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You’ve got to applaud Masayoshi Son for his tenacity at the very least. Lived through the Dot Com Crash, caused the next one 20 years later. That’s a big achie

You’ve got to applaud Masayoshi Son for his tenacity at the very least. Lived through the Dot Com Crash, caused the next one 20 years later. That’s a big achievement in my book. How many people can really say they’ve been able to do something like that? [Edit] I should probably add a caveat that Masayoshi Son isn’t the dumb one here. No, he’s actually quite the genius, managing to convince Saudia Arabia to basically give him $45 billion and then spinning that all the way into $100 billion with the Vision Fund. I’m genuinely giving praise to the man here. He saw an opportunity and took advantage of it.

quaquaqua1 7y ago
Serial market crasher, see you in 2040 for when I finally end up on the correct side of the market and can turn my stock into cash and my cash in yachts.
baxtr 7y ago
Agree. He for sure had a exciting life so far...
jore 7y ago
I wonder if his investments could really trigger something like that. Are there other investments of the Vision fund that are falling apart besides WeWork and Wag?
- Judgmentality 7y ago
  Uber (lost money on the IPO), Cruise (just delayed their launch, still have no product or revenue), they bought Boston Dynamics (super awesome technology but the business doesn't seem viable), Light (really awesome idea to change mobile photography, but seems an obvious failure at this point), Zume (a pizza chain buildings robots that's raised hundreds of millions of dollars...they do not have any production robots), Nuro (another overhyped self-driving startup, because Uber and Cruise weren't enough billions)...this is not an exhaustive list. I have repeatedly said SoftBank is some of the dumbest money in the Valley, and I stand by that proclamation. https://www.businessinsider.com/running-list-softbank-investments-2017-7#brightstar-acquired-for-22-billion-49 https://www.businessinsider.com/running-list-softbank-invest... Now that said, it is expected that most investments in any VC portfolio will fail! Something like a 70% failure rate, with 20% being moderately successful, and 10% being very successful is considered very good for the VC industry. But at the end of the day it's ROI - you make money or you lose money. I think SoftBank is going to lose more money than all the other VC firms simply because they started with more money to lose.
  - threeseed 7y ago
    Being pretty negative on those companies. 1) Uber strategically is looking pretty good. They are the market leader in most countries and their Uber Eats business is turning out to be quite lucrative. 2) Self driving cars is a long term project so of course Cruise isn't going to have anything released just yet. 3) Boston Dynamics just launched their latest robot and has already seen pretty good adoption amongst enterprise customers. There is a huge need just in the resources industry for technologies to assist with compliance. Let along going more mass-market like construction sites. 4) Light have pivoted to being an autonomous car sensor company. And as we know there is significant potential demand in this space. 5) Nuro actually has more potential than most of the self driving car companies around by aggressively focusing on a single use case i.e. consumer goods delivery.
    - Judgmentality 7y ago
      You effectively summarized all my points towards "Uber is fine," "Boston Dynamics is fine," and "self-driving cars are fine." Uber is hemorrhaging money and are still competing against Lyft. What is their path towards profitability other than raising prices and losing customers? How do they become anything other than a glorified taxi company? Even if you disagree with me, you can't deny that the stock is trending downwards right now and is expected to continue to fall until after the lockup period for employees is up - that's when I think we'll see a glimpse of what Uber is really worth. Boston Dynamics has been