- Warren Buffett: "I recommend MiTek, an informative history of one of our very successful subsidiaries. You'll learn how my interest in the company was originally piqued by my receiving in the mail a hunk of ugly metal whose purpose I couldn't fathom." source ↗
The inside story of MiTek, a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary that manufactures connector plates and engineering software for the construction industry. Written by the former manager Jim Healy, it covers the company's growth from a small Missouri startup to a global operation serving 85 countries, detailing the operational decisions, the acquisition of competitors, and the hands-on engineering culture that made it work — a microcosm of what Buffett looks for in a wholly owned business.
Buffett recommended this book in his 2011 letter with a characteristically quirky endorsement: 'I recommend MiTek, an informative history of one of our very successful subsidiaries. You'll learn how my interest in the company was originally piqued by my receiving in the mail a hunk of ugly metal whose purpose I couldn't fathom.' For founders, the book's value is in how it documents a successful but obscure business that most people have never heard of. The lesson is that extraordinary businesses can exist in undifferentiated-looking industries (metal connector plates for roof trusses) when managed with obsessive attention to engineering, customer relationships, and incremental expansion rather than flashy innovation.
Healy's narrative of taking a niche product and systemically building a global distribution and engineering network around it is the operating playbook for a founder who wants to dominate a boring-seeming but durable market: hire engineers who care about the product, acquire competitors on favorable terms, and never lose the practical customer focus that built the original advantage.