Elon Musk. Patrick Pleul/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
- Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger let Elon Musk speak at the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting.
- The Tesla CEO is tackling complex problems, resulting in big wins and losses, they said.
- “We don’t want to fail as much,” Munger said, explaining why they take fewer risks than Musk.
Elon Musk dreams bigger and tackles much scarier problems than Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, meaning he sometimes achieves great things but often falls short, the investor duo said.
“He would not have achieved what he has achieved in life if he hadn’t striven for unreasonably extreme goals,” Munger, Berkshire Hathaway’s vice chairman, said during the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.
“He’s happy to take the impossible job and do it,” Munger continued. “We’re different. Warren and I are looking for the easy job.”
“We don’t want that much failure,” added the 99-year-old investor.
Buffett, the 92-year-old CEO of Berkshire, agreed that Musk is focused on much tougher challenges than either he or Munger are willing to take on.
“It’s a dedication to solving the impossible, and once in a while he will,” Buffett said. “But it would be torture for me or Charlie.”
The Berkshire chief said Musk’s all-consuming lifestyle doesn’t appeal to him, but the Tesla chief “wouldn’t enjoy being in my shoes,” either.
Musk welcomed the comments from the two legendary stock pickers. ” Appreciate the kind words from Warren & Charlie,” he tweeted.
Both Buffett and Munger have credited Musk with successfully scaling Tesla into a major automaker in the highly competitive auto industry. Musk, who dreams of colonizing Mars, has also pioneered reusable rocket technology at SpaceX, experiencing high-profile failures and spectacular explosions along the way.
Musk has distanced himself from Buffett in recent years, describing himself as a builder of companies and products as opposed to an investor. He has acknowledged Buffett’s expertise but called the Berkshire chief’s job of studying companies and allocating capital “super boring.”
Still, the tech billionaire recently said Buffett is an ideal US Treasury secretary because the Berkshire boss can get the job done in under an hour a week.
Musk has also chastised Buffett and Munger for passing on an opportunity to invest in Tesla in 2008, which is valued at $200 million. The automaker now has a market cap of over $500 billion.
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