The Ledger
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Reddy: SoftBank Vision Fund was actually highly disciplined and valuation-conscious
“While I know that that is the general perception that, you know, SoftBank comes in and gives more valuation you know, we were very, very, very valuation conscious. Deep Nishar made sure that he instilled a very good discipline in terms of how we invest. There …”
Entry valuations matter far less for category-creating tech platforms
“Valuations in the world of technology are not as important as you think you might, which is a fairly fundamental learning for anyone who comes out of business school and is fixated on on you know, discounted cashflow and hardcore, never lose out of the fact th…”
Masayoshi Son's 'time machine' thesis for emerging markets remains intact
“Massa's original thesis still remains intact, which is equal to the time machine, which is the idea of investing in technology models in In emerging markets, technology models that have been successful in the Western world, in the U S and bringing them to emer…”
WeWork was not a tech company and suffered fatal asset-liability mismatch
“My disconnect was that it just wasn't a technology company. And even as a real estate business model, it had this issue with Asset liability mismatch, right? I mean, your leases are very long-term and your tenants are frequently very short-term and that leaves…”
Traditional financial valuation skills are frequently useless in technology investing
“I have to say that there's a lot you have to, or I had to unlearn because the analytical skills you pick up valuation, for example, are frequently not that meaningful in a In a technology investment universe. So there was a little bit of a fair bit of unlearni…”
Alok Sama would not have initiated the expensive ARM acquisition himself
“The arm deal, which I'm closely associated with I can't claim Credit for going out and buying that company, merely the execution because I probably would have, wouldn't have seen beyond the fact that the stock is expensively valued and you got to pay a big con…”
Masayoshi Son agreed to invest $200M in InMobi in 2011
“And, you know, Masa negotiates a little bit and says, I'll put in 200. And that was it.”
Tewari: InMobi employee attrition reached roughly 40% post-unicorn round
“My attrition before the round happened was, you know, very, very, very low. My attrition in the company after the round happened within two years, I don't know, like, 40%.”
Narayana: Observe.ai hit $20M ARR with 50 customers before SoftBank investment
“March of 2019 is when we went to market and there was this great good story when zero to almost two two to almost seven, seven to almost 18 when SoftBank came in and invested at almost a billion dollar valuation. So three years of extraordinary growth. Our ave…”
Alok Sama faced an absurd smear campaign and surveillance at SoftBank
“I mean, I had this absurd smear campaign I had to deal with and maybe that's what you're referring to. That was something that was right out of a movie. You couldn't make that stuff up being under surveillance, et cetera.”
SoftBank without founder Masayoshi Son is like a church without Jesus
“Like a South Bank without Masa is like a church without Jesus, I think is what I say, which is very appropriate.”
Masayoshi Son backed OYO's Ritesh Agarwal because he saw himself
“It was a case of Ritesh being someone who reminded Masa when Masa himself was young, right? And I want to back you with capital. I want you to achieve what you're what you're capable to realize your potential, to realize for the, for your company to realize it…”
SoftBank made 4x on Nvidia but missed out on 30x returns
“You went in on a leverage basis and you made, you know, I think the number was, you know, kind of probably at least four times your money, which is a great result, but. It could have been 25, 30 times his money.”
Enduring anti-Korean discrimination in Japan shaped Masayoshi Son's character
“One of the keys to understanding him, I think is he's not really Japanese. He's Korean. And For those among among your audience in India may not be familiar with this. It's being Korean in Japan is the equivalent of what hopefully I'd like to think things are …”
Masayoshi Son was focused on artificial intelligence back in 2014
“I think that whole, you know, visionary, that expression is thrown around a little bit too loosely, but Sonsan is the real deal, I should say, because I mean, take AI, for example. It's all hype right now. Everyone's talking about it. He was talking about it i…”
SoftBank and Masayoshi Son possess an investment war chest exceeding $50 billion
“I think he has a war chest trap, you know, kind of with leverage capacity and with cash on hand is certainly north of fifty billion.”
Mid-Stage Funding in India Was an Underserved Market in 2016
“We looked at the landscape fairly deeply and realized that while early stage has a lot of established brands and late stage has a lot of capital in terms of Softbank and DSTs and all those guys. The real mid-stage of Series B and early Series C was still nasce…”
Mega-rounds from funds like SoftBank overwhelm competitors regardless of execution
“See what has happened in India, and I think it's a global phenomenon, not just in India that sometimes some industries get overwhelmed by too much capital. So one player is able to raise, you know, significant capital from one of the big guys, let's say soft b…”
Makhija: Acevector promoters hold 37% of Unicommerce; SoftBank invested via balance sheet
“About 30, 37% is held by the promoters.
the second, then it's a. Which includes you and?
No, promoters are Kunal, Rohit, Acevector, which is our parent company.
then it is SoftBank which is through their balance sheet.
It's not through the Vision Fund.”
SoftBank backed quantum computing firm IonQ before its $2B IPO
“They went public at two billion and we came in before that.”
Reddy: SoftBank Vision Fund's Minimum Check Size Was $100 Million
“When I saw what SoftBank was doing their minimum check size was a hundred million.”
Reddy: Deployed Nearly $1B at SoftBank Across a $5B+ Portfolio
“Deployed almost a billion dollars of new investment, had an overall portfolio of over five billion, led their first quantum computing investment, their first additive manufacturing investment, their first mental wellness investment, did gaming, web three, bloc…”