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The Baffling World of Masayoshi Son's Presentations (2020)
https://archive.ph/HN8KZ https://archive.ph/HN8KZ
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- kencausey 3mo ago(2020)
- nippoo 3mo agoHere's an example of his latest presentation slides: https://group.softbank/media/Project/sbg/sbg/pdf/ir/investors/shareholders/2026/shareholders-meeting_46_05_en.pdf https://group.softbank/media/Project/sbg/sbg/pdf/ir/investor...
- helloplanets 3mo agoSlide number 55 is a beauty.
- financetechbro 3mo agoReally blurs the like between genius and crazy
- throwup238 3mo agoI think he left that line behind a long time ago.
- esafak 3mo agoI can't speak to the numbers, but the values it espouses sound reasonable.
- donkey_brains 3mo agoPreposterous. Clearly the goose is full of golden eggs
- sysguest 3mo agotranslation: goose has constipation
- akomtu 3mo agoASI as Alien Slop Intelligence is already here. The next phase is hardening the slop, I suppose.
- vavos 3mo agoGoose value 0?
- sysguest 3mo agohmm g00se?
- DANmode 3mo ago“Is the value of the goose 0?”
- Reubachi 3mo agoGosh that one got me good. I haven't had a genuine chuckle from a post on here in ages, nevermind one that's from a a CEO of a multibillion dollar firm, who's presentation I was up until that point more or less agreeing with. IE; It went from "ya know, this is actual a reasonable take to provide investors from a 70+ y/o CEO" to "Goose value 0?"
- NickC25 3mo agoSkimmed through this hoping it was some sort of joke, and there was a genuine "gotcha" moment before diving into the stuff professional analysts spend lots of time examining. Turns out, the joke was on me. I got pictures of fucking geese.
- littlekey 3mo agoI love slide 18 with the implication that researchers don't create and engineers don't think.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- aetherson 3mo agoI mean, he was pretty vindicated on Uber. Which kind of hurts me to say, I was a long time Uber bear. But it did indeed emerge from the pandemic stronger.
- returnInfinity 3mo agoyeah I was a uber bear too, some how it has turned around I was betting on the taxi drivers revolting, but the capital markets have prevailed
- nl 3mo agoIn what country would taxi drivers revolt? I think in most countries the drivers get paid by the taxi license holders and usually can make more money and/or more have more flexible working conditions driving for Uber. See eg https://www.statista.com/chart/6971/fare-deal-taxi-drivers-earnings-compared-to-uber/ https://www.statista.com/chart/6971/fare-deal-taxi-drivers-e...
- kleiba2 3mo ago> In what country would taxi drivers revolt? Germany.
- throwawaypath 3mo agoBetter the taxi drivers revolt in Germany than artists!
- protocolture 3mo ago>I was betting on the taxi drivers revolting, but the capital markets have prevailed Capital Markets found in favor of giant corporation Uber instead of giant corporation Cabcharge.
- porridgeraisin 3mo agoThe old taxi union+licensing+bully hybrid system common in many parts of the world was far worse than the cruelest thing uber could do.
- camillomiller 3mo agoMasayoshi Son for me has always been the best living example of survival bias. Got very lucky once, been taking terrible decisions ever since. Zuckerberg is another great example.
- piker 3mo agoThis makes no sense. Masa has at least 2 extraordinary investments and Zuck bought Insta for 1 billion USD.
- camillomiller 3mo agoAnd then spent 80 billion on the Metaverse, while actively making the world a worse place. Masayoshi son has lost absolutely stupid amount of money on things like WeWork, which he deemed as revolutionary as "AGI", which he is still pushing as inevitable. These are immensely stupid people, with a lot of capital and non-existen ability to self-reflect or care, both enormous advantages when you play a game that favors carelessness.
- InsideOutSanta 3mo agoIt's like somebody winning the lottery once, constantly investing all of their money into more lottery tickets, and going "holy shit, look at how smart I am at picking lottery numbers; I've already won something four times!"
- zemvpferreira 3mo agoGiven that the lottery has a typical expected value of -$1.00 per ticket you really should revise your opinion of how lucky/smart these people who repeatedly make tens of billions by pouring all their money into tickets are.
- camillomiller 3mo agoDavid Walsh and Zeljko Ranogajec would beg to differ: https://www.championbets.com.au/betting-academy-article/tassie-devils https://www.championbets.com.au/betting-academy-article/tass...
