This billionaire CEO uses 'pattern recognition' to make business decisions — and so does Warren Buffett

• Michael Rubin attributes his business success to a set of skills he calls "pattern recognition."
• He told Jay Shetty's podcast those skills help him vet candidates for jobs as well.

A billionaire CEO said he uses "pattern recognition" to help him make smart business decisions.

Michael Rubin, the founder and CEO of sports merchandise company Fanatics, told Jay Shetty's podcast about the role that pattern recognition plays in business success. His comments were first reported by CNBC Make It.

Rubin, whose company was valued at $31 billion in 2022 and Forbes estimates is worth $11.5 billion, told Shetty he used those skills to decide whether to hire a candidate after a job interview.

"If I like them, as soon as they leave, I go out and start calling people that I knew that we have in common to recognize patterns. To me, 50% is the interview and 50% is what I learn behind the scenes," Rubin said.

"Some of them could blow me away but you find out one minute that person sucks, people don't like working with them. Or you can find out that person was a little bit understated, but they're a beast, they've got huge followership, they're super smart, they've got an unrelenting work ethic."

Rubin added: "So to me pattern recognition is everything — I use it in everything that I do."

Legendary investor and billionaire Warren Buffett also makes important decisions based on recognizing patterns.

Alice Schroeder, Buffett's biographer, said in a 2010 interview: "Pattern recognition is one of his primary skills and perhaps his greatest skill."

Buffett's approach is to buy stock in companies he thinks will become more valuable over the long term.

"I think about what a company's going to be worth 10 or 20 years from now, and I hope it goes down when I buy it because I'll buy more," he once said.

At Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting in 2016, Buffett said he'd been urged to invest in Valeant Pharmaceuticals, now known as Bausch Health Companies.

However, he believed its business model was "deeply flawed" and wouldn't prosper in the long term.

It appears Buffett was right, as the company was later accused by the SEC of price gouging, sending its share price plummeting.