The David Rubenstein Show: Masayoshi Son

[Music] when you told people you were gonna raise a hundred billion dollar fund did they tell you you were a little crazy well some people said did you suffer discrimination growing up in japan that made me you know stronger how did you feel losing 70 billion dollars of net worth i was so close to you know fall down from the cliff we almost went bankrupt somehow i survived would you fix your tie please well people wouldn't recognize me if my tie was fixed but okay just leave it this way all right [Music] i don't consider myself a journalist and nobody else would consider myself a journalist i began to take on the life of being an interviewer even though i have a day job of running a private equity firm how do you define leadership what is it that makes somebody tick [Music] you are clearly one of the world's most successful technology investors and one of the world's most successful businessmen let me start by asking you about a fund that you are now raising the vision fund it's supposed to be a fund of a hundred billion dollars yes now that would be the biggest fund ever raised so when you told people you were going raise a hundred billion dollar fund did they tell you you were a little crazy well some people said you had a meeting with a man who was the deputy crown prince of saudi arabia who's now the crown prince of saudi arabia and as i understand the story you went in and in one hour you convinced him to invest 45 billion dollars no no it's not true okay 45 minutes 45 billion okay sorry okay i apologize in other words if you had one one billion dollars per minute what could you have said that was that persuasion to get 45 billion in one meeting well actually uh i said you came to tokyo the first time i want to i want to give you a gift i want to give you a masa gift the tokyo gift a trillion dollar gift and he opened up his eyes and said okay now it's interesting right so i woke up him and said here is how we can give you a i can give you a trillion dollar gift you invest 100 billion dollars to my fund i give you a trillion dollars but what is it that you told people what was the vision that you actually gave them so one vision which is singularity singularity is the concept that the computing power comp computers artificial intelligence surpass mankind's brains the singularity is the concept the word means that is the point at which a computer becomes smarter than a human brain yes today already computer is smarter than mankind for chess or goal or weather forecast to some expert systems computer is already smarter but in 30 years most of the subject that we are thinking they will be smarter than us that's my belief let's go back and talk about your upbringing a bit so you are of korean descent your grandfather came from korea and moved to japan many years ago and your parents were born in japan did you suffer discrimination growing up in japan yes i i had some experience but i feel now it was good you know that made me you know stronger to work harder so i had to prove that i am not different from any other guys you know not inferior it's the same so i had to work harder to prove the value your family adopted a japanese name at one point well actually in japan there was at some period japanese government forced every korean to change to japanese name so it was not their intention that we had you had to change had to change that made me even more harder because i was feeling that i was hiding something it was even tougher now you did not grow up in tokyo um you grew up in a relatively small town is that right yes in japan yeah in the southern the southern part of japan so at one point is said that you were very interested in meeting the head of mcdonald's in mcdonald's event why were you interested in being ahead of mcdonald's did you like mcdonald's food or you just what was it well he he he wrote the book and that book became the best seller i was so impressed and say oh my god this is great and the guy who wrote about it must be great so so how old were you when you wanted to meet him uh 16 16. so you you managed to get a meeting with him i called his his assistant and long distance call back then it was so expensive i made almost 100 calls 60 calls and say you know this is my name i'm a student and could you ask him to spend me share me some time and could you ask him and she said oh i will try but he's not going to meet with the student i said well don't decide by yourself let him decide okay so i spoke with with the assistant different assistants so many times and and they don't give me the right answer so i said okay this is waste of my telephone bill so i flew into tokyo and i said i came because the the phone call become becoming more expensive than a ticket so what happened and i said well tell him exactly the way i said you don't have to look at me you don't have to talk to me you can keep on walking whatever you are doing i just want to see his face for three minutes okay so i'm not bothering him i just i'm so impressed and respect him i want to see him and if if you tell him that i'm not going to bother him time is money he says i'm not gonna damage his life she actually asked and he said okay okay actually he spent 15 minutes with me talking face to face and he gave you some advice which was to learn yeah i asked him what business should i do computer that's the one if i were you at your age at this time of the you know this is don't look at the past industry look at the future industry that's the one computer industry that's the one you should focus if i were you that's the one so i said wow great okay so i gave you that advice you're number one in your class and then you go to university california berkeley yes but when you were there i understand you were not being a student so much you were doing business on the side well i was a good student but i i said you know five minutes i would allow other than study i have to make money i want to earn ten thousand dollar per month and i will allow me myself five minutes a day so i asked my friends isn't a good job that i can earn ten thousand dollars in five minutes a day but i still my friend said you're crazy it's impossible nothing like that you want to sell drugs so no no i don't want to do that so i said okay what is the best most efficient use of my time it's invention it's invention and i have to file patent if i get the patent five minutes if i focus i can come some idea i can make some idea so i set alarm clock five o'clock five minutes and take take in five minutes i said come invention.com so i did that and it worked it worked you invented a machine that helped people translate languages yeah that one was the electronic dictionary the first electron dictionary the many students used electronic dictionary the first one i ever made was by myself first electric dictionary yes and you sold it to this sharp and you made a lot of money yeah uh 1.7 million dollars so what did you do with 1.7 million then well i i used to start softbank i should so did you move back i did i did one more project i made another 1.5 million so i made 3.2 million in 18 months so that is better than 10 000 per month right i stole that to my friend look i got 3.2 million dollars and i kept working only five minutes a day as i as i promised you but then after you graduated and you made these uh successful inventions you moved back to japan why did you move back to japan not that it's not a great place to move back to but you're in silicon valley area why not stay there i created a company and my employees asked me to stay and but i said no i promised to my mother when i was when i decided to come study in the state she was crying in the airport and i said no don't cry mom after i graduate from the school i come back i promise she said no you don't come back you know this is the forever you know forever no i i promise you don't worry i promise you so i kept my mind recently you did the biggest investment you've ever made in a company called arm they have 99 market share for any smartphone that you have in your pocket i think it's the company is going to be more valuable than google all right so you move back to japan and then you start a company called softbank uh what was softbank's purpose what kind of business were you in so that was the beginning of the time of the personal computer got started so but there's hardware not enough software so i aggregate all kinds of software from the small software houses and i i i wholesale to the you know pc stores so it's like a bank you know the software's bank it's not the money bank the software wholesaling storing in in my warehouse