In 1964, Warren Buffett made the biggest investment mistake of his life: buying Berkshire Hathaway.

In 1964, Warren Buffett made the biggest investment mistake of his life: buying Berkshire Hathaway. He was 34, running a small investment partnership, and had spotted what looked like easy money. Berkshire Hathaway was a dying textile company, closing one mill after another. Every time a mill shut down, the company bought back its own stock and the price would pop. Buffett's plan was simple: buy cheap, tender during the next buyback, pocket a small profit, move on. By 1964, he owned about 7% of the company. That's when the CEO, a Harvard-educated old-guard businessman named Seabury Stanton, approached him with a proposition. "At what price will you tender your stock?” "$11.50," Buffett replied. They shook on it. A few weeks later, the written offer arrived in the mail. The price wasn't $11.50. It was $11.375. Stanton had chiseled him for one-eighth of a dollar. A rational investor would have taken the deal. The difference was 12.5 cents per share. But Buffett didn't sell. He later admitted the lowball offer made him furious. And in that fury, the most rational investor in history made a purely emotional decision. He bought more shares. Then more. By May 1965, he had taken control of the entire company and fired Seabury Stanton. It was the only hostile takeover of his career. He later wrote: “Through Seabury's and my childish behavior, he lost his job, and I found myself with more than 25% of my capital invested in a terrible business about which I knew very little.” For 20 years, Buffett tried to save the textile mills. They bled money every single year. He estimated that this mistake cost him at least $200 billion. But Berkshire Hathaway didn't die. It later became the company through which Buffett bought everything else: insurance, railroads, energy, consumer brands. And yet, he never changed the name. Buffett kept the name of that dying textile company on purpose. Because every single morning, when he walked into his office and saw those two words, they whispered the same lesson: you are not perfect. You let your pride win that day. Never again. #finexecutive