passed around constantly because nobody wants to keep them once they realize they can't make money. Spot is a cool robot, but they don't release a price. How many people want to spend the better part of $100k (or a leasing option) on something with incredibly limited utility? The market is tiny since the military keeps rejecting their machines. If you believe in self-driving being the future, fine. Then that's a logical bet. I adamantly believe self-driving is like nuclear fusion - it's decades and tens of billions of dollars away from being commercially viable, if ever. > Being pretty negative on those companies. That's because I know how easy it is to make demoware and how hard it is to make a real product.
      - rauchp 7y ago
- huac 7y ago
  uber (see stock), cruise (tbf, everyone overvalued the AV space), slack (see stock), zume pizza (come on), brandless (https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/26/report-softbank-backed-brandless-gets-a-new-ceo-amid-turmoil-at-the-company/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/26/report-softbank-backed-bra...), compass (https://www.wsj.com/articles/softbank-backed-real-estate-broker-compass-hit-by-high-level-exits-11569439433 https://www.wsj.com/articles/softbank-backed-real-estate-bro...) ... Which investments are doing well? Maybe Paytm?
  - threeseed 7y ago
    Zume Pizza isn't just about making pizzas. It's about being able to build autonomous restaurants. Combine that with autonomous deliveries and you have the potential for food to be delivered to people without any people involved. Given we have an ageing population which may involve lots of people unable to leave the house this could be a trillion dollar market.
    - huac 7y ago
      that's a very expensive vision (though I agree that it can be meaningful!), and getting there requires a lot of capital. even though it might not be about pizza in the future, it definitely is right now, and a $2B+ valuation is very rich there, esp compared to Dominos at $10B which is also very tech and automation focused, and delivering to more than 3 communities in the Peninsula/East Bay. achieving capital intensive goals either involves having strong cash flow to reinvest into your R&D (which is what Amazon did) or having continued cash infusements (which is the Softbank strategy). WeWork is a great example of what happens when the money runs out. the Softbank-specific angle here is that they promised 7% yearly payouts to the Saudis. the yearly dividend means that they need to extract liquid cash value out of their investments each year. surely you would agree that Zume and other similar investments are long-term speculations, and in the short term are not likely to pay much of a dividend or return through IPO either. however, Softbank is incentivized to push their investments to return value in the short term. so I'm personally very skeptical that their short-term commitments can allow them to be good stewards of companies with very long-term ambitions.
hogFeast 7y ago
Masa Son in 1999: loses $70bn in net worth in half year. Masa Son in 2019: hold my beer, watch dis.
- kamyarg 7y ago
  TIL Masayoshi Son has the distinction of losing the most money in history (approximately $70bn during the dot com crash of 2000). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masayoshi_Son https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masayoshi_Son
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    I remember reading some commentary about how losing billions is perversely a good thing to have on your resume, as it implies: - someone trusted you with billions - you weren't too paralyzed by fear of risk to do anything useful - you might even have learned from the experience Also see The "Parable of the Talents", in Matthew 25:14–30.
wp381640 7y ago
Masayoshi Son took what Yuri Milner did but supercharged it - we all thought Milner and his investments and valuations were insane ($3.5 billion for Facebook - nuts!), but Softbank took it to a whole new level and ran out of growth to invest into

