Turning $1M Into $1B+: A Masterclass From The Indian Warren Buffett

**Mohnish Pabrai** (0:00)
An idea is like an asshole, everyone has one. Okay, ideas don't mean anything.

**Shaan Puri** (0:05)
This guy is known as the Indian Warren Buffett. He's billionaire investor Mohnish Pabrai. And last month, I went to his house and asked him to teach me everything he knows about investing. How did you make your money?

**Mohnish Pabrai** (0:16)
After taxes, after everything, I got a million dollars. And I, for the first time, had money in the bank. That million became about 13 million.
And I said, wow, well done, Mohnish. And so they got 70% a year compounded.

**Shaan Puri** (0:33)
How the hell were you getting these returns?

**Mohnish Pabrai** (0:35)
I'm always looking at what is hated and unloved. The key to moving the needle is inactivity.

**Shaan Puri** (0:42)
I've met and become friends with Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett.

**Mohnish Pabrai** (0:45)
Good afternoon, Mr. Buffett, and good afternoon, Mr. Munger. My name is Mohnish Pabrai.

**Shaan Puri** (0:51)
How does that happen?

**Mohnish Pabrai** (0:52)
It shouldn't happen. When I look at a CEO, I always try to find out, did they run a lemonade stand when they were 12? Because if they didn't run the lemonade stand when they were 12, they're not going to be that great at business at 30 How stupid can you be?
If you know the big picture, you can change the big picture. The most important thing in life is-

**Shaan Puri** (1:16)
Are you a fan of Bitcoin? Are you a believer?

**Mohnish Pabrai** (1:18)
If you put a gun to my head, I would say-

**Shaan Puri** (1:20)
What do you think about Elon Musk?

**Mohnish Pabrai** (1:21)
Elon is not human.

**Shaan Puri** (1:22)
If I said, what's the number one trait that makes a great investor? What comes to mind?
All right, welcome. Good morning.

**Mohnish Pabrai** (1:40)
Great to be here, Shaan.

**Shaan Puri** (1:41)
You are a great investor, but you started as a businessman. I'm a businessman trying to become a great investor.
How do those two relate?

**Mohnish Pabrai** (1:49)
In our brains, we actually use the exact same part of the brain in both activities. So Warren Buffett has a great quote. He says, I'm a better investor because I'm a businessman, and I'm a better businessman because I'm an investor.
And in his case, a lot of people don't know, but Warren had done a lot of different businesses in different areas before he was 17, starting when he was, I think, five or six years old. His very first business was buying cokes from his grandfather's store at a nickel apiece and then selling them at a dime apiece.

**Shaan Puri** (2:31)
Buy wholesale, sell retail.

**Mohnish Pabrai** (2:32)
Yeah, so that was one of his first ones. And one of the things that a lot of people don't understand about the way our brains work is the human brain actually, when we are born, it is the most underdeveloped organ. When we were born, because the birth canal is not wide enough. So for the first five years of life, the brain is the fastest growing organ that we have as humans. The neuron connections are growing at an exponential rate.
From the age of about 11 to about 20, that window is when the brain is set up to specialize and the neuron connections get cut.
So they actually go down quite a bit, but the brain allocates areas to hone in and specialize. So if you think of someone like Michelangelo or Bill Gates or even Warren Buffett, these guys started specializing at 10 or 11 And if you start writing code at the age of 10 or 11, for example, like Bill Gates did, by the time he was 20, the expertise that he had, someone else starting at 20, would not be able to match him even at 50 So that 10-year window is a very critical window in human development. And unfortunately, our education system doesn't recognize that.

**Shaan Puri** (4:01)
And unfortunately, I'm 35, so it's too late.

**Mohnish Pabrai** (4:04)
We hope there are some 11-year-olds listening, or we hope when you have kids.

**Shaan Puri** (4:08)
Tell your kids, yeah.

**Mohnish Pabrai** (4:09)
It's not all, the cake's not fully baked yet.

**Shaan Puri** (4:13)
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