The Unicorn Hunter: The Craziest Billionaire EVER

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 to raise a hundred billion dollar fund did they tell you you were a little crazy well some people said massa's son was once the richest man in the world for three whole days and then he lost about 70 billion dollars almost overnight the biggest personal loss in history he once managed to secure 45 billion dollars worth of funding after a 45-minute meeting 1 billion per minute he's also responsible for the single greatest investment ever made but on the other hand many feel he's simply a crazy gambler who treats the economy like a casino and that he's causing catastrophic damage this is a man who once threatened to set himself on fire if he didn't get a business deal a man who's invested billions of dollars in entrepreneurs purely based on the sparkle in their eyes and yet i love him you see i've recently been making videos telling the stories of totally different businesses like uber yahoo tick tock and yet massason always seems to be connected i feel like i'm in that movie where jim carrey starts seeing the number 23 everywhere but for me all roads lead to massason the majority of the world know extremely little about this man but they should he is quite literally changing the world and betting on our future and his story is one of the most fascinating i've ever heard it's inspiring it's terrifying and most of all it's absolutely insane is he the world's most astute tech investor or is he the luckiest guy on the planet massason's grandparents emigrated to japan from south korea by hiding on a small fishing boat they had no food nowhere to stay and couldn't speak the language mata's start in life was similarly bleak he was considered an outsider in japanese society because of his heritage and his childhood classmates threw rocks at him his father barely made enough to get by and did any odd jobs he could to make money from raising pigs to selling illegal liquor from an early age masa was adamant he wanted to build a better life for himself the bullying he received as a kid only made him more determined and by middle school masa decided on his life plan he wanted to become japan's most successful businessman he idolized a man named den fujita who had brought mcdonald's to japan masa spent hours as a teenager calling den's office asking to speak to him but the receptionist always told him he was too busy 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 phone call became becoming more expensive than air ticket den was impressed with this kid's conviction and that he flown to his office to see him he agreed to a 15-minute meeting with masa who asked him for advice yeah i asked him what business should i do computer that's the one den's other recommendation was simple mata should go to america massa immediately took this advice to heart and at the age of just 16 he went to california to pursue his business dreams he brushed up on his english then went to an american high school however just a few days in he realized this was taking too long and convinced the school to let him take the college entrance exam early now whilst nasa was very bright he wasn't really ready for the exam but somehow he just managed to scrape through so less than a month after enrolling as an american high school student master graduated and went to study economics and computer science at the university of california of course he also needed money and he asked his friends if there were any jobs where he could make ten thousand dollars a month but only worked five minutes a day his friends obviously thought he'd lost the plots so i said okay what is the best most efficient use of my time it's invention so i set alarm clock five minutes come invention come come mazda spent five minutes every day coming up with new invention ideas so he could patent them and sell them on of course not all the ideas were great but there were some gems in there because mata realized there were three approaches to coming up with ideas the first was to search the solutions to problems he had in his life for example when his round pencil kept rolling off the table he considered a square or hexagonal pencil instead the second approach was looking at things from the opposite perspective like taking something big and making it smaller or taking something red and making it white for example he came up with a traffic light with different shapes so colorblind people could tell which phase the light was on and his final tactic for ideas was combining existing things like merging a radio with a tape recorder to get a radio cassette player by the end of the year masa had a book with 250 different invention ideas master decided the best of them was a pocket-sized device that translated text into different languages he then found a physics professor who agreed to help him build a prototype massa then started spending all his time pitching companies to buy his new device and he paid another asian student to take his places in the lectures that he was missing eventually massa found a company called sharp who agreed to buy the device patent for 1.7 million dollars so at the age of just 19 masa was technically now a millionaire meanwhile as a sort of side hustle masa had begun importing space invaders arcade machines from japan over to the us where he was setting them up in bars and restaurants since this was a new thing for the us they were a big hit and within just six months masa had imported over 350 arcade machines and made a profit of over a million dollars the beauty of this was that because he put the machines on credit and imported them by plane which was more expensive but much faster he would often make his money back from the machines before he even had to pay the machine supplier it was clear mata had great entrepreneurial instincts of course it also has to be acknowledged that sun simply worked incredibly hard it's understandably a lot of talk about the negatives of hustle culture but son worked seven days a week sleeping as little as possible