Buffet’s focus on value investing and consequent aversion to investing in software companies or more broadly, newer modern day technology companies has led Berkshire Hathway to serious misses in recent years. Losing billions over Kraft Heinz, another $5B loss on airlines, $3B loss on Wells Fargo. Warren Bufffeft had not invested in a tech IPO in over 50 years, famously avoiding IPOs and dismissing recent tech IPOs as ridiculous. So when Buffett invested over half a million dollars into a surging tech cloud data company called Snowflake in 2020, it caught Wall Street by surprise.

Snowflake since then has surged to become one of Buffet’s best investments with paper profits of over 2B dollars on a $735M investment. And while the company stock has cooled down significantly, Snowflake has remained one of Berkshire Hathaway's best investments to date.

So what is Snowflake and what exactly does this unprofitable data company do that has successfully convinced Buffet to go against his lifelong investing philosophy?

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0:00 Buffet's Value Investing Philosophy
3:20 Analytical v. Transactional Databases
8:21 Snowflake's Top Down Sales Strategy
12:38 World-Class Customer Retention
14:15 Monopoly in the Making
15:07 What Modern Tech Startups Get Wrong