You don’t need a flashy site if you already have the reputation. But without other signals an old simple site will be interpreted by many as an indicator of something amateurish or outdated.
But sometimes there's so much flash that you can't even tell what's being sold. And then there is the immediate blatant pop-over that demands that you make an account before you even have a chance to see the product.
I once raised a seed round with a dirt-simple (deliberately) deck that was just black and white text, Times New Roman default powerpoint style with zero design elements other than bullet points.
I got a lot of comments about how refreshing it was to just let the ideas and data stand for themselves without frills.
I accept that a deck and a website are not the same thing, but there is value in sometimes deliberately under-designing something.
This plus never doing a stock split despite BRK.A trading at $468,000 per share are little details that show what an extraordinary and unique company it is. I don't think there's anyone in finance who cares about appearances less than Warren Buffet. The fact that he chooses to stay in Omaha, Nebraska instead of a penthouse in Manhattan's Financial District also seems to tie in to his modus operandi.
> they are never going to succeed with a website like this.
How do you define success? BRK beat the S&P 500 returns for a few decades. They are one of the largest companies on planet earth(top 10), and their net income after all expenses is approaching $100B USD a year.
They own well known public companies like Dairy Queen, Duracell, BNSF Railroad, Geico Insurance, etc.
I'd be curious to know how many people access the Berkshire Hathaway website from a phone. If they do get any mobile traffic, I wouldn't be terribly surprised if it's from more BlackBerries than iPhones.
You could replicate 84% of the publicly-traded side of BH with 8 US-based holdings.
But BH trades at 1.5x price to book... not sure if it's really worth it. But there's some VC-style genius in his non-trading holdings (e.g. GEICO and railways) directly held on its book or its <1% public holdings.
(Though the asset value of the railroads, railcars, energy, pipelines, etc. (not even including liabilities) is about equal to its AAPL holdings, which is all asset/equity).
Overall, if you want a set-and-forget investment, I'd still say go for BH stock.
Unless I goofed in looking up this information, BH has outperformed the S&P 500 since 10 years ago and since 5 years ago, and that's with the S&P's dividendends reinvested. A few years ago I think it was different, but then they made a lot of money on Apple.
GEICO is a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway that provides coverage for more than 24 million motor vehicles owned by more than 15 million policy holders as of 2017.
Class and prestige is exactly what Buffett is not about. He does not care at all about opinions of his website. He cares only if the money goes up and credibility is maintained. Any focus on the site would be a waste of money, unless you can make a buck.
Same dude loves buying hail damaged cars. This is a hail damaged website. Works fine. Sells insurance while you’re there.
I want to make websites like this and run into the same problem every time: phones exist now.
The website is illegible on my phone. I have to do some zooming and panning and it feels awful.
It’s difficult to have a nice “classic web” page that runs on phones without a lot of care to use media queries. Not that that’s a deal breaker but it quickly departs from the “keep it simple” philosophy of these designs when you are effectively designing it twice.
> The website is illegible on my phone. I have to do some zooming and panning and it feels awful.
I see this complaint often, but I don’t get it. Zooming and panning are two dead simple gestures on any smartphone browser, no more difficult than scrolling. Out of all the annoyances I’ve encountered visiting a website on my smartphone, having to zoom or pan ranks near the bottom for me. Why is it such a nuisance for others?
Requires more than my thumb. So now I have to alter my entire ergonomics of phone usage for a page.
Double tap can sometimes work.
The other issue is that now the website has two overflow axes. So I’m just kinda wandering a page in some way that wasn’t designed by the author. To each their own but it feels janky and uncomfortable to have to wander a page. Especially if the page was designed with a certain viewport size in mind. They’re not expecting this case.
Nothing needs to be changed because it’s not a responsiveness problem. The font is tiny because the page was designed for a far wider screen than a phone. A little css could fix it: collapse the two columns of links into one when on a narrow screen.
Sure, that's how to fix the BRK site.
But I was replying to your comment:
> I want to make websites like this and run into the same problem every time: phones exist now.
If you start from unstyled HTML it works. My question is what are you adding in your development process of making simple websites that breaks it for phones?
While I appreciate the sentiment, some of this hyperbole is a bit much. This _could_ be a beautiful design with some simple padding and margin updates, but as it is, horizontal text that literally stretches 24 inches across my 1440p monitor is not what I'd consider effective, practical, or beautiful.
If they took down their website tomorrow would their market cap change at all? Are these then perhaps some of the least “valuable bytes” which explains the website’s design?
I just don’t see much “interesting and engaging design” that isn’t riddled with horrible performance or ridiculous dark patterns. The Reddit redesign is a perfect example of the former, and newsletter popups are an example of the latter.
The problem is when interesting and engaging design starts taking priority over functionality. This is fine for entertainment focused sites that are meant to capture your attention and help you burn some time. This is terrible for sites that fulfill some real purpose. For example, I don't want my healthcare website to have a flashy design, I want it to just work in a reliable way.
