Charlie Munger on GEICO and trying to save a bad business

This is a great little story by Charlie Munger about GEICO. He and Warren Buffett famously bought GEICO a long time ago, and apparently it was a mess.

The “cancer surgery formula” is basically what Steve Jobs did when he came back to Apple in 1997. He got rid of the Newton, their printing business, and slashed through all of the computer models until he came up with his famous grid of selling only four computer types (laptop/desktop for home-users or professionals). Once he got the company relatively stable, they were then able to create the iPod and everything else we now know. (Image from this PDF.)

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