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Financial Times journalist Lionel Barber’s new book is a deep dive into the life and business career of one of the most enigmatic and influential figures in the technology industry. His previous book on the downfall of Wirecard, the German payments fraud, is also worth reading. In recent memory, many might know of Masayoshi Son as the billionaire Japanese investor behind the $100bn SoftBank Vision Fund who invested heavily in WeWork, only to see the company file for bankruptcy soon thereafter. Whilst that is all true, there are many other chapters to the career of Masayoshi Son, many of which, in their own right, would make Son brilliant, some of which were foolish.
Masayoshi Son seems to have had a steadfast view on the role of the internet and technology from back in the 1990s. A lot of what he envisioned in this trend has become reality, and that has paid off handsomely. His ability to leverage his knowledge and experience in Japan to the major US software companies has been an underpinning strategy. Equally, his ability to be as leveraged as possible through extraordinary amounts (and types) of debt is quite extraordinary. Some of the people he formed relationships with throughout his career, and who owe a level of their success to him, include:
I know the saying ‘you can’t judge a book by its cover’ is a well-known truism; however, in this particular instance, the title of this book is very accurate. No doubt, the journey to date has been a wild ride. On more than one occasion, Masayoshi Son has been one of the wealthiest people on the planet and has also lost ~99% of his wealth. His career would demonstrate that he is always happy to keep rolling the dice. A man of Korean heritage growing up in post-WW2 Japan, he has always been an outsider who came from nothing. As he puts it, the worst that can happen is that he ends up back where he started. I think it is fair to say he isn’t going back to the ‘starting line’ again – investing ~$20m into Alibaba in return for a ~30% stake is widely recognised as one of the most successful investments of all time.
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