This web design reminds me a lot of when Apple "bravely" removed the 3.5mm AUX jack from the iPhone. Everyone scorned and mocked their simplified design, then copied it a year later. However, I don't know if there's anything equivalent to forcing companies to make better Bluetooth headsets in this case - maybe making people appreciate big fonts more?
How else will some random news site you're visiting for the first time know whether or not you want to subscribe to their newsletter, allow them to send you notifications, and know your current precise location?
There’s a reason Geico or Duracell’s websites (both incredibly famous Berkshire companies) don’t look like this. Berkshire is essentially an unorthodox investment fund, all of their websites are pretty sparse
> There’s a reason Geico or Duracell’s websites (both incredibly famous Berkshire companies) don’t look like this. Berkshire is essentially an unorthodox investment fund, all of their websites are pretty sparse
Of course there's a reason, but that doesn't mean there's a good reason. Big commercial websites do not choose their design out of a desire best to serve their customers, but out of a desire best to attract attention and to funnel that attention towards their ends—and what a website most wants us to do is not necessarily what is best for us to do.
But even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task, it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction - purpose and dignity - that afflicts us all. Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.
> If the web had stoped innovating and improving at this level of design it wouldn't have the GDP it does now.
But maybe not everyone's priority is maximising the GDP of the web? (I'm not even sure what the 'D' there means, but I'm trying to take the comment in the spirit in which it must have been meant rather than excessively literally.)
I guess it would be like Bill Gates advertising for Windows and Xbox at the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. Like I get the incentive but it doesn’t seem like the right place for it
To be clear I think the weirdnesses is in the pseudo-personal tone of it. This isn’t your uncle trying to sell you on his new business during thanksgiving dinner.
This is a billionaire trying to sell low low prices to presumably investors.
Or like Google's home page advertising Chrome (which they did early on in its life, which was surely a big factor in how they grew their market share so fast).
It's very on-brand for Buffett if you follow his stuff. He's always kinda hawking the stuff he owns. You'll see the can of Coke on the table at the annual meeting, you'll see him eating See's Candies, he'll talk about the brands he owns, etc.
It's not pushy or overly sales-like, but he is into a lot of the stuff he owns. The message about GEICO is really frank: different insurance carriers vary in their underwriting judgments, but he estimates that GEICO will offer the lowest rate for 40% of people which is more often than any carrier. Go to the website and see if you can save money.
For some of the businesses, it can be a bit personal. He bought Nebraska Furniture Mart over a handshake from someone he'd known for a long time.
It is a little weird, but it's certainly on-brand for him.
Using websites as a gauge into how profitable a company is is like looking at Kant's right index finger to figure out what he meant in Critique of Pure Reason.
The most recent news post is about https://berkshirehathawaytx.com/, a crypto exchange that is obviously trying to use the brand. The TX evidently stands for Texas, don't you know.
I get it, but I don't think many companies could get away with this. The site is for serious investors and simplicity is part of the brand. Imagine miro.com (whatever that is but I've seen lots of ads for in on YouTube), using this type of style - it seems unlikely that it would be successful. I'd like to see someone try however.
Uh oh! Check out the Legal Disclaimer.
>Reproduction or distribution of any materials obtained on this website or linking to this website without written permission is prohibited.
Linking to this website without written permission is strictly prohibited. Really hope meesterdude obtained said required written permission prior posting.
I had a bunch of sites on a shared host a while back. I got an email from the hosting company saying they'd had a legal notification from a site I was linking to that demanded I removed links to their website or they'd take legal action against the host (and me by extension?!).
Despite me pointing out the ridiculousness of the situation, as well as the SEO benefit to the original site no one would listen and it ended as "remove the links in the next 48 hours or we take down your sites until you do."
Wasn't worth the fight, so I removed them. Still can't get over the waste of resources and the ridiculousness of the whole thing.
On the other hand, Berkshire Hathaway is Apple's largest investor.
Berkshire Hathaway Energy owns and operates some of the world's largest wind and solar energy farms and is building state-of-the-art Terrapower (Bill Gates) nuclear reactors:
There's a lot for a "tech investor" to like about the company. As a consequence, Berkshire has a top-notch subreddit, probably the best subreddit of any company:
105 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 156 ms ] threadBut sometimes there's so much flash that you can't even tell what's being sold. And then there is the immediate blatant pop-over that demands that you make an account before you even have a chance to see the product.
Who designs crap like that?
I once raised a seed round with a dirt-simple (deliberately) deck that was just black and white text, Times New Roman default powerpoint style with zero design elements other than bullet points.
I got a lot of comments about how refreshing it was to just let the ideas and data stand for themselves without frills.
I accept that a deck and a website are not the same thing, but there is value in sometimes deliberately under-designing something.
Restaurant websites should be a readable pdf of the menu and prices and operating hours with a link for further information about the restaurant.
How do you define success? BRK beat the S&P 500 returns for a few decades. They are one of the largest companies on planet earth(top 10), and their net income after all expenses is approaching $100B USD a year.
