Lest not forget that this isn't Masayoshi Son's first ride on ligthing money on fire, he still holds the record of most money lost in history from the dot-com bubble crash of the 2000s.
Well, he was also the richest person in the world for 3 days in 2000.
I'm as skeptical of the vision fund as anyone. But it's pretty impressive to go from nothing to the richest person in the world. Lose the most money in history (still being a multi-billionaire, though), and in the span of 20 years, 10x your fortune AGAIN -- to be again one of the richest people in the world.
If anything, that's an impressive story -- at least to me.
I'm reminded a bit of his investment in Alibaba - when he met Jack Ma he says he had no business plan or revenue but he could tell he had charisma and leadership and so invested. I guess he tried to do similar with Adam but it didn't work out quite the same.
The whole WeWork saga stinks to high heaven, did Neuman con Son or was Son just not aware of what's going on till all truth came out in the S1. And, was he stupid to believe that the company could still go IPO based on what was in the S1.
He's always showing signs of making money before losing more of it. Personally I think TikTok is a paper tiger and wouldn't throw a dime of my money near them.
it seems to be the first major Chinese player who makes inroads with global (and in particular American) audiences, something that other Chinese companies are notoriously bad at. And they really seem to be onto something when it comes to young users. I wouldn't brush them off.
All they realized was that people wanted Vine, even if it wasn’t called Vine anymore. I still don’t know why Twitter shuttered them, it seems stupid in hindsight.
I have massive distrust in companies headquartered in China. No company of TikTok's (purported) scale w.r.t revenue/valuation is going to be divorced from the influence if not ownership by the CCP.
I would not invest in the Chinese government, and therefore would not invest in a large Chinese company since they are two sides of the same coin. Not only out of morality, but because I don't want to expose myself to financial risk by betting on a communist government/dictatorship not to fuck me.
Agree he has a stake in something good now that he has control. WeWork in the long tail will be a great cash generator but it’s unlikely to return anything for at least a decade and due to the leases there is some risk that needs mitigating. However the model is sound We just needs better cost controls, many years of investment and a customer obsession.
I believe this is a baloney quip. If you want to know how he fared in dotcom you should look at his worth before and after, not compare the peak of the funny money to the bottom of the crash.
