I agree he had the solid foundation [1] [2], but it is still not that simple.
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Most importantly at this level Buffet would have hundreds of people in his target pool of similar profiles Goldman Sacks, BCG, McKinsey and ofcourse insurance guys with similar Harvard/Stanford/Yale/MIT kind of ivy league education .
Selecting the right person would still be hard.
The pedigree of this kind of education and job helps in filtering out a ton of candidates, and keeping the pool to high quality, however it won't be a selection criteria.
[1] His academic credentials are impressive, but just to keep in mind IIT in 1972 didn't have the same reputation( guys like Jain created that their achievements) as later on especially terms of difficulty getting in - saying this as late 2000s IITb grad
[2] His younger cousin was definitely not factor in 1982 when getting hired , he wasn't Deutsche Bank CEO then
I haven't met him - but I've heard Ajit Jain is insanely smart and hard working.
If I trusted Mr X, and Mr X said "hey that little startup insurance thing you want to do could be run by Mr Y who is the smartest, hardest working guy I've ever met", and I met Mr Y, and he seemed to be everything that trusted Mr X had said, and had gone to IIT, Harvard and worked at McKinsey, I'd hire him on the spot too.
Also keep in mind - Buffett wasn't the god like figure he is today then.
In late 1970s he was worth $67M by 1982 it was $370M , $670M in 1983 and billonare in 1986 at age 56.[1]
He bought control of Berkshire Hathaway in 1965 about 17 years prior to hiring Jain. His model and name were well known in the right circles by then.
In the investment world and cricles where he would be searching for talent in early 80s he had demigod status, making that kind of returns as pure investor without being a founder of tech company like Apple/MS was unheard of .
He was not as popular with general public , it wasn't as big a story for middle aged man making money by investing in boring stocks as compared to 20-30yr old tech rock stars with more colourful life like Jobs/Gates and type of products Apple /MS were building at that time. General public popularity came much later when he became the richest in the world
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[1] It is very very hard to 20x $50M by just investing in lower risk diversified assets. We don't fully grasp how rich billionaires are. Tom Scott video https://youtu.be/8YUWDrLazCg comes to mind
Yup, and he got an amazing hire. But he wasn't looking for an investment hire, he was looking for an operating guy, and he wouldn't have had the same level of interest as he would now.
Most importantly at this level Buffet would have hundreds of people in his target pool of similar profiles Goldman Sacks, BCG, McKinsey and ofcourse insurance guys with similar Harvard/Stanford/Yale/MIT kind of ivy league education .
Selecting the right person would still be hard.
The pedigree of this kind of education and job helps in filtering out a ton of candidates, and keeping the pool to high quality, however it won't be a selection criteria.
[1] His academic credentials are impressive, but just to keep in mind IIT in 1972 didn't have the same reputation( guys like Jain created that their achievements) as later on especially terms of difficulty getting in - saying this as late 2000s IITb grad
[2] His younger cousin was definitely not factor in 1982 when getting hired , he wasn't Deutsche Bank CEO then