Today’s business needs little introduction. Berkshire Hathaway is one of the largest businesses in the world and run by arguably the most famous investors of our time, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. 
To break down the business, I’m joined by Chris Bloomstran. Chris is the President and CIO of Semper Augustus and has gone as deep on Berkshire as anyone I’ve ever encountered, making him the perfect person to do this with. Given the reams of excellent content already out there about Buffett and Berkshire, we focused our conversation on the specific elements that make this business so special. Please enjoy this breakdown of Berkshire Hathaway.
 
For the full show notes, transcript, and links to the best content to learn more, check out the episode page here.
 
-----
 
This episode is presented by Visible Alpha. The team at Visible Alpha built a platform to analyze consensus data and financial metrics on over 6,000 publicly traded companies. Rather than having to dig through models one by one, Visible Alpha extracts data from every line item across sell-side models so you can better understand expectations on metrics beyond just revenue and earnings. Listeners are invited to try Visible Alpha for free by visiting visiblealpha.com/breakdowns
 
-----
 
This episode is brought to you by Daloopa. Daloopa streamlines a major pain point for investors. By capturing all of a company's KPIs and adjusted financials into their database - Daloopa makes it easy to quickly update your models for what matters. Daloopa uses AI to find every KPI disclosed - from charts, to text, and even from footnotes of investor presentations. Daloopa updates these KPIs and data points in your existing Excel models in one click, regardless of your source or format. Test Daloopa for free at daloopa.com/Patrick.
 
—--
 
Business Breakdowns is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Business Breakdowns, visit joincolossus.com/episodes.
 
Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here.
 
Follow us on Twitter: @JoinColossus | @patrick_oshag | @jspujji | @zbfuss
 
Show Notes
[00:02:26] - [First question] - What Berkshire has taught the world about float
[00:14:00] - How much of Berkshire's success was predicated on insurance 
[00:23:17] - Whether or not Berkshire’s capital source has been more important than stock selection 
[00:30:04] - Why there’s such a disparity between good stock pickers and holding companies
[00:36:24] - What the major signposts of durability are when evaluating companies
[00:38:29] - Acquiring Alleghany and using that as a case study that reflects their values
[00:47:22] - The role that energy has played in Berkshire’s growth 
[00:59:54] - Thoughts about the major pieces of Berkshire and the future of the company 
[01:05:46] - Important lessons learned about investing and business from Berkshire’s story