because he enjoyed the process and clearly it was paying off right after i graduate i went back to japan because i promised to my mother that as soon as i finished my college i would be back to japan so i kept my word masa knew he wanted to use the money he'd made in america to help build an even bigger business in japan he began brainstorming new business ideas and mapped out 40 potential businesses he could start then ranked them based on different metrics the best scoring idea was a company that distributed computer software and thus he created a new company called softbank now at this point in the early 80s personal computing was still in the very early phases but massa was extremely optimistic about the industry especially after his old mentor had taught him to focus on computers massa believed softbank could become the top distribution company in japan despite the fact he had absolutely no experience with software he hired two employees to help him and one morning he stood on a crate in the office and told them that softbank was going to become a billion dollar company but both employees soon began to think he was crazy and they quit soon after and at first it looked like those employees might have been right softbank struggled to take off massa tried to start some magazines to generate interest in computing but they didn't take off well either pretty much everyone was telling him to stop as he was going to blow all the money that he'd earned but massa ignored them and kept plowing more and more money into the business and eventually his persistence paid off softbank then rode the wave of demand in personal computing in the early 90s and then disaster struck son began to feel increasingly ill and was diagnosed with chronic hepatitis and became bedridden in hospital massa was a workaholic and nervously asked how long the treatment would take the doctor told him there was no guarantee they'd even be able to cure him at all massa had finally got his company up and running successfully and now he was facing the fact he might not have long left to live he had a daughter who was only a year old and his wife was pregnant with another child to complicate things further mata had taken out loans from the bank to help fund the company and he knew they'd pull his funding if they found out about his illness so massa had to keep up the facade that everything was fine and would sneak out of the hospital to turn up for company meetings thankfully masa recovered but his health scare convinced him that he needed to act even bigger faster and crazier since he couldn't take any time for granted by the middle of the 90s softbank had 800 employees and a billion dollars in revenue and master took the company public to raise even more money software distribution had been very successful but it wasn't enough for massa he had such a clear vision of how technology was going to change the world and so he started making investments in other tech companies and became known for making audacious business bets for example he threw millions of dollars into a new company called yahoo at a valuation of 40 million dollars when the company had its ipo a few months later it became valued at 808 million meaning softbank had made a gigantic return in just a few months massa was building a war chest but he never sat on that money he'd always reinvest it right away into something new by the end of the 90s softbank was a giant conglomeration that was basically acting like a venture capital fund softbank's main business was no longer selling anything it was buying other tech businesses that masa believed in for example in 1998 he put 400 million dollars into e-trade after a single call with its founder however if you want to 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deposit any amounts after you've done that let's get back to the story by the end of the 90s mass had invested 3 billion into 800 different tech startups and softbank employees were struggling to even keep track of them all massa was meeting 200 entrepreneurs every three months to try and find the next big opportunity now of course not every investment was a success plenty of them failed but massa had come to an important realization one big winner could mask all the other failures combined he didn't need to be right with every investment as long as he had a few big successes and in the year 2000 that's exactly what happened when masa made what's considered the best venture capital investment of all time massa heard about a chinese internet company called alibaba and absolutely loved what they were doing the founder jack ma initially said they didn't need any investment right now but masa was persistent even though the company only had a few employees massa sensed a huge potential and said he saw a sparkle in jack ma's eyes that he could build something incredible he had no business plan zero revenue but his eyes was very strong they agreed a deal for softbank to invest 20 million dollars into the company and that stake would later become worth over 70 billion dollars that same year massa raised the largest japanese investment fund ever which he began throwing into hundreds of internet companies since he believed the internet was the next big phase of technology that would transform the world the new york times started calling massa the bill gates of japan in fact for three days in the middle of 2000 masa passed bill gates as the richest man in the world but then the dot-com bubble burst the market crashed and masa lost 70 billion dollars more wealth than any single investor has ever lost in history if you thought that was going to slow master down think again master spent the next decade taking yet more risks and betting big in fact he's sometimes been described as a wall street bets trader but who actually has a lot of money to spend in 2001 massim managed to get into the japanese broadband business after barging into the telecoms office of the japanese government shouting this is the end if you don't help me i'm gonna pour gasoline all over myself and set myself