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- freefaler 3mo agothe one on top didn't work for me, this one did: https://archive.is/oe6NR https://archive.is/oe6NR
- JdeBP 3mo agoOne of Masayoshi Son's recent slideshows has been doing the rounds on the FediVerse this week. If you've seen people making odd comments about 'Goose was not valued.' or 'Goose value 71.' or 'eggs do not lay eggs' over the past few days then Son's 2026 presentation to shareholders is what they are going on about. * https://discuss.systems/@dev/116807460725864716 https://discuss.systems/@dev/116807460725864716 This is the context that a lot of us didn't have. Son has been doing this since 2010, the goose laying golden eggs going back to at least 2014, and the 2020 earnings report having a run of 23 slides of geese and eggs. Other weird things over the years have included dog telepathy and a representation of COVID-19 as flying unicorns jumping out of a ditch. As the Bloomberg people pointed out, this significantly came to the attention of the world outwith Japan, which largely boggled at some of the slideshows sans context, in 2019 and 2020. Part of the world is discovering this afresh in 2026. * https://vice.com/en/article/these-delusional-powerpoint-slides-show-how-softbank-wants-to-save-wework/ https://vice.com/en/article/these-delusional-powerpoint-slid... * https://trillium.substack.com/p/golden-geese-stirring-the-pot-shop https://trillium.substack.com/p/golden-geese-stirring-the-po... * https://group.softbank/system/files/pdf/ir/presentations/2020/earnings-presentation_q3fy2020_01_en.pdf https://group.softbank/system/files/pdf/ir/presentations/202... * https://group.softbank/media/Project/sbg/sbg/pdf/ir/presentations/2011/press_20100625_01_en.pdf#page=63 https://group.softbank/media/Project/sbg/sbg/pdf/ir/presenta... (https://group.softbank/en/news/webcast/20100625_01_en https://group.softbank/en/news/webcast/20100625_01_en) Some of the criticism over the years has focussed not on the more oddball aspects of these slideshows, but on the stereotypical way in which the graphs with projections just suddenly make lines shoot upwards.
- rendaw 3mo agoTBF the presentation as a whole makes a lot more sense than the 4 slides out of context.
- drumhead 3mo agoThe baffling thing is how SoftBank still hasn't gone under.
- zipy124 3mo agoLucky bets that paid off enough to cover thousands of bad investments.
- yen223 3mo agoThat's the nature of most venture capital isn't it? Downside is capped, upside is uncapped, why not bet on as many companies as you can?
- rendaw 3mo agoIs a small number of people with huge amounts of money investing in things nobody wants better than lots of people with small amounts of money investing in things they want?
- zipy124 3mo agoSoftbank aren't really doing this any more though. They are making very large bets on relatively few companies. Their vision fund 1 was something like 100 billion spread between about 100 companies, so 1 billion each. This is rather different than the usual VC. It's hard to get data, but most data suggest smaller rounds have better success [1]. [1]: https://carta.com/uk/en/data/vc-fund-size-performance-2024/ https://carta.com/uk/en/data/vc-fund-size-performance-2024/
- nerdsniper 3mo agoDue to the power law distribution of startup outcomes, the "expected value" of the "average" (mean) startup is infinity (assuming there are infinite startups). This means YC's model to invest a modest amount in as many startups as possible is the rational strategy. Even the tiniest percentage of equity in infinite companies yields infinite returns. This seems as counter-intuitive as saying "superconductors have zero resistance". It makes people think you meant to say "nearly zero resistance" or "approaches zero resistance". But both cases are true - the power law distribution really does tell us that the expected return is actually infinite and superconductors really do have zero resistance (up to the critical current limit).
- georgefrowny 3mo agoThey were right that economics is a dismal science, but to me these days it's not only about the ugly Moloch-like consequences, but also because these utter wierdos are in charge of it, and the medium of economic domination is a PowerPoint of nonsensical AI slop.
- actionfromafar 3mo agoTrue but these particular powerpoints predate AI slop by far.
- oersted 3mo agoI assume that the PowerPoints can be absolute slop because they do not matter at all, the power is elsewhere. It all comes to names here. The world puts waaay too much faith in successful people being successful again, and too much of the success is attributed to their inherent talent. It’s a classic fallacy of authority. Ironically, because everyone thinks that everyone thinks that they will succeed, investing on them does yield good returns, because others are likely to invest after. And they do indeed continue to succeed! It’s as arbitrary as tulips. Bubbles of names. That’s why it’s weirdos, because it’s quite random who is chosen, and I suppose weirdos have a more pronounced brand. Of course it’s not completely arbitrary, there’s real merit in cracking the initial chicken-and-egg, depending on where you start in life. And there are plenty of ways of squandering the opportunities that come after. But still.
- burnermore 3mo agoSoftbank is a codesmell. If u have worked for a Softbank startup, you'd know. I don't use any Softbank backed services. The employees are in extreme stress. Nothing good can come out of that environment than money printing for the big dogs.
- fsh 3mo agoI once has the displeasure of using a SoftBank SIM in Japan which relentlessly spammed my phone with unblockable ads. The continuing survival of this company is proof that billionares that got lucky once cannot possibly fail.
- skeeter2020 3mo agoThis feels like the same PE theory / sell job: "Untapped value that can only be unlocked with PMaaS - Professional Management as a Service", only scaled up "because AI". They're trying to change the narative so that SB has a huge intrinsic value, while it's common knowledge that venture funding is a hit-driving business. I don't blame them but it's total bullshit. Funds do this when they're out of ideas and throw a lot of very expensive spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.
- Havoc 3mo agoTheir 30 year plan slide deck was easily the best. That’s where the sorrow slide is from. Wild that decks like that get produced and approved by such a big company
- chews 3mo agoThis is AI Alzheimers not AI psychosis.