In 1974, 17-year-old Son Zhengyi traveled east alone to the United States to study. At the age of 21, he led the development of the world's first electronic translation machine and earned his first million dollars. After graduating from university, Son returned to Japan to found SoftBank, which controls 70% of the Japanese software market. After SoftBank went public, he became the world's richest man at the age of 42 for investing in Yahoo. Later, it invested in Alibaba to obtain hundreds of billions of dollars in returns, laying the cornerstone of today's SoftBank empire.
How can Son Zhengyi build an investment empire that now holds hundreds of billions of dollars? Let's find out.
One
Not willing to be mediocre, Yan Que An knows the Hong hu zhi
Masayoshi Son (also known as Masayoshi Aomoto) was born in 1957 in Goken-no-do, Tosu City, Saga Prefecture, Japan.
Sun Zhengyi was a native of Putian, Fujian Province. Xun Ning came to goryeo to make a living during the Northern Song Dynasty,during the reign of Emperor Zhenzong of the Northern Song Dynasty, and later changed his surname to Sun, and then took root in Goryeo and passed on the lineage.
In the 1910s, after the Korean Peninsula was occupied by Japan, Sun Zhengyi's grandfather Sun Zhongqing smuggled into Japan to make a living, and only then did he have the Son Zhengyi family.
Although the Sun family struggled in Japan for decades, before Son Zhengyi went to high school, the family lived a life of poverty.
Later, Sun Zhengyi's father finally made money by selling private liquor and opening a gambling game hall, and the family's economic situation gradually improved.
When he was a teenager, Sun Zhengyi liked to read, and his life enlightenment began from the book.
At the age of 14, Sun Zhengyi read Sima Liaotaro's historical novel "Dragon Horse Coming" and was deeply shocked.
The great achievements of the Japanese restorationist Sakamoto Ryoma made him fascinated, and Sakamoto Ryoma's spirit of not sacrificing his family to save the country in pursuit of his dream of saving the country also deeply touched him, and even shed tears for a time.
At the age of 16, Son Saw a Success Book called "Jewish Commercial Law", was greatly overwhelmed, and made a special trip to Tokyo to meet the author, Mr. Fujita, the father of McDonald's in Japan.
After meeting Fujita, Son Zhengyi asked him, "What should I do in the future?" Fujita replied, "Don't look at the past, look at the future." If I were you, I would learn English and computers well. ”
Because of this dialogue, Sun Zhengyi has since embarked on a prosperous road in life.
Subsequently, Son flew to the West Coast of the United States and spent 4 weeks at the English Bootcamp at the University of California, Berkeley. In just one month, Sun Zhengyi's eyes were wide open, and he secretly thought in his heart: I must come to the United States, Go to Berkeley!
After returning to Japan, Son immediately told his family that he wanted to study in the United States, a decision that stunned them. At that time, Sun Zhengyi's father was seriously ill, and the family economy was also affected, and everyone advised him not to leave his parents alone.
But Son Zhengyi remembered the story of Sakamoto Ryoma's rescue of the country, and he was determined to realize his dream, and in the end, his parents could only express support.
So, in February 1974, Masayoshi Abeen dropped out of Japanese high school and flew to the United States alone, where he was admitted to The Sacred Name University in Oakland and later to the University of California, Berkeley.
One autumn day in 1976, Son bought a copy of Popular Electronics magazine at a small supermarket in Oakland. When he saw the photo of the Intel 8080 chip above, Son Zhengyi was struck by lightning, and he was very excited: it turned out that this was a computer, and humans finally created something beyond their own brains!
Intel 8080 chip
Under the surging mood, 19-year-old Son Zhengyi set his life plan for the next 40 years:
At the age of 20, I started a business and announced my existence to the world;
30 years old, earn enough to earn hundreds of billions of yen (billion DOLLARs) of seed funds, used to devote themselves to great causes;
40 years old, become the first;
50 years old, earned a trillion yen (ten billion DOLLARs);
At the age of 60, he retired and handed over his career to his successor.
Since then, under the guidance of lofty dreams, Sun Zhengyi has begun the road to take off.
