SoftBank’s billionaire CEO Masayoshi Son is known for being quite the character. The eccentric Japanese investor—who began his career by starting a video game company that he later sold to electronics giant Kyocera—has made a name for himself investing billions in trendy startups that have the potential to change the world.
Sometimes, like in the case of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, this strategy leads to monumental returns and praise from investors, but other times, it ends in tragedy and tears (literally). Son described in 2019 how his multibillion-dollar miss on the coworking giant WeWork left him in agony, but he promised to learn from the “very harsh lesson.”
