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The Baffling World of Masayoshi Son's Presentations (2020)

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Re: The Baffling World of Masayoshi Son's Presentations (2020)

#31
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes no sense. Masa has at least 2 extraordinary investments and Zuck bought Insta for 1 billion USD.

And then spent 80 billion on the Metaverse, while actively making the world a worse place. Masayoshi son has lost absolutely stupid amount of money on things like WeWork, which he deemed as revolutionary as "AGI", which he is still pushing as inevitable. These are immensely stupid people, with a lot of capital and non-existen ability to self-reflect or care, both enormous advantages when you play a game that favors c…

It's like somebody winning the lottery once, constantly investing all of their money into more lottery tickets, and going "holy shit, look at how smart I am at picking lottery numbers; I've already won something four times!"

Re: The Baffling World of Masayoshi Son's Presentations (2020)

#32
post #29

The baffling thing is how SoftBank still hasn't gone under.

Lucky bets that paid off enough to cover thousands of bad investments.

That's the nature of most venture capital isn't it?

Downside is capped, upside is uncapped, why not bet on as many companies as you can?

Re: The Baffling World of Masayoshi Son's Presentations (2020)

#35
post #30
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what country would taxi drivers revolt? I think in most countries the drivers get paid by the taxi license holders and usually can make more money and/or more have more flexible working conditions driving for Uber. See eg https://www.statista.com/chart/6971/fare-deal-taxi-drivers-e...

> In what country would taxi drivers revolt? Germany.

Better the taxi drivers revolt in Germany than artists!

Re: The Baffling World of Masayoshi Son's Presentations (2020)

#36
post #4

Here's an example of his latest presentation slides: https://group.softbank/media/Project/sbg/sbg/pdf/ir/investor...

Skimmed through this hoping it was some sort of joke, and there was a genuine "gotcha" moment before diving into the stuff professional analysts spend lots of time examining.

Turns out, the joke was on me. I got pictures of fucking geese.

Re: The Baffling World of Masayoshi Son's Presentations (2020)

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then spent 80 billion on the Metaverse, while actively making the world a worse place. Masayoshi son has lost absolutely stupid amount of money on things like WeWork, which he deemed as revolutionary as "AGI", which he is still pushing as inevitable. These are immensely stupid people, with a lot of capital and non-existen ability to self-reflect or care, both enormous advantages when you play a game that favors c…

It's like somebody winning the lottery once, constantly investing all of their money into more lottery tickets, and going "holy shit, look at how smart I am at picking lottery numbers; I've already won something four times!"

Given that the lottery has a typical expected value of -$1.00 per ticket you really should revise your opinion of how lucky/smart these people who repeatedly make tens of billions by pouring all their money into tickets are.

Re: The Baffling World of Masayoshi Son's Presentations (2020)

#38
post #32
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lucky bets that paid off enough to cover thousands of bad investments.

That's the nature of most venture capital isn't it? Downside is capped, upside is uncapped, why not bet on as many companies as you can?

Is a small number of people with huge amounts of money investing in things nobody wants better than lots of people with small amounts of money investing in things they want?

Re: The Baffling World of Masayoshi Son's Presentations (2020)

#39
post #22

One of Masayoshi Son's recent slideshows has been doing the rounds on the FediVerse this week. If you've seen people making odd comments about 'Goose was not valued.' or 'Goose value 71.' or 'eggs do not lay eggs' over the past few days then Son's 2026 presentation to shareholders is what they are going on about. * https://discuss.systems/@dev/116807460725864716 This is the context that a lot of us didn't have. Son h…

TBF the presentation as a whole makes a lot more sense than the 4 slides out of context.

Re: The Baffling World of Masayoshi Son's Presentations (2020)

#40
This feels like the same PE theory / sell job: "Untapped value that can only be unlocked with PMaaS - Professional Management as a Service", only scaled up "because AI". They're trying to change the narative so that SB has a huge intrinsic value, while it's common knowledge that venture funding is a hit-driving business. I don't blame them but it's total bullshit. Funds do this when they're out of ideas and throw a lot of very expensive spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.
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