All you need to know about value investing from Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. Some are collections of Q&As from Berkshire Hathaway’s AGMs, some are from Warren’s speeches to Universities, etc. You may find insights about many industries and reasons why Berkshire buys and sells companies.
2. Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger
Wisdom from Charlie Munger. Can apply those to both life and investing.
3. The everything store: Zeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon
The story of Bezos building Amazon based on the philosophy of bringing the best value to customers. Great business lessons and interesting insight of competition between Amazon and rivals can be expected from the book.
4. Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul
Howard Schultz recounts the story and leadership at Starbuck on the second time at the position as the CEO of the company. Even Howard Schultz, the founder cum CEO of Starbucks, struggled to revive the soul of the No.1 coffee brand-name among customers and employees.
Doing business with Wal-mart may help small companies grow greatly. But if you cannot sustain the pressure of Wal-mart’s demand on cutting costs and reducing the price, you will be squeezed to be out of business. This book, to some extent, demonstrates how Wal-mart affects suppliers, customers and changes the game of retailing business.
6. Brewing up a business: Adventures in Beer from the Founder of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery
The story of Sam Calagione building Dogfish Head Craft Brewery from nothing. With Dogfish Head, Sam produces many great strong beers to both serve true beer lovers and meet his passion for brewing. In this book, Sam shares everything he knows about building a business from production to marketing, financing, and management, etc. He builds Dogfish Head with unwary belief and endless love. Many try-error lessons are found in this book. And of course, because this book is about beer, we are expected to learn insights about this industry.
7. Shoe dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike
Phil Knight is a great entrepreneur. No doubt! But his Memoir demonstrates he is a great writer too. The book is surprisingly good. This 400-hundred-book about Nike from the very first idea in 1962 to the date of the IPO in 1980 seems not enough for me. I personally want more about Nike’s race after that.
And once again, just like the story of any business, we can see a lot of try-error lessons here. Of all the problems, the book emphasizes on cash-flow shortage to sustain the business during the high growth phase (double revenue annually in consecutive years). Although the book is written when everything is done, I could not see hindsight bias here. Phil Knight just told exactly what he thought at the time and acted accordingly. Just do it motto. I could not expect what would happen next. I was curious to know and it made me stick to page by page until the end of the book.
I recommended this book to everyone I think it is related. It’s not just that we can learn a lot from Phil Knight, but the book is really interesting to read, also.
Vietnam Value Investment 