quaquaqua1 7y ago

Serial market crasher, see you in 2040 for when I finally end up on the correct side of the market and can turn my stock into cash and my cash in yachts.

baxtr 7y ago

Agree. He for sure had a exciting life so far...

jore 7y ago

I wonder if his investments could really trigger something like that. Are there other investments of the Vision fund that are falling apart besides WeWork and Wag?

Judgmentality 7y ago
Uber (lost money on the IPO), Cruise (just delayed their launch, still have no product or revenue), they bought Boston Dynamics (super awesome technology but the business doesn't seem viable), Light (really awesome idea to change mobile photography, but seems an obvious failure at this point), Zume (a pizza chain buildings robots that's raised hundreds of millions of dollars...they do not have any production robots), Nuro (another overhyped self-driving startup, because Uber and Cruise weren't enough billions)...this is not an exhaustive list. I have repeatedly said SoftBank is some of the dumbest money in the Valley, and I stand by that proclamation. https://www.businessinsider.com/running-list-softbank-investments-2017-7#brightstar-acquired-for-22-billion-49 https://www.businessinsider.com/running-list-softbank-invest... Now that said, it is expected that most investments in any VC portfolio will fail! Something like a 70% failure rate, with 20% being moderately successful, and 10% being very successful is considered very good for the VC industry. But at the end of the day it's ROI - you make money or you lose money. I think SoftBank is going to lose more money than all the other VC firms simply because they started with more money to lose.
- threeseed 7y ago
  Being pretty negative on those companies. 1) Uber strategically is looking pretty good. They are the market leader in most countries and their Uber Eats business is turning out to be quite lucrative. 2) Self driving cars is a long term project so of course Cruise isn't going to have anything released just yet. 3) Boston Dynamics just launched their latest robot and has already seen pretty good adoption amongst enterprise customers. There is a huge need just in the resources industry for technologies to assist with compliance. Let along going more mass-market like construction sites. 4) Light have pivoted to being an autonomous car sensor company. And as we know there is significant potential demand in this space. 5) Nuro actually has more potential than most of the self driving car companies around by aggressively focusing on a single use case i.e. consumer goods delivery.
  - Judgmentality 7y ago
    You effectively summarized all my points towards "Uber is fine," "Boston Dynamics is fine," and "self-driving cars are fine." Uber is hemorrhaging money and are still competing against Lyft. What is their path towards profitability other than raising prices and losing customers? How do they become anything other than a glorified taxi company? Even if you disagree with me, you can't deny that the stock is trending downwards right now and is expected to continue to fall until after the lockup period for employees is up - that's when I think we'll see a glimpse of what Uber is really worth. Boston Dynamics has been passed around constantly because nobody wants to keep them once they realize they can't make money. Spot is a cool robot, but they don't release a price. How many people want to spend the better part of $100k (or a leasing option) on something with incredibly limited utility? The market is tiny since the military keeps rejecting their machines. If you believe in self-driving being the future, fine. Then that's a logical bet. I adamantly believe self-driving is like nuclear fusion - it's decades and tens of billions of dollars away from being commercially viable, if ever. > Being pretty negative on those companies. That's because I know how easy it is to make demoware and how hard it is to make a real product.
    - rauchp 7y ago
huac 7y ago
uber (see stock), cruise (tbf, everyone overvalued the AV space), slack (see stock), zume pizza (come on), brandless (https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/26/report-softbank-backed-brandless-gets-a-new-ceo-amid-turmoil-at-the-company/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/26/report-softbank-backed-bra...), compass (https://www.wsj.com/articles/softbank-backed-real-estate-broker-compass-hit-by-high-level-exits-11569439433 https://www.wsj.com/articles/softbank-backed-real-estate-bro...) ... Which investments are doing well? Maybe Paytm?
- threeseed 7y ago
  Zume Pizza isn't just about making pizzas. It's about being able to build autonomous restaurants. Combine that with autonomous deliveries and you have the potential for food to be delivered to people without any people involved. Given we have an ageing population which may involve lots of people unable to leave the house this could be a trillion dollar market.
  - huac 7y ago
    that's a very expensive vision (though I agree that it can be meaningful!), and getting there requires a lot of capital. even though it might not be about pizza in the future, it definitely is right now, and a $2B+ valuation is very rich there, esp compared to Dominos at $10B which is also very tech and automation focused, and delivering to more than 3 communities in the Peninsula/East Bay. achieving capital intensive goals either involves having strong cash flow to reinvest into your R&D (which is what Amazon did) or having continued cash infusements (which is the Softbank strategy). WeWork is a great example of what happens when the money runs out. the Softbank-specific angle here is that they promised 7% yearly payouts to the Saudis. the yearly dividend means that they need to extract liquid cash value out of their investments each year. surely you would agree that Zume and other similar investments are long-term speculations, and in the short term are not likely to pay much of a dividend or return through IPO either. however, Softbank is incentivized to push their investments to return value in the short term. so I'm personally very skeptical that their short-term commitments can allow them to be good stewards of companies with very long-term ambitions.

hogFeast 7y ago

Masa Son in 1999: loses $70bn in net worth in half year. Masa Son in 2019: hold my beer, watch dis.

kamyarg 7y ago
TIL Masayoshi Son has the distinction of losing the most money in history (approximately $70bn during the dot com crash of 2000). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masayoshi_Son https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masayoshi_Son
- perl4ever 7y ago
  I remember reading some commentary about how losing billions is perversely a good thing to have on your resume, as it implies: - someone trusted you with billions - you weren't too paralyzed by fear of risk to do anything useful - you might even have learned from the experience Also see The "Parable of the Talents", in Matthew 25:14–30.

wp381640 7y ago

Masayoshi Son took what Yuri Milner did but supercharged it - we all thought Milner and his investments and valuations were insane ($3.5 billion for Facebook - nuts!), but Softbank took it to a whole new level and ran out of growth to invest into