8 ms·

The impact of Masayoshi Son’s $100B fund will be profound

117 points by waqasaday 8y ago

cylinder 8y ago
It's these kinds of larger than life personalities who carry humanity forward, or at least make the big leaps possible. Not the conservative ivy league money manilupulators now pretending to be tech visionaries at VC firms in exchange for a quick skim off the top.
- aijoe 8y ago
  It's also their mothers.
- collyw 8y ago
  Tim Berners Lee never came across as large than life personality. I would say he had quite a profound impact on things. More than "larger than life" type Steve Jobs IMHO.
  - nickpeterson 8y ago
    You're speaking of real history, not the watered down version that gets taught to school children. Unfortunately, without concerted effort, the public will willfully reject an alternate history if it's more nuanced. Exhibit A, who invented the telephone?
    - purple-again 8y ago
      That is a really bad example to use as there is no general agreement on the issue. The Italian government obviously has a biased opinion in wanting to credit one of their citizens(I’m actually confused if he was Italian or American because it said his invention was in New York). I don’t know what skin in the game Canada has when they passed a resolution recognizing Bell Graham as the inventor. Honestly to me it looks like there is not a clear answer. You can pick either of them you want, draw an abitrary line in the sand about what a ‘telephone’ really is and use that line to defend your choice. Any rational argument on the topic will have to start with both parties agreeing on what a telephone is first and then looking at the two parties to see which invented their agreed definition.
  - innagadadavida 8y ago
    There were other competing ideas to http and html. They were better but unfortunately lost out. Tim is incredibly lucky that what he wrote for his PhD unexpectedly took off - he is also a one hit wonder. Steve’s story is vastly different.
    - erikpukinskis 8y ago
      Yeah, I appreciate TBL, but I don’t think he can take credit for the web. The web picked his project as its nest, more than he did anything to conjure it.
- kyleblarson 8y ago
  It's more Standord that Ivy Leagers.
- knuththetruth 8y ago
  Masayoshi Son nearly destroyed his entire business during the dotcom crash, and was really only saved by his investment in Alibaba, an essentially state-owned technology company. It’s weird to frame his success in some “great man of history” terms when the only reason he’s still wealthy and powerful is because of his alliance with the world’s largest authoritarian regime?
- adamsea 8y ago
  ... and they reach their great heights of monumentousness without help, learning, encouragement or support from useless people like caring mothers, fathers, teachers, and mentors /sarcasm
meuk 8y ago
This is paywalled, and the web link does not work.
- Rainymood 8y ago
  https://web.archive.org/web/20180513073120/https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21741969-it-giving-new-opportunities-entrepreneurs-and-forcing-silicon-valleys-best-stay https://web.archive.org/web/20180513073120/https://www.econo...
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - meuk 8y ago
    Thanks (I didn't think of using wayback machine), but it doesn't work either.
    - JoachimSchipper 8y ago
      The original link works for me, for what that is worth...
    - ShorsHammer 8y ago
      https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/6ll6uo/how_jump_the_the_economist_paywall/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/6ll6uo/how_jump_the...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
RichardHeart 8y ago
If you mash the escape button before the paywall loads, it doesn't load.
- sah2ed 8y ago
  Shhh. Don't give their development team ideas ;)
- flowless 8y ago
  With noscript it doesn't even get a chance to load.
chrischen 8y ago
> The dotcom crash of 2001 wiped out 99% of SoftBank’s market value. > But one investment—$20m sunk into Alibaba—is regarded as one of the best in history. The Chinese internet titan went public in 2014 in the world’s biggest IPO. SoftBank’s 28% stake in the firm is now worth $140bn. Kind of mind-boggling who the real titan is here: Alibaba. Both Softbank and the late Yahoo (USA)'s core value were derived solely on Alibaba's market cap, able to prop up whole other companies. I've always assumed that Softbank was getting its money from Softbank, but surprising to learn they derived most of their value from Alibaba stock just like Yahoo. If you've ever seen their Pepper robots, it's pretty indicative of how dysfunctional their main offerings are. The robot is somehow everywhere in Japan, but 100% useless as well.
- ekianjo 8y ago
  Yeah Pepper was just some PR effort. This is a dumb robot with an integrated tablet that is asking you to click on it. Its just ridiculous.
- minikomi 8y ago
  I've interacted with the robot a few times at stores and every time I've come away feeling more annoyed with technology. It really is a shoddy piece of work.
- onetimemanytime 8y ago
  > The dotcom crash of 2001 wiped out 99% of SoftBank’s market value. > But one investment—$20m sunk into Alibaba—is regarded as one of the best in history. The Chinese internet titan went public in 2014 in the world’s biggest IPO. SoftBank’s 28% stake in the firm is now worth $140bn. Frankly that's luck. No doubt he is smart and has smart people working for him but that's pure luck. All but one gone and that tiny $20 mil investment saves it all.
