What Warren Buffett wants in an entrepreneur

Warren Buffett: “When I hand somebody $US100 million, or a billion, or $US5 billion, and they hand me the stock certificate, I’m counting on them to run it. We never rely on contracts. It wouldn’t mean anything.”

If you don’t love what you’re doing, don’t ask Warren Buffett to back you.

That’s the essence of the Oracle of Omaha’s view on entrepreneurship, according to Bloomberg Television host Betty Liu’s new book, Work Smarts: What CEOs Say You Need To Know to Get Ahead, which pulls together comments from prominent US CEOs on what it takes to be successful in business.

Publishing excerpts from the book, Bloomberg reports Buffett’s view of the entrepreneurs in which he invests in his own words:

“They’ve got to be in love with the business. When I hand somebody $US100 million, or a billion, or $US5 billion, and they hand me the stock certificate, I’m counting on them to run it. We never rely on contracts. It wouldn’t mean anything.

“You know, six months later the guy’s getting up at six in the morning and his wife says, “You know, what the hell are you doing?” He says, “Oh, I’m getting up to work for some company in Omaha,” and she says, “I thought the last 30 years we’ve been building this thing, and now we’ve got billions of dollars, why aren’t we out on a boat or taking trips to Europe or whatever?”

“And unless his answer is “I’m doing this because I love it,’ [and not] “I’m doing this because I signed an agreement,” you know, it isn’t going to work over time. But if he says, “I’m doing this because I’d rather do it than anything else in the world,” then we’re going to have a wonderful leader ...

“I try to buy companies where the managers of them feel that way about their company, and then it’s up to me not to destroy that feeling.”

From Financial Review