Well...yes and no. We can argue about whether Softbanks plan of handing out billions to let tech companies blitzscale and obtain market dominance via first move

Well...yes and no. We can argue about whether Softbanks plan of handing out billions to let tech companies blitzscale and obtain market dominance via first mover advantage and network effects and the power of SaaS economics (good scaling; low capital intensiveness) and so forth was a good idea or not. But WeWork was 1) not a tech company 2) had no hope of obtaining market dominance 3) wasn't the first mover 4) existed in a market with no network effects 5) wasn't a SaaS company but instead was in a capital intensive business that scaled linearly. No part of the Softbank plan applied here! > Turns out when you Silicon Valley tech executives a billion dollars What about when you hand some real estate developers...what did it end up being in the end? $18.5B dollars? (On a similar note, in other markets - specifically ride hailing - Softbank picked multiple competitors in a single market and funded both sides ensuring no single market leader would emerge. Again, even if the core Softbank strategy would have worked, it can't work when you don't even try and follow it.)