  - thankthunk 8y ago
    > Frankly that's luck. No doubt he is smart and has smart people working for him but that's pure luck. All investment is "luck" if you put it that way. > All but one gone and that tiny $20 mil investment saves it all. That investment didn't save it all. Softbank was a multibillion dollar company before and after their investment in alibaba. With or without alibaba, they would still be around. Not sure where you are getting the idea that alibaba saved softbank. Softbank's Alibaba stake makes softbank very valuable, but it would be around without alibaba.
TeMPOraL 8y ago
SoftBank seems to be all over HN this year; I see it mentioned in comments all the time, as some very well known and important player. But I swear I didn't even know that name when this year started. So what's going on? Is it me just not paying attention? Or did something change, and suddenly made this company interesting?
- caligarn 8y ago
  They’ve been around for a long time but the Valley historically doesn’t pay attention to non-Valley players until they reach Valley shores. Softbank, after all, was one of the only very early investors in Alibaba. Alibaba wasn’t even on the Valley’s radar until they IPO’ed. Californian tech folks can’t help but see only within a 100-mile radius.
  - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
    For a company that had little non Asian presence, not knowing what soft bank is very reasonable. It’s like knowing about ICBC, the largest bank in the world but most people have never seen a branch of it. Couple that with them being like an investment firm outside of Japan. They could be as obscure as Berkshire, a big player, but one most consumers don’t come into contact with.
- adventured 8y ago
  > So what's going on? Is it me just not paying attention? It was you not paying attention. Softbank has been doing this at a big level for ~23 years now. They had a $40 billion stake in Yahoo at the peak of the dotcom bubble (first stake was purchased for $2m in 1995) and had invested into at least a hundred start-ups back then. 1999, Forbes, Master of the Internet "Venture capitalists scoffed when Christos Cotsakos hit the road in the spring of 1996 to round up $9 million for his fledgling on-line brokerage, E-Trade. It took Masayoshi Son's venture firm just 30 minutes to agree to fork over the funds." "All told, Son has invested $1.7 billion in more than 100 Internet companies. Softbank and its venture capital arm have sunk $906 million into eight Internet firms that have gone public, an investment now worth $14.1 billion. Son is now about to invest at least $1.2 billion more in the next few months. By Son's count, Softbank holds 7% to 8% of the publicly listed value of all Internet properties" https://www.forbes.com/forbes/1999/0705/6401146a.html https://www.forbes.com/forbes/1999/0705/6401146a.html https://nypost.com/2000/06/02/yahoo-softbank-cashes-out/ https://nypost.com/2000/06/02/yahoo-softbank-cashes-out/
petra 8y ago
So $33B has been invested. What has been done with this money, besides mergers and financial stuff? What has been built that wouldn't have been built with regular sums of money ?
- charlesdm 8y ago
  The fund isn't about building stuff. It's about trying to acquire key components of the digital and internet based economy. So mergers and financial stuff is the intent -- it's essentially a digital infrastructure fund. To be fair, if he gets one or two homeruns (like with Alibaba) the returns for the fund will be positive. Quite remarkable actually, 90% of these investments could go to zero, and he might still end up making a boatload.
  - aaavl2821 8y ago
    I think it will be much much more difficult to get a market beating return with a $100B fund than the $1.7B SoftBank invested back in the 1990s. The denominator is a huge issue -- to get a 3x on a $100B fund, which most VCs target and what is roughly needed to beat the market over the ~10 year life of a fund you need your investments to generate $200B of value. That's 25% of Alphabets value for reference. So if 90% go to zero, he'd not only need to catch the next Google but also would need to own 25% of it when it's worth $800B Even if he did alibaba again, unlikely bc it was one of the best investments ever, the current stake is only worth $140B. If that's your only winner you'd be better off buying mutual funds His strategy probably isn't just to get a financial return like typical VCs, he probable has more of a financial engineering / corporate raider / empire building strategy
    - petra 8y ago
      Can you please explain your last sentence ?
      - aaavl2821 8y ago
        I think the vision fund will probably act less like a typical VC fund and more like a private equity / leveraged buyout fund. Rather than invest in really early but promising companies, invest in companies that are more mature and are leaders in industries with high growth potential. And then use your huge wallet as a weapon to move and shape those industries as you see fit The ride sharing market is an example. He's invested in several ride sharing cos with leadership in different geographies. If a company doesn't want his money, he can threaten to give $5B to a competitor. That's an almost predatory, and certainly not founder friendly move. not quite as aggressive as Carl Icahn for ex, but certainly not something most VCs would do (maybe I'm giving VCs too much credit). Once he invests in a company I imagine he will use each company as a chess piece in reshaping industries. If there's a battle between two ride sharing companies over leadership of a new market, he'll probably be in a position to influence how that plays out. So maybe the fund is less about investing in innovation and more about staking claims to pieces of the digital economy and playing a game of chess against the rest of the global tech industry
