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 24 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 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
Masayoshi Son would not have invested in Alibaba using traditional advisors
“If he started making all these investment decisions based on advice, like people like me, I don't think he would have done the Alibaba deal”
Nvidia's 40x PE valuation is not outrageous given its 75% margins
“Nvidia is the poster child, right? I mean, that's the one everyone talks about in Nvidia. Again, I haven't looked at that. Don't look, I don't follow stocks on a daily basis, by the way, I'm not a research analyst or a portfolio manager, but at 35 to 40 times …”
Public tech markets are not in a dot-com style bubble today
“It's nothing like the bubble we saw in the year, 2000. Cisco as a provider of the plumbing for the internet is the closest comparable. Cisco is trading at 200 times earnings. So I don't think we're in bubble territory in the world of technology yet. I think th…”
Raw processing power is commoditized among top business and IIT graduates
“I think that that is somewhat commoditized. A lot of people have that. And a lot of people you end up interviewing who coming out of the top business schools or IOTs or whatever, Processing power intelligence is something you can take for granted.”
Blitzscaling works brilliantly for platform technology models with network effects
“The idea of blitzscaling Reid Hoffman introduced that into the vernacular, you know, the idea that you just grow at all costs. And that's something that works brilliantly for platform technology models. Right? Where you don't worry about profitability. It's al…”
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…”
The romanticization of entrepreneurial suffering is driven by survivorship bias
“Kind of the idea of desirable suffering, I don't buy into that at all. Yeah. You hear stories about people like Sansan who crashed and burned, picked themselves up. You don't hear stories about people who just crashed and burned, right? There's nothing desirab…”
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…”
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…”
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…”
Standalone AI business models remain unclear as every company adopts AI
“The business models that, that come about at an individual level, I still don't have clarity on beyond even at the enterprise level it's productivity tools. It's just less obvious to me how you monetize that. So every company becomes an AI company effectively,…”
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…”
Europe's business environment has never been conducive to entrepreneurship
“There's very little off note, sadly, that's happened in Europe by way of entrepreneurial businesses. It's just never, the environment has never been conducive to entrepreneurs.”
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…”
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.”
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 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.”
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.”
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.”
Extreme price sensitivity prevents Western tech models from easily scaling in India
“The Indian consumer is unbelievably price sensitive. You probably appreciate that more than I do. And some of these numbers don't scale. Some of these businesses don't scale the way people think they might because there's twists and turns along the way.”
Easy fundraising environments are rarely the best times to deploy capital
“It's the easiest time to, what is the easiest time to raise money is almost never the best time to be investing.”