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How SoftBank’s costly bet on the ‘internet of things’ backfired at Arm

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Re: How SoftBank’s costly bet on the ‘internet of things’ backfired at Arm

#31

Post by hartator »

paxys wrote: post #21
dannykwells wrote: post #6

Can anyone tell me an example where Softbank has been spectacularly correct in the past few years? We all know the failures - are there any major success in their portfolio? Or is it all meh?

https://visionfund.com/portfolio ByteDance, Grab, Ola, Uber, Opendoor, Slack, DoorDash, Didi, Coupang were/are all great bets. According to CrunchBase ( https://news.crunchbase.com/news/softbank-vision-fund-strate... ), as of March 31, 2021 Vision Fund 1 was worth $146.5 billion from $86.2 billion in initial investment. I don't know enough about the space to judge whether that is considered good enough or not.

This is still underperforming the sp500 who went up 87% in the same 5 years.

Re: How SoftBank’s costly bet on the ‘internet of things’ backfired at Arm

#32

Post by paxys »

devmunchies wrote: post #18
bogota wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? You think gopuff is going to win that space? Why?

The “This Week in Startups” podcast from last week, episode 1378, interviewed the CEO. They are hiring their own drivers and building their own delivery hubs, meaning products you order are coming from their hubs, not from CVS or Walmart. They have more control over efficiency. They even acquired BevMo and are converting those into hubs.

I'm still skeptical that anyone will win that space. The core problem (instant delivery logistics in a dense urban area) is just too expensive for the average consumer to bear. Right now every player is VC subsidized, but what happens when that money dries up?

Re: How SoftBank’s costly bet on the ‘internet of things’ backfired at Arm

#33

Post by achow »

perfopt wrote: post #28
achow wrote: post #25

How it 'backfired', if it is going to do an IPO? Post IPO its market value could be much higher than acquisition price of $31B. Failure to sell to Nvidia at 2X the acquisition price is not a failure, it was an honest attempt to make a profit.

Correct. Here "backfired" is the investment did not make 10x return

Well, 10x was never a target, they were happy with 2x return from Nvidia acquisition.

Re: How SoftBank’s costly bet on the ‘internet of things’ backfired at Arm

#34

Post by paxys »

hartator wrote: post #31
paxys wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://visionfund.com/portfolio ByteDance, Grab, Ola, Uber, Opendoor, Slack, DoorDash, Didi, Coupang were/are all great bets. According to CrunchBase ( https://news.crunchbase.com/news/softbank-vision-fund-strate... ), as of March 31, 2021 Vision Fund 1 was worth $146.5 billion from $86.2 billion in initial investment. I don't know enough about the space to judge whether that is considered good enough or not.

This is still underperforming the sp500 who went up 87% in the same 5 years.

It's not as simple a comparison. We don't know the annual return % since all the money wasn't invested on day 1 but at various different points over 5 years. And the majority of it is still tied up in companies that haven't exited yet, so the value is mostly theoretical.

Re: How SoftBank’s costly bet on the ‘internet of things’ backfired at Arm

#35

Post by achow »

paxys wrote: post #27
achow wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question was "are there any major success in their portfolio?", time period was not specified.

Maybe you want to read the comment again?

Sorry. Overlooked the first part of the question.

Re: How SoftBank’s costly bet on the ‘internet of things’ backfired at Arm

#36

Post by mbesto »

paxys wrote: post #21
dannykwells wrote: post #6

Can anyone tell me an example where Softbank has been spectacularly correct in the past few years? We all know the failures - are there any major success in their portfolio? Or is it all meh?

https://visionfund.com/portfolio ByteDance, Grab, Ola, Uber, Opendoor, Slack, DoorDash, Didi, Coupang were/are all great bets. According to CrunchBase ( https://news.crunchbase.com/news/softbank-vision-fund-strate... ), as of March 31, 2021 Vision Fund 1 was worth $146.5 billion from $86.2 billion in initial investment. I don't know enough about the space to judge whether that is considered good enough or not.

> According to CrunchBase (https://news.crunchbase.com/news/softbank-vision-fund-strate...), as of March 31, 2021 Vision Fund 1 was worth $146.5 billion from $86.2 billion in initial investment. I don't know enough about the space to judge whether that is considered good enough or not.

Also Crunchbase is imperfect data so those numbers could be WAY off for all we know.

Re: How SoftBank’s costly bet on the ‘internet of things’ backfired at Arm

#37

Post by hartator »

paxys wrote: post #34
hartator wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is still underperforming the sp500 who went up 87% in the same 5 years.

It's not as simple a comparison. We don't know the annual return % since all the money wasn't invested on day 1 but at various different points over 5 years. And the majority of it is still tied up in companies that haven't exited yet, so the value is mostly theoretical.

Sp500 is meant to be the benchmark. This is very unfair to present worst numbers than the benchmark and present it as a win even if numbers can be off.

Re: How SoftBank’s costly bet on the ‘internet of things’ backfired at Arm

#39

Post by okhobb »

hartator wrote: post #31
paxys wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://visionfund.com/portfolio ByteDance, Grab, Ola, Uber, Opendoor, Slack, DoorDash, Didi, Coupang were/are all great bets. According to CrunchBase ( https://news.crunchbase.com/news/softbank-vision-fund-strate... ), as of March 31, 2021 Vision Fund 1 was worth $146.5 billion from $86.2 billion in initial investment. I don't know enough about the space to judge whether that is considered good enough or not.

This is still underperforming the sp500 who went up 87% in the same 5 years.

Investors in Vision Fund likely have the goal of returns for this investment that are not similar to the S&P 500 or other public equity indices. I'd further bet that 15-20% annualized is considered a very good result for this part of those investors' portfolios.

Re: How SoftBank’s costly bet on the ‘internet of things’ backfired at Arm

#40

Post by rurban »

rektide wrote: post #11

lol the cortex a7 is still the go to low power arm cpu. how a vast company with all the funding in the world can "bet on iot" but fail so miserably to make any improvement or change at all for so long is something i don't think I'll ever understand. dont get me started on how impossible to purchase most chips are, how inaccessible/non-existant the docs are, how vendored the frak up the screwball drivers are. what a d…

The Cortex-M4 is the goto low-power CPU.
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