l5870uoo9y 8y ago
> Putting $4.4bn into WeWork, a provider of shared workspaces, valuing it at $20bn, is another risky bet. The firm leases office space, redesigns it to create a hip vibe and sublets it to startups, freelancers and some big firms. The worry is that WeWork is little more than a commercial-property company that is unjustifiably trading on a tech valuation and will soon be rumbled. I was impressed by how fast WeWork expands. In Berlin it now has 7 co-working spaces all fairly close located. They recently bought meetup.com.
- mxschumacher 8y ago
  a couple of coworking spaces pale in comparison to $4.4bn in equity investments. they are looking for a return of more than 10% p.a. It'll take lots of design freelancers to produce $500m in cash
- nikanj 8y ago
  It’s easy to expand fast, when you expand by burn, not by customer acquisition. Want to have 10x empty offices in 10x cities? Just burn 100x more money.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- dalbasal 8y ago
  "commercial-property company that is unjustifiably trading on a tech valuation" I kind of wonder which way the causation runs. Those "tech multiples" are supposedly a reflection of profit & growth potential. Growth requires investment. Margins tend to be in some way linked to investment too. It's easier to have a better margin if (a) you have cheap money and (b) if you can afford to take some risks for long term gain. Both have to do with multiples. Why doesn't Tesla have an auto manufacturer multiple?
visarga 8y ago
I don't appreciate articles from paywalled newspapers. I can't read them and don't want to do any tricks to gain access. The net is large and full of well written articles that are accessible to read. Let's ignore the paywalled bunch and focus on the open and free.
- collyw 8y ago
  Right click and open in a private window. Not that difficult.
  - visarga 8y ago
    Good idea. Thanks. I will use it.
- sdwa 8y ago
  News is not fungible though, so even if there many good free news article, and there are, it has little relevance here. Besides, there's a great deal of good to be said for paywalls in my option, as I find most of what's funded exclusively by ads is pure trash.
- mxschumacher 8y ago
  the economist publishes articles of extraordinary quality and offers quite a few of them for free. This is not the financial times
  - thankthunk 8y ago
    > the economist publishes articles of extraordinary quality No they don't. They offer fluff. This article is just fluff and years old news. Maybe because I work in the tech industry, but this article didn't offer anything of value. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that $100 billion dollar fund dedicated to tech investing ( especially in developing nations ) is going to have an impact.
    - mxschumacher 8y ago
lingzb 8y ago
$100B will completely change landscape given the total amount of VC investment per year has only been around $100B to date. Exact figure depends on what source you look at but here's one: https://www.statista.com/statistics/277501/venture-capital-amount-invested-in-the-united-states-since-1995/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/277501/venture-capital-a...
ajmurmann 8y ago
If anyone is interested to get a good understanding of Softbank's history and the Vision fund, I can strongly recommend a recent, lengthy episode the great Acquired podcast did on it: http://www.acquired.fm/episodes/2018/3/22/season-2-episode-4softbank-fortress-and-the-vision-fund http://www.acquired.fm/episodes/2018/3/22/season-2-episode-4...
jgalt212 8y ago
Who runs purchasing at Improbable? That person can put my kids and their cousins through college.
maym86 8y ago
At this point can SoftBank make winners in silicon valley by pouring money on companies and having the other companies they have invested in support each other by using each others products? Is this good/bad for the silicon valley ecosystem? Is there a point at which massive investment groups get treated as monoplies and regulated? Uber and Grab (both SoftBank investments) merged into one in the Philippines: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-26/grab-vanquishes-uber-with-local-strategy-billions-from-softbank https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-26/grab-vanq...
telltruth 8y ago
SoftBank had been good news and bad news both at the same time for tech. The good news is that they have so much money that they don’t know what to do with it. On the top of this, they have moronic non-technical people who were only “technical” like a decade ago to do the evaluations. So if you have a startup and mild ability to hype up to these folks, you come out laughing with millions in your hand almost instantly. The bad news is that they are absolutely incompetent VCs. Just look at their recent investments in things like impossible io. Whenever I think who the hell in their right mind will invest in this completely bogus and fraudulent company, SoftBank comes around and buys them up with billion dollars. They have no differentiation between betting on risky startup vs betting on bogus startup. They are currently biggest party responsible for hyping up lots of startups for absolutely no apparent reason.

