WARREN BUFFETT ONCE MADE A 99-YEAR-OLD WOMAN SIGN A NON-COMPETE.

Buffett bought Nebraska Furniture Mart after asking one question. Do you owe any money? Her answer is the whole business. Blumkin sold at $3.98 where the big Omaha stores charged $6.98, and they sued her four times for it. She won every case, and the price was never really the point. A shop carrying debt has to cover its interest out of margin, so it needs prices to stay high, which is why the big stores fought so hard to keep them there. Blumkin owed nobody anything, so she could trade at a margin that would have killed her competitors and keep doing it forever. The second thing Buffett learned cost him more. At 95 she fell out with the grandsons running the shop and quit, opened a rival store across the street, and her customers walked over with her. He had bought the building and she had kept the business, so he bought her out a second time and made a 99 year old sign a non-compete. She went back to work until she was 103. She had arrived from Russia with $500 and never learned to write, so she signed that $60 million contract with a scrawl. Nebraska Furniture Mart now sells more than a billion dollars a year. Follow @theventure for the greatest founder stories ever told.