The Guy Who Studied Buffett for 25 Years

**Shaan Puri** (0:00)
I have a thought experiment for you. Imagine if you could just snap your fingers, and suddenly there was a second version of you, a second body, brain, your eyes, your ears, the way you think, the way you operate, but with one caveat, one change. It would do whatever you said to do. You know what I would tell it to do? I would tell it to go study the art of investing. Investing, like Scott Galloway says, is like having an army of capital go wage war for you, right? Instead of you working for money, your money works for you. I love that. So how do you get great at something? Well, you would study the greats. And that's exactly what the person who's coming on this podcast today has done. He's gone back and for 25 years has studied everything that Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, all the great investors, what they have done, read every single annual letter, go and read all the reports, study how they grew from bit by bit, block by block, step by step, and not just learn them in the book, but then went and practiced it. And so I wanted to ask this guy, what did you learn about investing and what can I learn? How can I spend an hour or two with you and download 10 years of your brain? His name is Guy Spier. He's a very cool guy. A lot of people really respect Guy because he is an incredibly humble, interesting guy. I think you're going to love this conversation. So enjoy this episode with Guy Spier.
I have all these notes about where to start because I'm like, oh, he's value investing. There's going to be good investing knowledge. But the thing I was actually curious about when I was doing my research was about this group that you had called The Posse.

**Guy Spier** (1:34)
Oh, yeah.

**Shaan Puri** (1:35)
And I don't know if The Posse still exists or this was just a moment in time. But can you explain what was The Posse? Who was in it? What was it?

**Guy Spier** (1:41)
Well, what's happened to me is I've discovered that I love Warren Buffett, value investing, Berkshire Hathaway. So I want to be all over anything that's got to do with that. And in New York City, there's this Ruane Cunniff firm that has a friend of Warren Buffett's, two friends of Warren Buffett's that run it, and they have a mutual fund and they have an annual general meeting. And I get invited to some event before or after. And there's a guy, Whitney Tilson, there, who's like master network to the power of master networker. And we're introduced to each other and we're one year away from each other at Harvard Business School. And the next thing I know, he invites me to meet other people. And he doesn't invite me to the group on its own. And he invites me to meet this person over there or that you're sort of like, hey, go have a coffee with that guy. And so before I know, I've met three or four members of this group. And then it was Whitney who put together a group of five or six of us who were all fascinated by Warren Buffett, who all wanted to become better investors. And we'd meet, I think it was, sometimes we'd meet even once a week in one of our member's offices, there was a member that had an office in Midtown. And we'd present ideas and Whitney's friend Bill Ackman was part of that group for a while, that's how I met Bill Ackman for the few times I'd met him. And I wasn't really aware of what that was or why. Well, we'd had study group at business school and obviously you want to get together with friends who have common interest. But I didn't realize what a powerful tool for success it was until at that dinner and lunch, first meal with Monish Pabrai where he talked about forums, YPO forums and he said you should get into one, you'd benefit. And then I got switched on.
But that posse met for about, I think it met for two or three or four years. And we're still part of an email chain. I mean, Whitney will send out an email, send out a happy birthday message to the group. Some have become very, very good friends of mine and some are, I'm not even sure where they are now.

**Shaan Puri** (3:35)
So, what was happening? So, you're meeting, let's say, once a week or every couple of weeks, and you go to someone's office and you said you had, all the commonality was you're all investors who were fans of the Buffett style of investing, value investing. What would happen at these groups? You show up, what actually, is there a substructure? Did you just, somebody's got a stock that they're interested in, and you start debating it, what would happen?