117 points by waqasaday 8y ago

It's these kinds of larger than life personalities who carry humanity forward, or at least make the big leaps possible. Not the conservative ivy league money manilupulators now pretending to be tech visionaries at VC firms in exchange for a quick skim off the top.

aijoe 8y ago
It's also their mothers.
collyw 8y ago
Tim Berners Lee never came across as large than life personality. I would say he had quite a profound impact on things. More than "larger than life" type Steve Jobs IMHO.
- nickpeterson 8y ago
  You're speaking of real history, not the watered down version that gets taught to school children. Unfortunately, without concerted effort, the public will willfully reject an alternate history if it's more nuanced. Exhibit A, who invented the telephone?
  - purple-again 8y ago
    That is a really bad example to use as there is no general agreement on the issue. The Italian government obviously has a biased opinion in wanting to credit one of their citizens(I’m actually confused if he was Italian or American because it said his invention was in New York). I don’t know what skin in the game Canada has when they passed a resolution recognizing Bell Graham as the inventor. Honestly to me it looks like there is not a clear answer. You can pick either of them you want, draw an abitrary line in the sand about what a ‘telephone’ really is and use that line to defend your choice. Any rational argument on the topic will have to start with both parties agreeing on what a telephone is first and then looking at the two parties to see which invented their agreed definition.
- innagadadavida 8y ago
  There were other competing ideas to http and html. They were better but unfortunately lost out. Tim is incredibly lucky that what he wrote for his PhD unexpectedly took off - he is also a one hit wonder. Steve’s story is vastly different.
  - erikpukinskis 8y ago
    Yeah, I appreciate TBL, but I don’t think he can take credit for the web. The web picked his project as its nest, more than he did anything to conjure it.
kyleblarson 8y ago
It's more Standord that Ivy Leagers.
knuththetruth 8y ago
Masayoshi Son nearly destroyed his entire business during the dotcom crash, and was really only saved by his investment in Alibaba, an essentially state-owned technology company. It’s weird to frame his success in some “great man of history” terms when the only reason he’s still wealthy and powerful is because of his alliance with the world’s largest authoritarian regime?
adamsea 8y ago
... and they reach their great heights of monumentousness without help, learning, encouragement or support from useless people like caring mothers, fathers, teachers, and mentors /sarcasm

meuk 8y ago

This is paywalled, and the web link does not work.