so it's like a concept so it was very successful soft bank stock is going up and then you decide at some point to start investing one of the investments you made is considered by many people to be the most successful investment in the history of mankind you invested roughly 20 million dollars in alibaba and at the time it went public it was worth roughly 90 billion dollars so 20 million to 90 billion is a return about 4 500 percent now jack ma is a very distinguished individual now now one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world what is it that made you feel this was worth putting in 20 million dollars well he had no business plan and zero revenue employees maybe 35 40 employees but his eyes was very strong strong eyes strong shining eyes i could tell from the way he talk the way he look at he has a charisma he has a leadership so his business model was wrong it's the way he talk the way you know he can bring you know young chinese people following him before yahoo was so famous you made an early investment which was spectacularly successful how did you hear of yahoo yeah yeah for us was still private 15 employees and i convinced jerriann to take 100 million dollars of our investment so at the time we negotiate we agreed they grew from 15 to 35 people 30 35 people and we invest 100 million dollar to own 35 percent and actually went ipo and made a great return and at the same time i convinced him to start joint venture board of jiafu japan where we put 1.2 million dollars they put 0.8 million 2 million startup capita we own 60 now let's talk about one big mistake you made overall obviously you're very successful in almost everything you've touched but you were making a lot of internet investments around the turn of the century around year 2000 1999 2001 the market went down in the in the in the tech crash and it is said that you personally lost 70 billion dollars of net worth the greatest loss that any human being has ever suffered financially so how did you feel losing 70 billion dollars of net worth one year before that actually my net worth personal net worth was increasing 10 billion dollar per week for three days i became richer than bill gates was that that upset him or no before i talked to anybody else you know our stock started crashing okay so in in six months after that our share price went down 99 so we almost went bankrupt and somehow i survived you rebuilt your business and among the things you did was you bought some very well-known companies so you bought vodafone's uh mobile telephone business in japan at that time i said now is the time to go next stage which is the internet will become mobile internet so i have to either get the license from the government for the spectrum or acquire border from japan and first i applied for the license to the government and the government said no there is no more spectrum i actually sued the government and uh you know for one year big fight but then uh then the border from japan became available 20 billion dollars i had two billion dollars so 18 billion that are short so where'd you get the money so i convinced the bank you know that the vote upon japan i'm going to turn around and we'd become successful and become great cash flow believe me and lend me money and they did they did and it turned out to be very successful and recently you did the biggest investment you've ever made in a company called arm yeah which is harm which is a semiconductor manufacturer based in london why did you spend 31 billion dollars buying a semiconductor manufacturer when many people think that that's not the future it's uh actually i study 4 billion 34. yeah it's not the manufacturer it's a design design house they design all the chips chipset they have 99 market share for any smartphone that you have in your pocket is um has 99 market share right in next 20 years it's going to be they're going to ship 1 trillion chips designed for 1 trillion chips so i said this is this is the company this is you know nobody can live in the on the earth anymore without chip chip is everywhere in the car in your refrigerator everywhere so if if chip is something that everybody needs and if there is one company has 90 market share there must be a value they're not monetizing well enough but if i own it we can monetize much better so that's my belief so i think it's the company is going to be more valuable than google so let me ask you it's not available it's private company now so you don't worry that the robots could become so smart they could wipe out humanity as some people worry there is a danger but when the robot super intelligence go beyond mankind's intelligence and they say well fighting is the not efficient way of living the harmony is better now in the future you are a big believer in robots it is your view i guess that artificial intelligence is a good thing and ultimately will not hurt humanity is that correct right so you don't worry that the robots could become so smart they could wipe out humanity as some people worry yeah there is a danger of that there is a danger but if you look at the mankind history people were killing each other with many battles diff among different tribes and rays and so on but today's world we don't have that kind of things everyday life we we are more civilized so when the robot super intelligence go beyond mankind's intelligence and they say well fighting is the not efficient way of living the harmony is better it's more social so we we're going to live in harmony and they think about us they help us and they try to amuse us and have a good love for each other what gives you the greatest pleasure in the world well the thing is you know i have a vision i have a vision of singularity that's really coming so we create a vision fun right we go and change the world together and create a better world better world for for human living so that excites me you know what is thinking about what is the future what is the how we can change the life of people for the better humanity right so that people don't need to die for unnecessary reasons like having accidents or having the disease or having the disaster to protect human from all those you know sadness is a good thing right so imagining those things and investing and create a group and having great product great solution is exciting and now today you've come back and you're having enormous net worth by any human standards one of the richest men in the world what do you do with all this money well i haven't decided what to do you haven't decided but you're 60 years old now you've got to decide at some point deciding how to spend with respect is more difficult than making money that was a headache i had when i when i you know became soldiers were the richest man in the world you had the headache then you lost that headache now you've got it again right you have any plans to keep doing this for another 10 years or 20 years yeah in my age of 19 i created 50 years my life plan and in my age of 60s from between 60 and 69 i would decide my successor and have my successor keep on running it so in my next 10 years i have to do that but even after i find a successor and give him a baton to run as a captainship i would probably stay working with him coaching him and you know as long as i leave probably i i i cannot give forget about this excitement your parents are still alive they must be extremely proud of you well they're they're actually very proud of me and they are very happy we are happy family and you know we don't live together but they they call me occasionally and you know my dad is funny guy he he has a unique idea crazy idea and he always called me and said masa i got an idea you have to do this she he knows everything i'm doing and he's very creative very smart and he talked about business to me all the time now you are japanese and uh but you're of korean descent but you're different than most japanese business people who are very um consensus oriented not maybe as entrepreneurial as you are has that been a challenge for you in building up your business in japan yeah lots of challenge but the uniqueness is actually good you know if the pack of other people this way i am unique i have more opportunity so the difficulty turn if you flip over become the advantage so final question if you could live your life over an extraordinary story is there anything you would do differently than you've done i may but this is the life i'm enjoying so much that i would love to do it again i was so lucky i was so close to you know fall down from the cliff so i don't know i can do it twice [Laughter] but but this is definitely an exciting life i'm having fun

