The government has to be flexible in Air India sale price, structure, and employee management plan. Mohnish Pabrai Read Quote
To the extent societal rules or the wiring of your brains make it easy to acquire a lot of assets, then to the extent you can, you should try to improve the world. Mohnish Pabrai Read Quote
Before starting my own investment funds, the only models I was aware of were those of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. Their models made a lot of sense to me, so I cloned them. Mohnish Pabrai Read Quote
Talking to people is beneficial if you can identify the right people to share ideas and discuss decisions because everyone has blind spots, and others can sometimes catch yours. I think an investment team is a bad idea, but it is a good idea to talk to trustworthy individuals who do not have biases or interests. Mohnish Pabrai Read Quote
It is the performance of the business that matters. It is hard enough to figure out the future of the business. Do not try to figure out the future of the country or the world; focus on the business. Mohnish Pabrai Read Quote
What is John Arriaga’s circle of competence? Is it real estate? No! Is it U.S. real estate? No! Is it California real estate? No! Northern California real estate? No! Only real estate around Stanford. His circle of competence is this small. Mohnish Pabrai Read Quote
A subset of CEOs is that of entrepreneurs. And the classical definition of an entrepreneur is an individual who pursues opportunity without regard to the resources currently controlled. That sounds like a very different person than one might expect an analytical investment manager to be. Mohnish Pabrai Read Quote
The essence of a good investment manager is one who studies a given business and extrapolates the future cash flows that the business is likely to generate over the next several years. Based on the cash flow and asset assessment, they can then arrive at their expected rate of return if they bought a fraction of that business at a given price. Mohnish Pabrai Read Quote
When I ran a small IT services business in the 1990s, it had strong recurring revenues – yet I couldn’t accurately forecast cash flow for even the next few quarters. Small changes in the customer base or losing/hiring a few key employees could create massive swings in cash flow. Mohnish Pabrai Read Quote