Rainymood 8y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20180513073120/https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21741969-it-giving-new-opportunities-entrepreneurs-and-forcing-silicon-valleys-best-stay https://web.archive.org/web/20180513073120/https://www.econo...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- meuk 8y ago
  Thanks (I didn't think of using wayback machine), but it doesn't work either.
  - JoachimSchipper 8y ago
    The original link works for me, for what that is worth...
  - ShorsHammer 8y ago
    https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/6ll6uo/how_jump_the_the_economist_paywall/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/6ll6uo/how_jump_the...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

RichardHeart 8y ago

If you mash the escape button before the paywall loads, it doesn't load.

sah2ed 8y ago
Shhh. Don't give their development team ideas ;)
flowless 8y ago
With noscript it doesn't even get a chance to load.

chrischen 8y ago

> The dotcom crash of 2001 wiped out 99% of SoftBank’s market value. > But one investment—$20m sunk into Alibaba—is regarded as one of the best in history. The Chinese internet titan went public in 2014 in the world’s biggest IPO. SoftBank’s 28% stake in the firm is now worth $140bn. Kind of mind-boggling who the real titan is here: Alibaba. Both Softbank and the late Yahoo (USA)'s core value were derived solely on Alibaba's market cap, able to prop up whole other companies. I've always assumed that Softbank was getting its money from Softbank, but surprising to learn they derived most of their value from Alibaba stock just like Yahoo. If you've ever seen their Pepper robots, it's pretty indicative of how dysfunctional their main offerings are. The robot is somehow everywhere in Japan, but 100% useless as well.

ekianjo 8y ago
Yeah Pepper was just some PR effort. This is a dumb robot with an integrated tablet that is asking you to click on it. Its just ridiculous.
minikomi 8y ago
I've interacted with the robot a few times at stores and every time I've come away feeling more annoyed with technology. It really is a shoddy piece of work.
onetimemanytime 8y ago
> The dotcom crash of 2001 wiped out 99% of SoftBank’s market value. > But one investment—$20m sunk into Alibaba—is regarded as one of the best in history. The Chinese internet titan went public in 2014 in the world’s biggest IPO. SoftBank’s 28% stake in the firm is now worth $140bn. Frankly that's luck. No doubt he is smart and has smart people working for him but that's pure luck. All but one gone and that tiny $20 mil investment saves it all.
- thankthunk 8y ago
  > Frankly that's luck. No doubt he is smart and has smart people working for him but that's pure luck. All investment is "luck" if you put it that way. > All but one gone and that tiny $20 mil investment saves it all. That investment didn't save it all. Softbank was a multibillion dollar company before and after their investment in alibaba. With or without alibaba, they would still be around. Not sure where you are getting the idea that alibaba saved softbank. Softbank's Alibaba stake makes softbank very valuable, but it would be around without alibaba.

TeMPOraL 8y ago

SoftBank seems to be all over HN this year; I see it mentioned in comments all the time, as some very well known and important player. But I swear I didn't even know that name when this year started. So what's going on? Is it me just not paying attention? Or did something change, and suddenly made this company interesting?

