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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)

#41

Post by camillomiller »

zemvpferreira wrote: post #37
InsideOutSanta wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

David Walsh and Zeljko Ranogajec would beg to differ:

https://www.championbets.com.au/betting-academy-article/tass...

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

#42

Post by oersted »

georgefrowny wrote: post #27

They were right that economics is a dismal science, but to me these days it's not only about the ugly Moloch-like consequences, but also because these utter wierdos are in charge of it, and the medium of economic domination is a PowerPoint of nonsensical AI slop.

I assume that the PowerPoints can be absolute slop because they do not matter at all, the power is elsewhere.

It all comes to names here. The world puts waaay too much faith in successful people being successful again, and too much of the success is attributed to their inherent talent. It’s a classic fallacy of authority.

Ironically, because everyone thinks that everyone thinks that they will succeed, investing on them does yield good returns, because others are likely to invest after. And they do indeed continue to succeed!

It’s as arbitrary as tulips. Bubbles of names. That’s why it’s weirdos, because it’s quite random who is chosen, and I suppose weirdos have a more pronounced brand.

Of course it’s not completely arbitrary, there’s real merit in cracking the initial chicken-and-egg, depending on where you start in life. And there are plenty of ways of squandering the opportunities that come after. But still.

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

#43

Post by zipy124 »

yen223 wrote: post #32
zipy124 wrote: 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?

Softbank aren't really doing this any more though. They are making very large bets on relatively few companies. Their vision fund 1 was something like 100 billion spread between about 100 companies, so 1 billion each. This is rather different than the usual VC. It's hard to get data, but most data suggest smaller rounds have better success [1].

[1]: https://carta.com/uk/en/data/vc-fund-size-performance-2024/

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

#44

Post by [deleted] »

nmfisher wrote: post #17
aetherson wrote: post #7

I mean, he was pretty vindicated on Uber. Which kind of hurts me to say, I was a long time Uber bear. But it did indeed emerge from the pandemic stronger.

Quick Google suggests Uber is up 66% on its IPO price, but the S&P index is up 85% over the same time period. I think Softbank also sold out around 2022, so the return (vs IPO price) would have been even lower. Didn't check for stock splits etc but I don't think Uber was a home-run for Softbank at all.

[deleted]

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

#47

Post by zemvpferreira »

camillomiller wrote: post #41
zemvpferreira wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

David Walsh and Zeljko Ranogajec would beg to differ: https://www.championbets.com.au/betting-academy-article/tass...

Interesting that you would use as an example two people who ingeniously built complex systems, through lots of hard and clever work, to turn the odds in their favour.

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

#48

Post by microgpt »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #31
camillomiller wrote: post #26

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!"

What else can you do with your life after you're rich? Life is meaningless. Most of us strive for money - when you have money, what's left? You're the dog that caught the car.
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