put in front of me. I have enough money. I’m extraordinarily fortunate and lucky. So why am I doing this, you know? What is the point? I have a limited number of hours and days on the planet, and I can say on a rational level, I need to be spending my time doing something more than just making money. 

If you go up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, at some point you’ve got to stop being fixated with [financial security]. I mean, you can only live in one house. So, if you own 20 houses, at some point you have to say, stop building new houses for yourself, and think about what your legacy will be, what your impact on the planet will be.

Big Think: So, where’s the meaning in your life?

Spier: I grew up with an intergenerational [understanding that] poverty is not that far away. You can do the very, very best you can, and you can still be made penniless from one day to the next. And there was this idea that it would be nice to rebuild what was lost. I got into the investing game partly because my father pushed me into it. And the benefit of shining a light on it, which I’m doing right now, is saying, okay, but you’ve done that now. So, what now? 

What we all ignore to our detriment are all the non-financial aspects of your balance sheet, your psychological health, your emotional health, your societal experience. And so, I think that I’ve understood that my goal in life is to invest in those other things. So what does that mean? You know, have the strongest family you can possibly have.

Another part of me would have shut down the fund that I’m running and just run family money, or gone and decided to have a second career as an academic. I’m afraid to do that — and that might be me not showing up to myself in the fullest way I possibly can. So, I have an incomplete answer to that question.

Big Think: You’ve previously talked about having about 10 years of Jungian psychotherapy. How is that kind of analysis useful?

Spier: The act of self-reflection on one’s own, or in a group with the help of a significant other, is a more meaningful way to live one’s life. When you go into therapy, you’re going into a personal adventure, maybe the only adventure that counts. In addition to therapy organizations like the Entrepreneurs’ Organization and the Young Presidents’ Organization, you have these forums which are structured conversations, which is basically group therapy. 

I remember deciding that I was going to go and do therapy, and walking in and feeling very nervous, because I was afraid of what I might find out. But ultimately, no problem is too difficult that it can’t be solved by simply shining light on it and revealing what is there.

Big Think: What advice do you have for people about how to invest?

Spier: What I would want to tell the readers of Big Think is, they’re smart enough to do it on their own. If you look at my career, yes, I have the academic background, but, actually, I learned on my own. The best thing that somebody can do is to come to the Berkshire [Hathaway Annual] Meeting. If you get around the right people, you’ll learn everything you need to know. The Roger Lowenstein book (Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist) is a really wonderful introduction to the life of Warren Buffett. And there’s also the Alice Schroeder book (The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life), which is a tome. 

And everybody talks about The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing (by Benjamin Graham). You don’t need to read the whole book, but as Warren Buffett said, that is the most important book for him, so it’s a good place to start.