caligarn 8y ago
They’ve been around for a long time but the Valley historically doesn’t pay attention to non-Valley players until they reach Valley shores. Softbank, after all, was one of the only very early investors in Alibaba. Alibaba wasn’t even on the Valley’s radar until they IPO’ed. Californian tech folks can’t help but see only within a 100-mile radius.
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  For a company that had little non Asian presence, not knowing what soft bank is very reasonable. It’s like knowing about ICBC, the largest bank in the world but most people have never seen a branch of it. Couple that with them being like an investment firm outside of Japan. They could be as obscure as Berkshire, a big player, but one most consumers don’t come into contact with.
adventured 8y ago
> So what's going on? Is it me just not paying attention? It was you not paying attention. Softbank has been doing this at a big level for ~23 years now. They had a $40 billion stake in Yahoo at the peak of the dotcom bubble (first stake was purchased for $2m in 1995) and had invested into at least a hundred start-ups back then. 1999, Forbes, Master of the Internet "Venture capitalists scoffed when Christos Cotsakos hit the road in the spring of 1996 to round up $9 million for his fledgling on-line brokerage, E-Trade. It took Masayoshi Son's venture firm just 30 minutes to agree to fork over the funds." "All told, Son has invested $1.7 billion in more than 100 Internet companies. Softbank and its venture capital arm have sunk $906 million into eight Internet firms that have gone public, an investment now worth $14.1 billion. Son is now about to invest at least $1.2 billion more in the next few months. By Son's count, Softbank holds 7% to 8% of the publicly listed value of all Internet properties" https://www.forbes.com/forbes/1999/0705/6401146a.html https://www.forbes.com/forbes/1999/0705/6401146a.html https://nypost.com/2000/06/02/yahoo-softbank-cashes-out/ https://nypost.com/2000/06/02/yahoo-softbank-cashes-out/

petra 8y ago

So $33B has been invested. What has been done with this money, besides mergers and financial stuff? What has been built that wouldn't have been built with regular sums of money ?

charlesdm 8y ago
The fund isn't about building stuff. It's about trying to acquire key components of the digital and internet based economy. So mergers and financial stuff is the intent -- it's essentially a digital infrastructure fund. To be fair, if he gets one or two homeruns (like with Alibaba) the returns for the fund will be positive. Quite remarkable actually, 90% of these investments could go to zero, and he might still end up making a boatload.
- aaavl2821 8y ago
  I think it will be much much more difficult to get a market beating return with a $100B fund than the $1.7B SoftBank invested back in the 1990s. The denominator is a huge issue -- to get a 3x on a $100B fund, which most VCs target and what is roughly needed to beat the market over the ~10 year life of a fund you need your investments to generate $200B of value. That's 25% of Alphabets value for reference. So if 90% go to zero, he'd not only need to catch the next Google but also would need to own 25% of it when it's worth $800B Even if he did alibaba again, unlikely bc it was one of the best investments ever, the current stake is only worth $140B. If that's your only winner you'd be better off buying mutual funds His strategy probably isn't just to get a financial return like typical VCs, he probable has more of a financial engineering / corporate raider / empire building strategy
  - petra 8y ago
    Can you please explain your last sentence ?
    - aaavl2821 8y ago
      I think the vision fund will probably act less like a typical VC fund and more like a private equity / leveraged buyout fund. Rather than invest in really early but promising companies, invest in companies that are more mature and are leaders in industries with high growth potential. And then use your huge wallet as a weapon to move and shape those industries as you see fit The ride sharing market is an example. He's invested in several ride sharing cos with leadership in different geographies. If a company doesn't want his money, he can threaten to give $5B to a competitor. That's an almost predatory, and certainly not founder friendly move. not quite as aggressive as Carl Icahn for ex, but certainly not something most VCs would do (maybe I'm giving VCs too much credit). Once he invests in a company I imagine he will use each company as a chess piece in reshaping industries. If there's a battle between two ride sharing companies over leadership of a new market, he'll probably be in a position to influence how that plays out. So maybe the fund is less about investing in innovation and more about staking claims to pieces of the digital economy and playing a game of chess against the rest of the global tech industry

l5870uoo9y 8y ago

> Putting $4.4bn into WeWork, a provider of shared workspaces, valuing it at $20bn, is another risky bet. The firm leases office space, redesigns it to create a hip vibe and sublets it to startups, freelancers and some big firms. The worry is that WeWork is little more than a commercial-property company that is unjustifiably trading on a tech valuation and will soon be rumbled. I was impressed by how fast WeWork expands. In Berlin it now has 7 co-working spaces all fairly close located. They recently bought meetup.com.

