HEAD OF THE DAY
🇯🇵 Masayoshi Son
🧠 From Software Distributor to Tech Mega-Investor: Masayoshi Son founded SoftBank in 1981, built the Vision Fund into the world’s largest tech investor from 2017, placed early bets on Alibaba and Arm, and is now steering SoftBank squarely toward AI. After tough years, the Vision Fund returned to profit with $4.6 billion in the fiscal year to March 2024 and just recently hit record high after quarterly profit of 3.7 billion USD beat expectations due to massive AI bets. Son’s playbook is about a few big platform bets and rapidly rewiring the portfolio when the facts change.
👉 Lesson learned: Develop a clear thesis and bet big on your industry’s platform nodes. Validate with milestones, stage your capital, set hard stop rules, and recycle gains from core holdings into the next wave. In practice, that means going early on infrastructure like chip IP, data centers, and AI software—and scaling with conviction instead of dabbling everywhere.
The China Survival Guide for Western Businesses
Entity setup, WeChat strategy, hiring your first local team. 12+ years on the ground in Shanghai.