At the age of 21, Son Zhengyi led the development of the world's first electronic translation machine and earned his first million dollars. After graduating from university, Son returned to Japan to found SoftBank, which controls 70% of the Japanese software market. After SoftBank went public, he became the world's richest man at the age of 42 for investing in Yahoo. Later, it invested in Alibaba to obtain hundreds of billions of dollars in returns, laying the cornerstone of today's SoftBank empire.
It can be said that Sun Zhengyi's dream has been realized step by step under his own choices and efforts.
A person's worldview and outlook on life will continue to change with the growth of insight and experience. The dream and ambition of the madman Sun Zhengyi, with the growth of his own strength, are also growing step by step.
In 2010, SoftBank held a 30-year general meeting. At the meeting, Son Zhengyi spent 133 ppt and 2 hours of speech to talk about his future plans:
"I want to build SoftBank into a business that has been growing for 300 years, while becoming the number one in the world in all areas."
In fact, as early as 2004, Son Zhengyi had the idea of doing a 300-year enterprise. Others regard a century-old enterprise as a distant goal, but Son Zhengyi feels that 100 years is too pediatric, and it will be done for 300 years.
In the same year, Ma Yun also proposed the goal of making Alibaba a great company for 102 years at Alibaba's fifth anniversary conference. It can be seen that the two should have exchanged ideas in private.
Son believes that there have only been two most important "paradigm shifts" in human history, one is the Industrial Revolution and the other is the information revolution, and the latter is more important than the former. The Industrial Revolution led the course of human history over the past 300 years, and the information revolution will lead the future course of mankind in the next 300 years.
He proposed that SoftBank's mission is to "commit to increasing human happiness", and the information revolution will create human happiness. SoftBank, in these 300 years, will become a leading enterprise leading the human information revolution.
Two
Perseverance, do not give up until you reach your goal
Look up at the stars and keep your feet on the ground. The achievement of a career must not only have the guidance of dreams, but also have the spirit of perseverance to implement.
Sun Zhengyi is not only a dream master, but also very tenacious in doing things, with a thick skin, and whatever he wants to do, he will not give up until he reaches his goal.
In high school, in order to meet Fujita, the father of McDonald's in Japan, Son Masayoshi made a lot of efforts.
At that time, he called Fujita's office to identify himself as a student, saying that he liked Mr. Fujita very much and wanted to meet him.
But more than 80 consecutive hits, each time being blocked by the secretary. The secretary felt that Mr. Fujita was so busy every day, who had time to meet an unknown student?
Later, Son Zhengyi simply cut and played first, flew directly to Tokyo, and then called his secretary and said:
"I've been to Tokyo and have come to see Mr. Fujita. You don't have to help him make a decision, just tell him what I said and let him decide for himself. I only had to see him for three minutes and see his face, and I was satisfied. ”
The secretary had no choice but to report to Fujita. Later, Fujita gave Masayoshi Abemoto 15 minutes, giving him directions for future career development.
In 1974, when Son Zhengyi arrived in the United States to prepare for the SAT test (equivalent to China's college entrance examination), he was dumbfounded when he saw the test paper being sent down.
The volume of the American exam is very large, with dozens of pages on a single test paper. Son Zhengyi's English is only a few months basic, and it is impossible to cope with it.
Sun Zhengyi thought about it and decided to ask the invigilator for special treatment: first, since he was Japanese and did not know English, he asked for permission to look through the Japanese-English dictionary; second, because it was too laborious, he was asked to extend the examination time.
The invigilator did not agree, and Son Zhengyi went to the principal. The principal could not be the master, so Sun Zhengyi called the official in charge of education in the state, looked for it layer by layer, and finally got the conditions he wanted from the governor.
Later, others finished the exam at 3 p.m., while Sun Zhengyi flipped through the dictionary and answered the exam until 11 p.m.
After taking the exam for 3 consecutive days, he was finally admitted to the University of Sacred Names.
In September 1978, when Son Zhengyi's electronic translation machine was developed, the 19-year-old began to sell everywhere.
First of all, Son Zhengyi wrote a letter to 50 Japanese home appliance manufacturers, attaching his own products and indicating his willingness to visit. Among them, 10 manufacturers such as Panasonic, Sony, Canon, Casio, and Sharp replied to the letter.