mxschumacher 8y ago
a couple of coworking spaces pale in comparison to $4.4bn in equity investments. they are looking for a return of more than 10% p.a. It'll take lots of design freelancers to produce $500m in cash
nikanj 8y ago
It’s easy to expand fast, when you expand by burn, not by customer acquisition. Want to have 10x empty offices in 10x cities? Just burn 100x more money.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
dalbasal 8y ago
"commercial-property company that is unjustifiably trading on a tech valuation" I kind of wonder which way the causation runs. Those "tech multiples" are supposedly a reflection of profit & growth potential. Growth requires investment. Margins tend to be in some way linked to investment too. It's easier to have a better margin if (a) you have cheap money and (b) if you can afford to take some risks for long term gain. Both have to do with multiples. Why doesn't Tesla have an auto manufacturer multiple?

visarga 8y ago

I don't appreciate articles from paywalled newspapers. I can't read them and don't want to do any tricks to gain access. The net is large and full of well written articles that are accessible to read. Let's ignore the paywalled bunch and focus on the open and free.

collyw 8y ago
Right click and open in a private window. Not that difficult.
- visarga 8y ago
  Good idea. Thanks. I will use it.
sdwa 8y ago
News is not fungible though, so even if there many good free news article, and there are, it has little relevance here. Besides, there's a great deal of good to be said for paywalls in my option, as I find most of what's funded exclusively by ads is pure trash.
mxschumacher 8y ago
the economist publishes articles of extraordinary quality and offers quite a few of them for free. This is not the financial times
- thankthunk 8y ago
  > the economist publishes articles of extraordinary quality No they don't. They offer fluff. This article is just fluff and years old news. Maybe because I work in the tech industry, but this article didn't offer anything of value. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that $100 billion dollar fund dedicated to tech investing ( especially in developing nations ) is going to have an impact.
  - mxschumacher 8y ago

lingzb 8y ago

$100B will completely change landscape given the total amount of VC investment per year has only been around $100B to date. Exact figure depends on what source you look at but here's one: https://www.statista.com/statistics/277501/venture-capital-amount-invested-in-the-united-states-since-1995/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/277501/venture-capital-a...

ajmurmann 8y ago

If anyone is interested to get a good understanding of Softbank's history and the Vision fund, I can strongly recommend a recent, lengthy episode the great Acquired podcast did on it: http://www.acquired.fm/episodes/2018/3/22/season-2-episode-4softbank-fortress-and-the-vision-fund http://www.acquired.fm/episodes/2018/3/22/season-2-episode-4...

jgalt212 8y ago

Who runs purchasing at Improbable? That person can put my kids and their cousins through college.

maym86 8y ago

At this point can SoftBank make winners in silicon valley by pouring money on companies and having the other companies they have invested in support each other by using each others products? Is this good/bad for the silicon valley ecosystem? Is there a point at which massive investment groups get treated as monoplies and regulated? Uber and Grab (both SoftBank investments) merged into one in the Philippines: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-26/grab-vanquishes-uber-with-local-strategy-billions-from-softbank https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-26/grab-vanq...

telltruth 8y ago

SoftBank had been good news and bad news both at the same time for tech. The good news is that they have so much money that they don’t know what to do with it. On the top of this, they have moronic non-technical people who were only “technical” like a decade ago to do the evaluations. So if you have a startup and mild ability to hype up to these folks, you come out laughing with millions in your hand almost instantly. The bad news is that they are absolutely incompetent VCs. Just look at their recent investments in things like impossible io. Whenever I think who the hell in their right mind will invest in this completely bogus and fraudulent company, SoftBank comes around and buys them up with billion dollars. They have no differentiation between betting on risky startup vs betting on bogus startup. They are currently biggest party responsible for hyping up lots of startups for absolutely no apparent reason.