Channel: David Rubenstein

Views: 1,073,302

Rating: 4.894968 out of 5

Keywords: Bloomberg, David Rubenstein Show, Masayoshi Son, business, philanthropy

Id: Sa2_VBu0d7k

Length: 24min 2sec (1442 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 11 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/ap0lly0n]

What reason did they give for banning you because of this video? I can see nothing wrong with this. If anything this is motivating and inspirational.

[u/Abc1986]

It's funny because I think they are the ones who are radicalized.

Welcome here.

[u/SmiffnWessn]

I don't have the patience to search farther than 6 month into your post history but I didn't see anything even remotely controversial. Nothing demeaning to wmaf or af in general, no comments against other ethnicities, nothing about being "red pill"...whatever r/AsianAmerican usually bans people for.

So I can only believe that they banned you simply because you post here as well, and again you haven't posted anything misogynistic or controversial. So now r/AsianAmerican will ban you just for being open to other points of view. They literally want you to swallow whatever you feed them. They tell you a subreddit like this is "evil" so you better believe it is and never associate with them, otherwise you are not welcome into their community. You're not allowed to ask any questions, not allowed to think for yourself...OBEY. OBEY. OBEY.

We used to joke about them being like this but damn, guess they really are going full McCarthy now...

[u/walt_hartung]

Yup, that'll happen to ya.

1) You post here.

2) You've also made posts about discrimination against Asians before.

3) And you post on Joe Rogan.

Of course you got banned on AA. What did you think would happen?

[u/triumvir0998]

Honestly can't see what's wrong with this video. Is it because he's not American?