Then, Son Zhengyi returned to Japan with the products and visited the 10 manufacturers one by one, but even ran 9, all of which were rejected.
At this time, only Sharp had not yet visited, and if Sharp was not able to do so, he would be completely finished.
Luck doesn't seem to have come to Son, and his progress at Sharp is extremely unsmooth. Although the other party's attitude is very good, the core idea is to refuse.
Unwillingly, Son Zhengyi made countless phone calls, met countless individuals, and found Sasaki Masa, the head of Sharp's technical department at the time and director of Sharp Central Research Institute, the father of the Japanese electronics industry, and finally sold the patent to Sharp for $1 million.
Three
Extremely confident, I am born to be useful
Most of the people who have dealt with Sun Zhengyi said that sun zhengyi seems to have a magic power in him, and you seem to be able to see the future from his eyes, and from his confident expression, I believe that he can get everything done.
Where does Son's self-confidence come from? How did he show his self-confidence step by step?
When he was in elementary school, Son Zhengyi wanted to aspire to become an elementary school teacher, but because their family did not have Japanese citizenship at that time, this ideal was quickly shattered.
Sun Zhengyi was very sad, at this time his father comforted him: "Don't be discouraged, you are a genius, you are the material for doing big things." ”
In the days that followed, his father often encouraged him in this way, and Sun Zhengyi also listened to it, so in his future interactions with people, he did not hide his self-confidence, because he believed that he was a genius and everything could be done.
At the age of 19, Son was at the University of California, Berkeley, preparing to make an electronic translation machine.
But, as a poor student, he had neither the money nor the technology. Confident that he did not care about these things, he invited well-known professors from the physics department and the computer department of the school to join.
At the time, the world's authority on the pronunciation of electronic synthesizers was Professor Forrest Mosel of Berkeley's Department of Physics. Son went straight to Moselle's office and introduced him to the invention.
Son's passionate and sparkling eyes impressed the 48-year-old Moselle, who finally agreed to his invitation.
The two did not talk about much remuneration, Sun Zhengyi said, I don't like to talk about money, you think you need how much remuneration, just write down the numbers. When we have money, you can get as much as you write.
That evening, Moser went back to his wife and said, "I met a young man today, and one day he will own the whole of Japan."
In addition, Son Zhengyi also used his charm to find a Berkeley graduate to coordinate the invention, this person is Lu Hongliang, later the founder of UTStarcom (who produced PHS mobile phones).
At that time, Lu Hongliang was about to graduate and had a bright future. Son Zhengyi persuaded him not to look for a job, let's start a business together.
Lu Hongliang was very optimistic about Sun Zhengyi and felt that he was a person who did big things, so even if there was no funding for research and development at that time, Lu Hongliang still chose to fully support Sun Zhengyi.
Son zhengyi in the R & D laboratory
Later, after the product came out, Son Zhengyi went to Sharp and sold it to Sasaki Masa, the technical director at the time.
While demonstrating the product, he recounted the rejection of companies such as Panasonic. Son Masayoshi is not worried about the experience of being rejected by Panasonic and others, which will affect Sasaki Masa's judgment because he has absolute confidence in his products.
Eventually, Son's confidence and passion infected Sasaki Masa, who decided to support the young man's ideals. Sasaki wrote a $1 million check, bought the patent for the translation machine, and signed a new $10 million contract with Son to develop translation software for other languages.
Four
Integrate resources and make good use of empty gloves white wolves
The Jews claim to be the most business-friendly people on earth, and many of their financial and business ideas are widely spread, among which the business methods of "borrowing chickens to lay eggs" and "empty gloves and white wolves" are enshrined as the Bible by many entrepreneurs.
Son Zhengyi read "Jewish Commercial Law" when he was a teenager, so a closer look at Sun Zhengyi's history of his family can find that Sun Zhengyi is deeply influenced by Jewish business thinking, and is good at integrating everything and building his own business model in the absence of funds, connections and resources.
First of all, let's talk about the invention of the electronic translation machine.
Son Zhengyi, who was 19 at the time, had no technology or funds and only one idea.
He introduced his invention to the professor at the school and said, I want to do it, but I don't have the technology and need your support. I don't have any money now, I can't pay you, you can only get money if you sell things. If you can't sell it, you won't get a penny.
