Do you know this investor and the richest man from Japan?
Masayoshi Son - Founder and CEO of Softbank and at the same time the man whose net worth is 23 billion US dollar in January 2018. But how did it happen?
With more than 1300 invested in companies... there are 5 smartest investments he made we know about:
Uber. Son is called the king of investment at a late stage - and the last deal with Uber was the best illustration. In January 2018, Softbank became the largest shareholder of Uber, buying 15% of shares based on an estimate of $ 48 billion - 30% cheaper than the previous one.
Yahoo! Back in 1996, trying to find $ 5 million for the development of the search engine, founders found Masayoshi and his immediate offer of $ 100 million! Softbank has long been the largest shareholder of Yahoo !, and now owns 42.9% of Yahoo Japan.
Alibaba Group. Alibaba is the most successful so far project of Son. Now sounds implausible, but in 1999, 35-year-old Jack Ma convinced the billionaire to invest $ 20 million in his company. Now Softbank owns 29.5% of Alibaba, and the cost of this package has grown 6,000 times to $ 120 billion since 1999.
WeWork. Softbank Group invested $ 4.4 billion in coworking WeWork. This increased the company's capitalization to $ 20 billion and put it in line with the most expensive American start-ups - Uber, Airbnb and Space Exploration Technologies.
Boston Dynamics. A developer of famous robots that make everyone worry about the future of the humans since 2013 belonged to the parent company Google, Alphabet before Softbank entered in the capital.
Among of good investments, Son also owns a world record for lost money - during the collapse of dotcoms in 2000, he lost $ 70 billion. This did not stop him from building a business and today Softbank Fund manages $ 180 billion.
There are several theories about how Son makes decisions, for example, one about the meeting with a startup Plenty, which produces urban greenhouses, lasted only 15 minutes - and after it Son put in Plenty $ 200 million - twice more than the owners asked.
Patience is a virtue and made Masayoshi Son the richest man of Japan.