The $100B Bet: The Meaning of the Vision Fund (economist.com) 39
Two years ago, if you had asked experts to identify the most influential person in technology, you would have heard some familiar names: Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Alibaba's Jack Ma or Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. Today there is a new contender: Masayoshi Son. The founder of SoftBank, a Japanese telecoms and internet firm, has put together an enormous investment fund that is busy gobbling up stakes in the world's most exciting young companies. The Vision Fund is disrupting both the industries in which it invests and other suppliers of capital [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; an alternative source wasn't immediately available]. From a report: But even if the fund ends up flopping, it will have several lasting effects on technology investing. The first is that the deployment of so much cash now will help shape the industries of the future. Mr Son is pumping money into "frontier technologies" from robotics to the internet of things. He already owns stakes in ride-hailing firms such as Uber; in WeWork, a co-working company; and in Flipkart, an Indian e-commerce firm that was this week sold to Walmart. In five years' time the fund plans to have invested in 70-100 technology unicorns, privately held startups valued at $1bn or more. Its money, often handed to entrepreneurs in multiples of the amounts they initially demand and accompanied by the threat that the cash will go to the competition if they balk, gives startups the wherewithal to outgun worse-funded rivals. Mr Son's bets do not have to pay off for him to affect the race. Mr Son's second impact will be on the venture-capital industry. To compete with the Vision Fund's pot of moolah, and with the forays of other unconventional investors, incumbents are having to bulk up.
Funny how there isn't one scientist in that list (Score:5, Insightful)
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just a bunch of businessmen. The most "influential" are guys who go around buying up companies and using tech other people developed.
Tech is not influential if it sits on the shelf. Great ideas often go nowhere until someone puts some money behind them.
I agree (Score:2)
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It's The Economist (Score:2)
... with its piss poor track record of forecasting global affairs. (And local too.) Written for IYIs to give them an illusion they are being better informed about this world of ours.
The cover is more or less the only thing of value in that magazine, artistically speaking.
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'The Money Store' was largely funded by the DuPont family. Nice job redistributing the wealth, whoever pulled that one off.
Old money people are unbelievably stupid and helpless. If you did even a little searching, you could find many formerly rich families.
3 generations removed from the person that made the money, and you are pretty much guaranteed _metric_ room temperature IQs. e.g. The Kennedy family, the Bush family, the DuPont family, the Hunt family, the Rockefeller family, the Hilton family, the
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Indeed. In 1937, the Rockefeller family has a net worth of about 1.5% of America's economic output, or about $300B in today's dollars. But the assets of the Rockefeller family today has dwindled to almost nothing. A mere $10B.
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Commie theory, as espoused by the GGP, says that they would simply have to be worth more as time passed.
That's just false, even at the Billionaire level. They've pissed away 2/3 of it.
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They've pissed away 2/3 of it.
To be fair, a large amount of that money went to philanthropy.
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How they pissed it away isn't my problem.
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superforecaster sniff test (Score:2)
To find someone who doesn't already know this story, in many glorious hues, you'd pretty much have to trav
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Catch-22: You have to have one that he[/she/it] won’t get simply by waiting.
The devil then has an ‘in’ on the decedents, the devil has a voluminous catalog of what temptation works where and with whom, and gets them by simply waiting.
What SoftBank is (Score:2)
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Softbank is a bank in Japan ...
Saudi Arabia is completely elsewhere. Perhaps you like to consult a map.
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wow, I didn't realize money was so hard to send from saudi arabia to japan https://softbank-ia.com/vision... [softbank-ia.com]
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Oh, the GP was talking about the opposite, money send from Japan to Saudi Arabia.
And he was implying that the Japanese are kissing the ass of the Saudies.
It is extremely unlikely that a Japanese will ever be kissing the ass of someone who has not slitted eyes and slightly white/yellowish skin.
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Ah yes the classic "I don't like the Japanese because they're racist"
How enlightened!
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Did you answer to the wrong post?
I actually like Japanese ... many of my friends are ...
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I may have misunderstood the conversation but great follow up.
I have to agree that I dont see the Japanese having a super close relationship with the saudis.
Re:What SoftBank is (Score:5, Informative)
Softbank is a bank in Japan ...
SoftBank is not a bank. It is a tech holding company.
Also, while Masayoshi Son is a Japanese citizen, he is ethnically Korean, and is seen as an outsider in corporate Japan. He has attributed his success to being forced to follow a less cautious path, and being shutout of many of the cross-ownership deals between Japanese corps, that in hindsight have been a boat anchor impeding the growth and innovation of his competitors.
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Most Japanese are ethnically Korean.
The Ainu are mostly extinct.
Old Familes in Japan are either Chinese or Korean, partly intermixed with Ainu.
Modern Japanese are mostly Korean and partly Taiwanian and to a very low amount from Okinawa.
Of course you can not talk to a Japanese about that as Amaterasus' children are all sacret :D
SoftBank is not a bank. It is a tech holding company.
I thought they originally were a banking consortium, my mistake.
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Most Japanese are ethnically Korean.
If you want to get pedantic, why not go all the way, and point out that we all came from Africa?
The modern Japanese migrated to the archipelago several thousand years ago, and are linguistically and culturally distinct from Koreans.
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Hm,
first of all: I heavily doubt that we all came from Africa.
Secondly: you speak chines as I get from your other posts.
Perhaps you want to watch some random youtube videos and listen to japanese and korean, they sound the same. Even by sound a japanese can understand a high percentage of chinese.
Even *I* do, and my japanese is super mediocre.
culturally distinct from Koreans
Not at all. They conquered or tried to conquer each other several times in history. (Hint: there are books about that)
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Most Japanese are ethnically Korean.
Have fun trying to get a usual Japanese to agree with that.
(Not to say I personally disagree with that statement, looking at the map and then looking at the faces of Koreans and Japanese would convince most people that’s very likely, except Japanese)
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Oh, :D
I would never say that into the face of a Japanese
(Actually some parts of the Korean country speak dialects that are super similar to Japanese)
usual suspects (Score:2)
Uber; in WeWork, and in Flipkart,
Kind of late to the party there. These guys are already done doing whatever disrupting they're going to do.
How about finding some new ideas that need investment?
Maybe he can find some bio firms and CRISPER all up in that beeotch, but that bandwagon is already well under way. Maybe neural interfaces & mind uploading might be fertile fields.
Two years ago, if you had asked me... (Score:2)
I'd have said Linus Torvalds.
And I would do the same today.
jack ma? (Score:1)