Later, with his own ideas and charm, Son Zhengyi hired 6 professors and 1 full-time employee under the condition of not spending money in the early stage, made the translation machine, and finally earned 1 million US dollars.
The second is the computer software distribution business.
In 1981, more than a year after Son Zhengyi returned to Japan from the United States, he established the Japan Software Bank, which is mainly engaged in computer software distribution business.
However, as a newcomer to the industry, SoftBank was founded with no products, no customers, and even insufficient funds, only 10 million yen (100,000 US dollars).
What should I do at this time? Son Zhengyi thought of a way, he first used 80% of the company's funds to rent the largest booth in an industry exhibition, and then issued an invitation letter to major software vendors to welcome everyone to his booth for free.
For software manufacturers, there is such a good opportunity, do not have to use it. As a result, many manufacturers set up booths at SoftBank booths. In the end, SoftBank's booth became the hottest place at the fair, and all software manufacturers and customers knew SoftBank's top name.
After becoming famous, it is much easier for Son Zhengyi to integrate resources. Sure enough, not long after the end of the exhibition, Fujiwara, the manager of a large computer store named "Shangxin Motor", approached Son Zhengyi to see if SoftBank could provide them with software.
Son Zhengyi immediately packed the ticket and said that he would definitely be able to. And he can find all the software in Japan, get the wholesale price in a large way, and then sell it to Shangxin Motor at a discount.
After negotiating with Shangxin Motor, the customer piece was solved, and now only the supplier is left, and Sun Zhengyi directly found Hudson, the largest software company in Japan.
After sun zhengyi met Hudson's boss Kudo Hao, he told his past experience and future ideals. He repeatedly emphasized: "I am a genius, I will make SoftBank the first software distribution company in Japan." ”
In the end, Kudo Hiroshi was persuaded by Son Zhengyi to agree to Son's proposal for exclusive agency.
In this way, the upstream and downstream of software distribution have been handled by Sun Zhengyi, and a new software sales format has been born.
There is another case, which is the publishing business.
When Son Zhengyi did the software distribution business, he also involved in the book and magazine business.
At the industry show that made SoftBank famous, Son saw a collection of programming books called "PC Library" on display by Hewlett-Packard. He thought the book was well written and wanted to publish it for sale.
Hp's people were first persuaded by him to get the copyright.
He then went to the famous Asahiya Bookstore in Tokyo to find the person in charge, Tanabe, and when he did not know anyone else, begged Tanabe to take him to the Tokyo Publishing House and the Japanese Publishing House. Finally, the publisher looked at Tanabe's face and reluctantly agreed to Sun Zhengyi.
In this way, Son Zhengyi began the publishing business. Later, he published Oh! PC》、《Oh！ MZ and six other computer magazines became the publishing giants of the Japanese computer industry.
In addition to the above three cases, the SoftBank Vision Fund established by Son Zhengyi in 2016 is essentially an "empty glove white wolf".
Integrating family wealth, school endowments, social security funds and sovereign funds around the world to realize his 300-year dream plan, Son Zhengyi can be said to be blue and better than blue compared to Jews.
Five
The more frustrated and courageous, the more reborn in the fire
General Patton, a former U.S. Army general, once said, "A measure of a man's success is not his height at the top, but his resilience when he falls to the bottom." ”
By 1983, Son's SoftBank had gained a foothold in the Japanese software industry, with sales exceeding 4.5 billion yen.
At this time, The 26-year-old Son Zhengyi chunfeng was proud of the horseshoe disease, and at this rate of development, he is likely to achieve his goal of a net worth of $1 billion at the age of 30.
But there were unpredictable storms in the sky, people had misfortunes and blessings, and a bad news suddenly fell on Sun Zhengyi, who had severe chronic hepatitis.
The doctor told him: You won't live more than 5 years.
Hearing such bad news, even if Son Zhengyi has always been optimistic, it is difficult to accept for a while.
He feels that the world is gray, on the one hand, his softbank is just on the right track of development, on the other hand, his wife is pregnant with a second child, and the good life has just begun, why is it over?
Later, it was his idol Ryoma Sakamoto who revived him.