on fire massa then launched a broadband service in japan at half the price of competitors and even though this lost hundreds of millions of dollars masa believed in the future they'd be able to make a profit by offering add-on services although he was very vague about when the business would actually be profitable he reportedly had sales women and stripe mini skirts handing out free modems on tokyo street corners like with many of masters projects the focus was simply rapid growth and gaining market share profits would come later hopefully many people were skeptical of course but clearly mata's blind belief in the internet was absolutely correct however by 2007 massa had already identified what he believed would be the next big wave of the internet the shift to mobiles instead of pcs so massa had a call with another hero of his steve jobs massa told steve about an idea of his from a mobile phone that was more like a mini computer but steve told him apple was already working on something like this called the iphone master was excited and asked if he could get exclusive rights to sell it in japan steve jobs laughed and reportedly said mess up you've got to be mad we've not even publicly announced we're developing the iphone yet and you don't even own a mobile phone carrier in japan so how are you going to sell it but masa simply said he'd buy a phone company and sure enough masa soon took out yet more debt to buy vodafone japan for around 20 billion dollars massa you're crazy you know we have not talked to anybody but you came to see me as the first guy i give to you so because of his persistence massa now had the rights to sell the iphone in japan and this deal meant he was able to sell a huge amount of phone contracts as everyone was excited to try out the new iphone and as always masa offered extremely low cost deals in order to eat at market share meanwhile massa was still investing in a variety of other tech businesses like a robotics company that creates robots with the ability to read human emotion he frequently spoke about his 300 year vision and how in the future softbank could be a telepathy company or he even suggested maybe talking to dogs would be possible but whilst massa was buying companies at a pace most investors couldn't even dream of he still wanted more it wasn't enough for his ambition in fact he'd missed out on some deals he wanted because money had been tied up elsewhere for example he'd had a meeting with jeff bezos about investing in amazon in the early days but massa hadn't been able to free up enough capital quickly enough so he missed out on the deal desperate to not miss out on the next amazon massa realized he needed a true war chest so much money that he would never have a limitation again and thus he came up with an idea of the vision fund a hundred billion venture capital fund which was more than four times larger than any other fund in history so when you told people you were going to raise a 100 billion dollar fund did they tell you you were a little crazy well some people said now if you're thinking that raising a hundred billion dollars sounds a little tricky normally you'd be right but luckily for masa something interesting was happening in saudi arabia the country was incredibly wealthy because of its oil but as the world began to shift towards renewable energy it became clear they needed to shift their economy away from being so reliant on oil enter mohammed bin salman the next saudi crown prince eager to start investing his country's wealth into other areas he wanted to funnel their oil money into big long-term investments for the future and so who better to turn to than massason whose entire reputation was for betting big on the future they knew of mata's track record and wanted his help to find the next big tech giants so masa flew out to meet the saudi prince to see if he'd invest in his vision fund on the flight over massa looked through the presentation his team had prepared and casually changed the amount they were asking for from 30 billion to a hundred billion we've gotta aim high masa reminded his team in one hour you convinced him to invest 45 billion dollars no no 45 minutes 45 billion 1 billion per minute that's right in 45 minutes massa secured an initial investment of 45 billion dollars from saudi arabia which would be put into the vision fund softbank also put in some money of their own along with money from abu dhabi and even some money from companies like apple and foxconn massa had succeeded in his goal of raising a staggeringly huge fund of a hundred billion dollars so we are investing 100 billion dollars just on one thing ai you see the purpose of the fund is simple massa believes society is approaching the singularity the point where artificial intelligence transcends human intelligence nasa had been right about the previous waves personal computing and software then the internet their mobiles and now he believes the next big change will be ai as always when masa commits to something he goes all in high risk high return has always been his mentality massa himself has said he hopes to be remembered as a crazy guy who bet on the future and whatever you may think of him i think it's hard to argue with that however this wouldn't be a magnate's media video without pointing out this story has a darker side firstly masa has been accused of creating extreme bubbles and inflating prices he's distorted the true value of many companies such as putting billions of dollars into companies like wework and a dog walking app called wag under the guys they were tech companies when they really weren't many would argue that master's approach of investing billions of dollars based on 15-minute meetings and gut instinct it's just reckless for example he put four billion dollars into wework after a meeting that took less than half an hour and he didn't even look at the pitch deck and even on some of the companies masa has invested in they've been left frustrated too as sometimes his giant investments are like a kiss of death he tells his companies to think 