They own well known public companies like Dairy Queen, Duracell, BNSF Railroad, Geico Insurance, etc.
They seem pretty successful to me.
- popular saying amongst Dutch investors
40% of BH's publicly-traded holdings are AAPL stock. 11% is Bank of America. 9% is Chevron. 7% is Coca Cola.
https://www.cnbc.com/berkshire-hathaway-portfolio/
You could replicate 84% of the publicly-traded side of BH with 8 US-based holdings.
But BH trades at 1.5x price to book... not sure if it's really worth it. But there's some VC-style genius in his non-trading holdings (e.g. GEICO and railways) directly held on its book or its <1% public holdings.
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/BRK-A/key-statistics/
(Though the asset value of the railroads, railcars, energy, pipelines, etc. (not even including liabilities) is about equal to its AAPL holdings, which is all asset/equity).
Overall, if you want a set-and-forget investment, I'd still say go for BH stock.
Disclaimer: am not a billionaire.
Same dude loves buying hail damaged cars. This is a hail damaged website. Works fine. Sells insurance while you’re there.
The website is illegible on my phone. I have to do some zooming and panning and it feels awful.
It’s difficult to have a nice “classic web” page that runs on phones without a lot of care to use media queries. Not that that’s a deal breaker but it quickly departs from the “keep it simple” philosophy of these designs when you are effectively designing it twice.
I see this complaint often, but I don’t get it. Zooming and panning are two dead simple gestures on any smartphone browser, no more difficult than scrolling. Out of all the annoyances I’ve encountered visiting a website on my smartphone, having to zoom or pan ranks near the bottom for me. Why is it such a nuisance for others?
Double tap can sometimes work.
The other issue is that now the website has two overflow axes. So I’m just kinda wandering a page in some way that wasn’t designed by the author. To each their own but it feels janky and uncomfortable to have to wander a page. Especially if the page was designed with a certain viewport size in mind. They’re not expecting this case.
(Of course, really old HTML that uses table based layout has problems.)
> I want to make websites like this and run into the same problem every time: phones exist now.
If you start from unstyled HTML it works. My question is what are you adding in your development process of making simple websites that breaks it for phones?
(That's if you ignore the websites of subsidies)
[1] bottom of page 2: https://berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2021ltr.pdf
"Yes" or "Not right now"?
You selected "Not right now" the last 187 thousand times in a row, but maybe today you've changed your mind.
Your comment would almost fit better as a reply on the linked page from this other front page post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33680661
Of course there's a reason, but that doesn't mean there's a good reason. Big commercial websites do not choose their design out of a desire best to serve their customers, but out of a desire best to attract attention and to funnel that attention towards their ends—and what a website most wants us to do is not necessarily what is best for us to do.
But maybe not everyone's priority is maximising the GDP of the web? (I'm not even sure what the 'D' there means, but I'm trying to take the comment in the spirit in which it must have been meant rather than excessively literally.)
This is a billionaire trying to sell low low prices to presumably investors.
“Value” is a big philosophy of his, in investing and in business strategy, and many of his followers believe the same.
It's not pushy or overly sales-like, but he is into a lot of the stuff he owns. The message about GEICO is really frank: different insurance carriers vary in their underwriting judgments, but he estimates that GEICO will offer the lowest rate for 40% of people which is more often than any carrier. Go to the website and see if you can save money.
For some of the businesses, it can be a bit personal. He bought Nebraska Furniture Mart over a handshake from someone he'd known for a long time.
It is a little weird, but it's certainly on-brand for him.
His advice on how to make money is basically that you should give some to him. Sometimes you just have to stand back and clap.
<meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 15">
<meta name=Originator content="Microsoft Word 15">
That equates to Office 2013
Linking to this website without written permission is strictly prohibited. Really hope meesterdude obtained said required written permission prior posting.
There have been lawsuits about it! See, for example, https://www.seroundtable.com/linkage-lawsuit-15131.html (the first useful hit in a Google search for "lawsuit about linking"), and a survey article https://btlj.org/data/articles2015/vol16/16_3/16-berkeley-te... by Mark Sableman.
Despite me pointing out the ridiculousness of the situation, as well as the SEO benefit to the original site no one would listen and it ended as "remove the links in the next 48 hours or we take down your sites until you do."
Wasn't worth the fight, so I removed them. Still can't get over the waste of resources and the ridiculousness of the whole thing.
something something the 90s?
Berkshire Hathaway Energy owns and operates some of the world's largest wind and solar energy farms and is building state-of-the-art Terrapower (Bill Gates) nuclear reactors:
https://www.brkenergy.com/
There's a lot for a "tech investor" to like about the company. As a consequence, Berkshire has a top-notch subreddit, probably the best subreddit of any company:
r/brkb (https://old.reddit.com/r/brkb/)
Other investors will appreciate that Berkshire owns all of a large part of America's freight transportation system:
https://www.bnsf.com/
And is the largest investor in important parts of its financial system (Bank of America), etc.