While re-reading Sakamoto's story at the hospital, Son remembered that Ryoma died at the age of 31, but also overthrew the shogunate era. If you live for another 5 years, you are still 31 years old, so why can't you do something big?
"Even if I only have the last 5 years of life left, I will burn myself brilliantly!" Son Zhengyi cried out in his heart.
Since then, while treating patients in the hospital, he has begun to read books day and night.
During this period, Sun Zhengyi particularly focused on the study of Sun Tzu's Art of War, and summarized a set of business strategies that he later called "Dao Tiandi General Law, Wind Forest, Volcano And Sea".
In 1984, the good news came from the medical community that Sun Zhengyi had developed a new treatment for this disease, and the cure rate was as high as 70%.
In order to continue to realize his dream, Son Zhengyi did not hesitate to accept a new treatment. After a year and a half in the hospital, he finally recovered and was discharged from the hospital.
During the days when Son Zhengyi was hospitalized, SoftBank was caught in a dilemma of internal and external troubles, with debts as high as 1 billion yen. After Son Zhengyi was discharged from the hospital, it took more than two years to pay off the debt.
At this time, Son Zhengyi was 30 years old and had failed to complete the $1 billion goal set by the 19-year-old.
But he did not lose heart, continued to reorganize the business, and forged ahead. Soon, SoftBank's business continued to grow by leaps and bounds. Three years later, Son controlled 70% of the Japanese software market and became an absolute industry hegemon.
In 1994, SoftBank was successfully listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in Japan, with a market capitalization of up to $3 billion, and Son Zhengyi's personal wealth exceeded $1 billion.
Six
Plan to move later, and lay out new industries in the future
In the eyes of the outside world, Son Zhengyi is a crazy investor, impulsive and brainless, such as the widely circulated "6 minutes to invest in Ma Yun" incident.
But Sun Zhengyi is actually good at planning and then moving, and his thinking on strategy and general direction is beyond the reach of ordinary people.
The first key strategic thinking was the choice of business at the beginning of the founding of Japan SoftBank.
In 1980, when Son Zhengyi had just graduated from the United States and returned to Japan, he did not rush into an industry to start a business, but began to think, what kind of work can make me do for 50 years?
Unexpectedly, this thinking was a whole year and a half.
Son zhengyi has considered more than 40 business directions and scored them one by one according to 25 standards, including:
It has to be something I can focus on for 50 years;
It must be unique and unexpected;
Must be able to contribute to the happiness of all mankind;
Must have a broad space for development;
No large start-up capital is required;
Must be able to become the first, at least Japan first;
……
In the end, Son chose the one with the highest score from more than 40 projects: to be a computer software dealer.
The second key strategic thinking is the choice of investment strategy to the United States.
In 1994, after SoftBank went public in Japan, Son accumulated original capital and began to enter the financial markets. For him, the best way to achieve accelerated creation of the future is to invest in the future.
At that time, the United States was the center of innovation and entrepreneurship in the world. As a result, Son Zhengyi set his sights on the innovative industry in the United States.
Among them, Son Zhengyi is most optimistic about the information industry and is ready to invest all funds in this industry. However, he did not rush to act, but began to do research.
Son Zhengyi believes that the information industry is like a treasure place. If you want to go on an expedition, some people will bring food, some people will bring medicine, some people will bring water, and he chooses to bring a treasure map.
For this "treasure hunt", Son Zhengyi successively bought Ziff Davis, which is engaged in the publishing business of the information industry, and ComDex, which is engaged in the exhibition business of the information industry.
Through these two companies, he has mastered everything about the Information Industry in the United States, and he can always know where the best technology has emerged and who is the best person.
Yahoo, who later sent him to the throne of the richest man, was introduced by CEO Ziff Davis.
The third key strategic thinking is the 300-year corporate plan announced in 2010.
At the 2010 SoftBank 30th Anniversary Conference, Son Zhengyi announced to the world SoftBank's 300-year corporate plan.
Son argues that SoftBank's mission is to "strive to increase human joy," and that the information revolution will create human happiness. SoftBank, in these 300 years, will become a leading enterprise leading the human information revolution.
The $100 billion SoftBank Vision Fund, established in 2016, is the strategic deployment that Son zhengyi used to achieve the 300-year plan.
