The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 73 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 2 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
SoftBank's scale frees founders from short-term quarterly public market constraints
“As a public CEO, you have to hit your numbers to the penny every single quarter, and you're boxed in in some ways into executing against that one strategy, and you think very carefully about your Capital allocation, your investment decisions day by day, week b…”
Lemkin: SoftBank is hitting debt limits and flashing above covenants
“The only problem is SoftBank seems tapped out. They're hitting their debt limits. They just announced this week, right? That they're flashing above their covenants.”
The original SoftBank Vision Fund correctly identified the massive AI opportunity
“They were early to figuring out that there would be a huge opportunity in AI. So, you know, they famously were in NVIDIA in, in that fund you know, and they did some really good investments, like Slack, like Garnet.”
Ehrenberg: $5B Margin Loan Is a 'Low Octane' Move for Masayoshi Son
“So to me, this is like a relatively low octane masa move.”
Ehrenberg: SoftBank Could Easily Borrow $25B Against Arm Shares
“So, but it very easily could see him back in the news with an incremental twenty billion. He could lever this. He could take twenty-five billion against the arm position easily.”
Suster: Upfront Ventures participated in zero SoftBank or Tiger deals
“So we had zero SoftBank deals, we had zero Tiger deals, we had one Coatoo deal, one Insight deal.”
Claure: SoftBank Generated a 10x Return on VTEX IPO
“Two weeks back, we just took Vitex public at a very high valuation. I think it's whatever, 10 X what we invested.”
Claure: SoftBank invested in Univision and backed its Televisa acquisition
“We just invested in, in a media company in the U.S. Called Univision, which is, has a 70% market share for Hispanics, And then we helped them buy Televisa in Mexico.”
Claure: SoftBank wrote $50M and $8B checks on the same day
“There was a meeting in which we wrote a fifty million dollar check, and there was a meeting that we wrote an eight billion dollar check. And that could happen the same day.”
Claure: SoftBank invests exclusively its own capital with no LPs
“We only invest our own capital. We don't have our own LPs. We don't have specific cycles.”
Housenbold writes SoftBank checks ranging from $200 million to $2 billion
“And I've written checks between two hundred million and now close to two billion dollars.”
Housenbold: SoftBank has done multiple follow-on rounds in DoorDash, Compass, Opendoor
“In my portfolio alone, We've already done follow-ons or multiple follow-ons into companies like DoorDash, Compass, Katerra, Opendoor, as some examples”
O'Driscoll: SoftBank Holds $80B in Equity Through 90% Arm Stake
“He owns 90% of Arm still in SoftBank, and Arm is trading ninety-odd billion, so he's got eighty billion of equitable equity there.”
Haas: Masayoshi Son lost 90% of his net worth and recovered it
“Arm is owned by SoftBank. So, Masayoshi-san, who's, I think, in the top 50 most wealthy people in the world, in the year 2000, he was the wealthiest man in the world, I think, for, he likes the joke, for about 20 nanoseconds when the SoftBank stock was higher …”
SoftBank acquired Arm for $32 billion in 2016
“In 2016, SoftBank made Arm its largest ever acquisition, with a reported price of thirty two billion dollars.”
JOKR Raised Over $260M at a $1.2B Valuation
“Ralph has raised over two hundred and sixty million dollars for the company, most recently valuing it at 1.2 billion dollars, and prior to Joker, Ralph spent close to seven years as the founder and CEO of Food Panda, as well as enjoying roles as chief strategy…”
JOKR has raised over $170M from GGV, Balderton, SoftBank, and Kaszek
“To date, Ralph has raised over a hundred and seventy million dollars for the company, from the likes of GGV, Balderton, Soft SoftBank and Kazak, to name a few.”
Claure: SoftBank operates 26 global teams meeting hundreds of founders weekly
“Today we have 26 investment teams all over the world that are meeting hundreds of entrepreneurs every single week”
Housenbold: SoftBank Vision Fund's sweet spot is mid-to-late-stage minority investments
“We have the flexibility in our fund to do early stage, mid stage, late stage, to do private, to do public, to do minority investments, to do majority investments, but our sweet spot is meaningful size minority investments in mid to late stage”
Housenbold: SoftBank meets with 10 new pitching companies weekly
“In a given week, I'm probably meeting with 10 new companies that are pitching SoftBank. I'm sitting in two board meetings, having a couple compensation calls, chatting with my CEOs, interviewing members of prospective members of their management team, helping …”
SoftBank Vision Fund is structured as a 14-year vehicle
“We're a twelve-year fund with two one-year extensions, so we're a fourteen-year fund pragmatically, and we're only 22 months into that journey.”
SoftBank's due diligence process takes four to ten weeks
“And so that may take between four and 10 weeks of diligence.”
SoftTech VC was regularly confused with SoftBank after Vision Fund launch
“With the announcement of the Vision Fund and, you know, the huge investments into Uber and everything else that they've been doing, we were just getting confused on a pretty regular basis, which is kind of crazy considering that their fund is, I think, three o…”
SoftBank Owned a Third of Yahoo at Its IPO
“SoftBank then ended up owning, as you'll recall a third of Yahoo at the IPO.”
Stebbings: x.ai has raised over $30M in venture capital
“And x.ai is now one of the best funded AI startups, having raised over thirty million dollars from our friends at Firstmark, and a big thanks to Matt Turt for making the intro, and the likes of DCM, Lira Hippo, Crunch Fund, SoftBank, and many more incredible i…”