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I believe Ito was instrumental in helping to launch Yahoo Japan. That may be where some of his wealth came from.

freyr 7y ago
From his MIT Media Lab bio: In Japan, he was a founder of Digital Garage and helped establish and later became CEO of the country’s first commercial Internet service provider. Probably netted him enough to set the rest in motion. Still, landing professorships at MIT and Harvard without a college degree is pretty wild.
- paggle 7y ago
  The Media Lab in particular is a corporate PR/money vehicle, it’s not really an academic lab like a cancer research institute. There is some real research there but also a lot of “stick 25 Arduinos in something and make a video for a Fortune 50 company who will give you $10 million”
rolltiide 7y ago
and/or a random portfolio investment of one of the VC funds he is an LP of and/or a lottery ticket and/or employment from multiple sources and picking stocks and/or a particularly lucrative real estate holding and/or it probably wasn't linear at all just like your wealth probably doesn't materialize linearly either so doesn't that make this whole discussion rather odd and clickbaity? I saw similar articles regarding Epstein and thought "thats not how any of this works?" if I was ever put under similar analysis nobody would know anything accurate, they would just google me and see a big crowdsale I was on the executive team of and saw that it collected several million dollars and assume "thats how I made my money" even though they have zero transparency on who was paid what and how, or how the organizations made its revenues or not, or the investing patterns and homeruns and leveraged losses I had - which resulted in a useful exemption from capital gains tax on my next homerun, and would have zero information about what partnerships I'm part of, what hedge funds I'm invested in, how any of those things perform, etc.

From his MIT Media Lab bio: In Japan, he was a founder of Digital Garage and helped establish and later became CEO of the country’s first commercial Internet service provider. Probably netted him enough to set the rest in motion. Still, landing professorships at MIT and Harvard without a college degree is pretty wild.

paggle 7y ago
The Media Lab in particular is a corporate PR/money vehicle, it’s not really an academic lab like a cancer research institute. There is some real research there but also a lot of “stick 25 Arduinos in something and make a video for a Fortune 50 company who will give you $10 million”

rolltiide 7y ago

and/or a random portfolio investment of one of the VC funds he is an LP of and/or a lottery ticket and/or employment from multiple sources and picking stocks and/or a particularly lucrative real estate holding and/or it probably wasn't linear at all just like your wealth probably doesn't materialize linearly either so doesn't that make this whole discussion rather odd and clickbaity? I saw similar articles regarding Epstein and thought "thats not how any of this works?" if I was ever put under similar analysis nobody would know anything accurate, they would just google me and see a big crowdsale I was on the executive team of and saw that it collected several million dollars and assume "thats how I made my money" even though they have zero transparency on who was paid what and how, or how the organizations made its revenues or not, or the investing patterns and homeruns and leveraged losses I had - which resulted in a useful exemption from capital gains tax on my next homerun, and would have zero information about what partnerships I'm part of, what hedge funds I'm invested in, how any of those things perform, etc.