Seven
Attack wildly and concentrate on doing great things
Compared with the strategic calmness, Son Zhengyi's tactical execution can be called fierce, and some people even evaluate it as crazy.
In order to realize SoftBank's 300-year dream plan, Son Zhengyi established the SoftBank Vision Fund in 2016, with an initial fund size of $100 billion.
Before the establishment of the Vision Fund, there had never been such a giant monster in the capital markets. And its emergence has also brought huge changes to the entire venture capital market, and even changed the rules of the game.
One long-time SoftBank investor summed it up: "Most investors are game winners, while Son is a rare game changer." ”
Son Zhengyi's best investment game is: use the advantage of funds to throw money at the target company, promote the startup to expand the market scale, and then increase the valuation of the startup company.
At the same time, Son Zhengyi also likes to invest heavily in a number of competing companies on the same track, seeking large shares and even holdings.
Since 2016, SoftBank has swept goods in the Internet, cutting-edge technology, medical health, real estate and other fields, with billions of dollars in large and at least 100 million US dollars in small ones, and has invested a total of 70 billion US dollars.
Only making a lot of money and spending time and energy on blockbuster projects, Son's style once caused controversy among everyone. The result of such an investment style is that you will either make a lot of money or lose a lot.
Let's start with big money.
Needless to say, SoftBank's fiscal 2020 annual report shows that SoftBank Vision Fund Phase I and Phase II invested in 125 companies, and together with other investments, softbank generated about $57.6 billion in annual investment income.
thereinto:
The investment in the Korean version of "Alibaba" Coupang brought a return of $24.5 billion to SoftBank;
Investing in Chinese shells to find a house, bringing a return of $3.7 billion to SoftBank;
The investment in U.S. restaurant delivery platform DoorDash has brought a return of $11 billion to SoftBank.
At the same time, the Vision Fund's medical landscape has been a success. Five healthcare-listed companies have been born in the first phase of the Vision Fund, earning SoftBank a high return of $4.4 billion.
Among them, Guardian Health, a cancer early screening company, has made $2.4 billion for the Vision Fund in just two years, which is rare in the entire medical investment circle.
Let's talk about the big losses.
In 2019, SoftBank suffered its first deficit in several years, and the financial report showed that the company lost more than $10 billion that year.
The coworking WeWork IPO of the investment failed, the valuation plummeted, and SoftBank wrote down a loss of $4.582 billion;
After the listing of the invested ride-hailing car Uber, the stock price fell, and SoftBank lost $5.179 billion;
The investment satellite operator OneWeb filed for bankruptcy and SoftBank lost $1 billion.
In addition, as many as 50 of SoftBank's more than 80 investment projects have plummeted in valuations, and nearly 15 invested companies have gone bankrupt.
In April, Son invested $1.5 billion in Greenhill Capital to file for bankruptcy protection. In June, smart building company Katerra also faced bankruptcy after filing for bankruptcy protection, and SoftBank contributed a total of $1.8 billion as its majority shareholder.
In the past two months, a series of policies by the Chinese government have also caused SoftBank to suffer heavy losses.
Strong supervision of data security has allowed companies such as Didi, Manbang and Dingdong Tou, which SoftBank invested in, to fall all the way after the US stock market was listed in July.
The rectification of discipline-based training institutions has put SoftBank's investment homework gangs and education companies such as 1V1 in charge of the risk of bankruptcy.
For some of the failures of investment in these years, Son Zhengyi also mentioned in an interview with Forbes this year, "We still lack a systematic investment approach in many aspects, so we need to reflect on tactics, but the strategy remains the same, and the vision remains unchanged." ”
Although the investment cases in these years have made gains and losses, in general, SoftBank's fundamentals for future investment have not changed fundamentally, and the group as a whole is still positively profitable.
So far, SoftBank has invested in 301 companies worldwide.
In terms of market capitalization, Alibaba is still the largest investment held by SoftBank by market capitalization, worth more than $130 billion, accounting for 39%. ARM and T-mobile followed, accounting for 9% and 6% respectively.
From a regional perspective, SoftBank's global investments are mainly concentrated in the United States, Asia, Europe and Latin America. Among them, Chinese investment accounted for 23%.
SoftBank's investment landscape