Why Buffett Ignored the Crowd (And You Should Too)
Sound judgment isn’t about being contrarian, it’s about trusting your convictions when it’s easier to copy someone else.
People like to talk about Warren Buffett’s intelligence. His memory. His deal access. His long game.
But Buffett himself has said, over and over, that what really matters isn’t IQ, it’s temperament.
He didn’t build Berkshire by being the smartest guy in the room. He built it by being the calmest, clearest, most consistent thinker… even when everyone else thought he was wrong.
“You don’t need to be a genius,” he once said. “What you need is a sound intellectual framework and the ability to keep emotions from corroding that framework.”
Most people skip that second line.
Because without the discipline to think independently, no amount of knowledge matters.
The crowd doesn’t make you right
Most people need agreement before they act.
They want signals. Signs. Some kind of collective vote of confidence.
Buffett was willing to move without anyone else clapping. He didn’t need the market to agree with him. He didn’t need Wall Street to catch up. He needed one thing: clarity.
That’s the edge most people never develop. Not because it’s complicated, but because it’s uncomfortable.
If you’re building a company, you’ve felt this.
You make a move that doesn’t get immediate traction, so you second-guess it.
You see someone else pivot or raise or blow up a funnel, and you wonder if you’re falling behind.
You start to chase validation instead of sharpening judgment.
But the founders who win long term are the ones who stay anchored...they know exactly why they’re doing what they’re doing and aren’t looking for someone to confirm it.
They don’t ignore new information. But they don’t need permission to trust themselves either.
Clarity builds confidence. Confidence creates space to wait.
Buffett is famous for letting “pitch after pitch” go by until the perfect one shows up.
He’s not in a rush. He doesn’t chase. He doesn’t swing at everything.
Why?
Because he’s only playing in the spaces he understands. He knows his edge.
And when you know your edge, you can wait for the right setup.
The same thing applies when you’re operating a business.
You don’t need to launch five products or be on ten platforms.
You need to know which ones are aligned, which ones you can execute, and which ones fit the vision.
Confidence doesn’t mean you know everything.
It means you’ve thought through enough to move with conviction and let go of the rest.
This is about being honest, not different.
There’s a difference between thinking independently and trying to stand out.
Buffett didn’t bet against the crowd just to be contrarian. He wasn’t interested in being “edgy.”
He was interested in being right.
Munger said it best: “A lot of people with high IQs are terrible investors because they’ve got terrible temperaments.”
This is more about emotional control than raw horsepower. It’s about resisting the urge to react every time something around you changes.
Because if you’re always reacting, it’s a sign you don’t trust your own framework yet.
Build a framework. Trust the process.
Buffett and Munger made their biggest calls with total confidence, even when nobody else saw it.
Because they’d done the work.
They didn’t guess. They didn’t follow. They decided.
And then they let time do what time does.
That’s what separates the people who make good decisions from the ones who chase good feelings.
If you’re a founder, builder, investor, or operator, you don’t need to be louder.
You need to be clearer.
The more grounded you are in your own thinking, the less tempted you’ll be to outsource it to the crowd.
And that’s where real compounding starts.
📚 Excellent Books on Buffett (ordering through these links supports Startup Stuff):
The Warren Buffett Way by Robert Hagstrom (Kindle version)
Buffett and Munger Unscripted by Alex Morris (Kindle version)
The Essays of Warren Buffett by Lawrence Cunningham (Kindle version)
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