Famous for his venture capital mindset, over the years, Masayoshi Son has achieved many successes as well as experienced many failures in the financial markets. But few people know that the past of billionaire Softbank is filled with hardship. Let's take a look at Coin68's biography, career as well as memorable milestones of this billionaire.
Who is Masayoshi Son? The journey from a poor boy to the head of the Soft Bank empire
Who is Masayoshi Son?
Unlike the world's billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg or Warren Buffett who have their starting point, Masayoshi Son was born into a not-so-well-off family and an unfavorable social background. As a Korean but born in Japan, from a young age, Son had to live in a context of deep racism and even struggled to keep his original surname.
On August 11, 1957, in Tosu city (Kyushu island, Japan) Masayoshi Son was born into a poor family. As mentioned above, the Son family has settled here since the Japanese occupation of Korea. To support his family of 6 members, Son's father had to work the hardest and most difficult jobs. There was even a time when his small family had to live with livestock.
A bit of side information, right from the 60s of the last century, the issue of racism in Japan was extremely tense. If you are a Korean or a North Korean living here, life is really not easy. Human rights and national pride are two extremely luxurious things for residents of the North and South Korea to settle here. However, the boy Masayoshi Son has always asserted that he is of Korean origin despite pressure from society. Born in poverty and raised in injustice, he partly depicts his "High risk, High reward" investment style.
Masayoshi Son's career
In 1972, young Son had a fateful meeting with Den Fujita (founder of McDonald's Japan). The outcome of the meeting led Son to the decision to go to America. In the land of flags, he studied at the University of California, Berkeley. During the years here, he made millions of dollars first with just two businesses such as leasing old video game machines and then making compilers. Both jobs brought Son approximately $3.2 million, a huge amount for a college student.
Portrait of Masayoshi Son
After graduating from university, Masayoshi Son returned to his hometown and began his career with the founding of SoftBank Corp in Japan in September 1981, specializing in software consulting and distribution. In May of the same year, SoftBank launched two magazines called Oh!PC and Oh!Mz in Japan, which quickly became the largest technology magazines in the country. Oh! The PC reached a record release of 140,000 copies in 1994.
In March 1994, with the goal of investing in internet and technology related companies to stay ahead of the trend, SoftBank Holdings Inc was established in the US. By July of the same year, SoftBank made an IPO and was valued at up to $ 3 billion. Since then, a series of billion-dollar handshakes have been made by Son to expand his empire.
In 2000, SoftBank under Son's orders poured Capital into a very young company in China. The rest of this deal became history when Jack Ma made the IPO for Alibaba, the initial 20 million investment turned into 60 billion USD. Between 2013 and 2015, Son and SoftBank made a purchase of 73.3% of SuperCell's shares. Then, in 2016 Tencent bought all of those shares for $7.1 billion, making it one of the most valuable acquisitions of that year.
In March 2021, when Coupang, a company from South Korea, did an IPO in New York, making founder Bom Kim's net worth increase to $8.6 billion in the first day of trading. This also helped SoftBank's assets increase by $24.5 billion. A few months earlier, DoorDash, a delivery platform, had increased its price by up to 92% in the initial trading session. SoftBank's $680 million investment in DoorDash has reached a value of $9 billion.
An indispensable deal of Masayoshi Son is the decision that shook the Huawei empire to its roots. Back in 2019, when Donald Trump was in office as president of the United States, a series of executive orders were implemented to slow down the development of the Chinese economy. In particular, it is impossible not to mention the telecommunications sector, which always makes the US suspect that China will eavesdrop and violate national security. Therefore, the President of the White House did not hesitate to announce the decision to "oust" Huawei from this game.And the first thing the Trump administration wants is that the SoftBank operator must be on its side. On May 29, 2019, under the control of billionaire Masayoshi, the SoftBank operator officially selected Nokia and Ericsson as suppliers of 5G network infrastructure equipment to replace Huawei's Capital position. platform that provides software on the Android operating system) announced a ban on Huawei, but Huawei's situation was only really difficult when the bans spread to semiconductor chips.
These blows are strong, but they have only caused Huawei to lose 50% of its international revenue, the other half is still being developed in mainland China, the home of the empire. Understanding that, the Trump administration has also "taken hands" with the remaining 50% of Huawei's market share through ARM Corporation.A side information, Huawei in particular and China in general have both developed successfully. its own semiconductor chip called Kirin but still has to rely on ARM's chip design to have the smallest size and to prove his point, billionaire Masayoshi Son has officially stopped cooperating with Huawei, this has almost "choked" revenue from its smartphone segment.
Masayoshi Son's Lifetime Achievement
Masayoshi Son is famous for his bold, risky investment style with large investments. Despite his setbacks and losses, he was instrumental in turning SoftBank into a leading global corporation. Besides, when asked about his successes, the Korean-Japanese billionaire always humbly says that his achievements are self-made billionaires in the world.
SoftBank Capital $680 million in DoorDash in 2018. The investment is now worth $9 billion.
In 2019, SoftBank invested $1.35 billion in KE when valuing the company at $10 billion, KE's current market Capital has increased about six times, making SoftBank's investment more than 7 billion USD
SoftBank invested more than $460 million in Auto1 in 2017. This start-up is now valued at more than $11 billion
summary
Through the article, hopefully Coin68 has given readers the most overview about billionaire Masayoshi Son, one of the world's most adventurous investors. Besides, his example of overcoming adversity also brings many lessons to young entrepreneurs who have the desire to conquer the pinnacle of money.
