For four full seasons, SIC ran without a Summit. Then, in S4, the academic desk experimented with a three-day mid-program gathering. We timed it to early May — to coincide with the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting in Omaha, Nebraska. We did this not for the spectacle, but because Omaha that week is the most concentrated annual gathering of long-horizon, conviction-first investors anywhere in the world. We wanted SIC participants in that air.
What the three days actually look like
The Summit is deliberately small — typically 60-90 participants and 8-12 mentors. The schedule is light on broadcast keynotes and heavy on conversational format. A typical day:
- Morning — small-group panel with a practicing portfolio manager on a topic the participants pre-submit.
- Mid-day — structured working session: participants score anonymized past Featured Cohort submissions against the four-axis rubric, alongside members of the judging desk.
- Afternoon — alumni dispatch panel (“what I wish I’d known”), followed by mentor office-hour blocks.
“The thing the Summit does that nothing else in the season can do is put a 14-year-old in the same conversation as a senior buy-side analyst, and have both treat the conversation seriously.”
Why timing it to Berkshire matters
The Berkshire meeting that same weekend is a self-organizing magnet for the kind of investor SIC’s rubric was built around — people who write things down, defend them on a long horizon, and revise when the facts warrant it. SIC mentors who attend the Summit also attend Berkshire; many of our visiting practitioners route through Omaha that week regardless. We are simply borrowing the gravitational pull.
How to make the most of it as an S15 participant
If you’re going to Omaha, bring your thesis-in-progress, not your year-to-date return. The Summit is not a checkpoint; it is the highest-bandwidth opportunity in the entire season to test the reasoning you’re already working on against people who do this for a living. Come prepared with the specific question you most want answered. Leave with notes on what you’d revise.
— SIC Editorial Desk · S15 prep series