10 times bigger than they were planning to act crazier but because he gives them far more money than they actually need this often causes companies to start spending wildly and pursue a growth at all cost strategy if you go in the room and ask for 100 million dollars and he says well i was going to give you 500 million so why do you only need a hundred if you don't have a good answer for the 500 you're not getting the money he's also been accused of using capital as a weapon throwing endless cash at companies with the belief that the best funded startup can outspend all its competitors in winner-take-all markets you have so much money that anybody even thinking of competing with you just looks at the size of your checkbook and gets scared and doesn't even try but this means the companies he invests in don't actually focus on building a sustainable profitable business and some of those companies also complain that masa would shower them with attention at first and then find a new toy and move on there's even accusations that if companies try to turn down masters money saying they don't need it he'll threaten to invest in their rivals instead in order to force companies to accept his investments and in some cases he invests in rivals anyway like the fact he invested many billions into dd uber grab and other ride sharing apps and it's not just private companies where soft bankers distorted the price they were recently found to be the nasdaq whale behind billions of dollars of call option trades on public tech companies basically master has such huge amounts of money he can literally move markets by powering billions of dollars into call options now hearing massa's underdog story coming from nothing i found myself rooting for him but it does seem that underneath that smiley exterior is a ruthless shark maybe it's because english isn't his native language but the way he speaks is so simple and casual he seems like a character rather than a man quite literally having drastic impact on multiple industries and economies if someone like bezos or zuckerberg were saying the same things maybe it would sound more sinister perhaps there's an argument that mata's fun bubbly personality somewhat masks the reality but personally i don't think massa is doing this for just money or power i believe he's genuinely passionate about technology and just extremely optimistic about the future and he simply wants to accelerate the vision he has and whilst it's true that a lot of his investments aren't profitable yet mata has always said he's playing the long game whilst it's entirely possible his fortune could get wiped out again from a series of bad bets it's also entirely possible that he becomes the richest person in the world again especially if his vision about ai comes true and he backs the companies at the forefront of the ai revolution because then he can create synergy between those companies where they work together either way i think you have to give massa some credit after all the literal definition of an entrepreneur involves taking on financial risk and so whilst i'm not suggesting we all bet everything we own on tech stocks i think it's sometimes useful to ask ourselves what would massason do here just as a reminder to aim a little higher because another thing you have to respect is that from an early age mata created a 50-year life plan for himself start a company in his 20s build wealth in his 30s deploy that money in his 40s tie up loose ends in his 50s and hand things over to the next generation after he turned 60. and he's executed on that life plan extremely well so far the real question now is if he's really going to step away from it all soon like his life plan suggests massa seems to love the game and no gambler ever wants to leave the casino truthfully massa has had that same gambling instinct since childhood for example when his father opened a coffee shop massa suggested he give out free drink vouchers believing that his father would make the losses back later because he'd have attracted so many new customers and master's ambitious growth-minded philosophy still hasn't changed all these years later it's just he now has an almost endless supply of money to execute on his ideas for example mass is also investing in neon a futuristic city being built from scratch by using technology this talk the city will have flying cars commercial space travel robot butlers and an artificial moon that rises each night it will even host a genetic modification project to make people stronger massa has also talked about his time machine management theory the theory that the us is like the future and every other country will go through the same technology transition so if you know what's successful in the us investing in other places is like going back in time in a time machine there are undoubtedly some lessons to learn from masa but the truth is massason remains an enigma is he one of the most shrewd investors and businessmen ever with a vision of the future many people just aren't yet appreciating or is he a lucky gambler destroying venture capital and manipulating markets the debate over whether masa is crazy or a genius will continue but i say why can't he be both this is definitely exciting life i'm having fun if you want to know the story behind some of massason's investments you can check out these mini business movies i made right here thanks for being a legend and watching to the end i'll see you next time cheers you

Channel: MagnatesMedia

Views: 2,435,630

Keywords: Masayoshi Son, Masa Son, Softbank, soft bank, vision fund, masa son life story, masa son investor, best investment ever, finance documentary, business, finance, investing, investor, money, wealth, business movies, masayoshi son documentary, masayoshi son biography, masa, masa son documentary, magnatesmedia, magnates media, venture capital, investors, investments, crazy investments, crazy billionaire, billionaire story, craziest billionaire

Id: -q8nIhhwkVs

Length: 23min 24sec (1404 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 08 2022