MASAYOSHI SON, THE UNICORN HUNTER

What would you do if you were made the world richest man just for three days and then you lost 70 billion dollars thereafter (the biggest personal loss in history)

Here is a man that had this experience

Masayoshi Son was born as the second of four sons in Tosu, a city in the eastern part of Saga Prefecture on the island of Kyushu, Japan.

Prior to his grandparents’ migration to Japan on a small shipping boat, Son’s family spent 21 generations in Korea after migrating from China.

Son is a 3rd generation Zainichi Korean. Zainichi Koreans are ethnic Koreans with permanent residency or citizenship in Japan.

Son’s grandfather, Son Jong-kyung, moved from Daegu to Japan during the Japanese colonial period, where he worked as a miner.

His father is Son Sam-heon.

His father and other Koreans illegally built their houses on land that was owned by Japan National Railways, which caused them trouble with the authorities.

His father raised pigs and chickens on that land, and started an illegal liquor business that eventually became successful enough for his family to become the first people in town to own a car.

Son pursued his interests in business by securing a meeting with Japan McDonald’s president Den Fujita.

After trying to call him , his secretary kept telling him that Mr Den was busy so he flew to Tokyo to see him and Mr Den was so inspired that he gave him an audience of 15 minutes, he asks the magnate what was the best place to invest in and Mr Den advised him to invest in computer, Taking his advice, Son began studying English and computer science.

He left to study in the U.S. on the advice of Den Fujita.At age 16, Son moved from Japan to California and lived with his friends and family in South San Francisco. He finished high school in three weeks by taking the required exams at Serramonte High, because he felt it was taking him long to get to college.

Son attended the University of California, Berkeley. At age 19, Son became confident that computer technology would ignite the next commercial revolution after being enamoured by a microchip featured in a magazine, he would spend every 5 minutes trying to get a new invention, and after a while he got over 250 invention ideas,

He begin his first business endeavours while still a student. With the help of some professors, Son created an electronic translator that could translate written texts into different languages, that he sold to Sharp Corporation for $1.7 million. He made another $1.5 million by importing used video game machines from Japan, on credit and installing them in dormitories and restaurants.

Soon later he created SoftBank, Son was an early investor in internet firms, buying a share of Yahoo! in 1995 and investing a $20 million stake into Alibaba in 1999 even though they had few employees, no business plan because of a sparkle he saw in the eyes of Jack Ma

He was briefly the richest person in the world before the stock market crashed.

Son’s holding company SoftBank owns 29.5% of Alibaba, which is worth around $108.7 billion as of 23 October 2018.

Although SoftBank’s stake in Yahoo! had dwindled to 7%, Son established Yahoo! BroadBand in September 2001 with Yahoo! Japan in which he still owned a controlling interest. After a severe devaluation of SoftBank’s equity, Son was forced to focus his attention on Yahoo! BB and BB Phone. So far, SoftBank has accumulated about $1.3 billion in debt. Yet, Yahoo! BB acquired Japan Telecom, the then third largest broadband and landline provider with 600,000 residential and 170,000 commercial subscribers.

Yahoo! BB is now Japan’s leading broadband provider.

In June 2020, Son stepped down from the Alibaba board

At some point, he was diagnosed with Chronic Hepatitis, when his daughter was a year old, yet he kept up with his meetings, because he knew Banks would withdraw their loans if they knew he was sick.

Established in 2017, SoftBank Group’s investment vehicle, the $100 billion Vision Fund, was intended to invest in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and the internet of things.

So he had a meeting the Saudi Arabian crown prince and minister of defence, Mohammed Bin Salam who had plans to make Saudi Arabia technologically driven in the nearest future, he had initially wanted to ask him for 30bn dollars, and in 45 mins he was able to close the deal for 45bn dollars with other funds he got from his company, Apple, fox.com and Abu Dhabi.

He was inspired to do this after he missed out investing in Amazon because there wasn’t enough capital on ground to invest, so he lost that opportunity.

As of 2019, it aimed to nearly double its portfolio of AI companies from 70 to 125.

However, it also invested in companies supposedly focused on revolutionizing real estate, transportation, and retail. Son claimed he would make personal connections with the CEOs of all companies funded by Vision Fund in order to enhance the creation of intertwined synergies among those companies.

Son planned to raise $100 billion for a new fund every few years, investing about $50 billion a year in startups.

In 2019, a second Vision Fund was created with a target of $108 billion, of which $38 billion would come from Softbank itself.

But the amount was scaled down due to lack of investing partners beyond Softbank Group itself and Masayoshi Son

August 2022, Masayoshi Son said he was “embarrassed” and “ashamed” when asked to talk about the way he had run the SoftBank Vision Fund and Barron’s characterized the fund as a “failed experiment” while The Wall Street Journal called SoftBank a “big loser” and Bloomberg elaborated on “Masayoshi Son’s broken business model

To some he is known as the unicorn hunter, but he wants to be remembered as the “crazy guy who betted on the future”

Some have accused him for using capital as a weapon, threatening to invest in competitors and rivals when certain companies decline their offer, a lot of his investments haven’t been profitable but he believes that the few profitable ones would cover for the losses, he is also investing in Neon, an acronym for New enterprise operating model, a cognitive city with flying cars, automated and integrated ports, powered by clean energy in Saudia Arabia.

But I think the world needs more of his likes, what do you think?

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