Tong Zhao: The Rise of SoftBank (I) A Legendary Experience

Unlike other large companies in Japan, SoftBank (softbank) for Chinese few people know, but mention the founder of SoftBank, Sun Zhengyi, everyone will know that he is the largest shareholder of Alibaba, 6 minutes of investment in Alibaba 20 million US dollars has become a well-known good story, Son Zhengyi has thus become the biggest beneficiary of Alibaba's listing, its investment of 20 million US dollars in 15 years into a market value of 66.8 billion US dollars of Alibaba stock, the return on investment of up to 3440 times. Son Zhengyi was once a prominent figure in the Internet world, SoftBank has Japan's largest portal - Yahoo Japan, Son Zhengyi's value in the 2000 IT bubble once surpassed Bill Gates to become the world's richest man; his investment in Chinese Internet companies is not limited to Alibaba, invested $40 million in Chen Tianqiao's Shanda Network Company in 2003; in 2008 SoftBank withdrew $348 million into Chen Yizhou's RenrenRen Network.

Before we introduce Japan's number one "local tycoon" company, SoftBank, we must understand the legendary experience of its "local tycoon" founder, Sun Zhengyi, whose experience undoubtedly played a fundamental role in the rise of softbank. Here I must state that the author's use of the adjective "local tycoon" is not because Sun Zhengyi's behavior is similar to China's "local tycoons", but in the eyes of ordinary Japan, Sun is more like an upstart and incompatible with the Japanese moral concept.

Son zhengyi came from a family of merchants, his father was a Japanese businessman with Korean nationality, and he did so-called inferior third-rate businesses such as usury and marble houses. In Japanese society, Korean Japanese people are discriminated against in various ways, and this feeling of discrimination undoubtedly affects Son Zhengyi's life.

Son was gifted and intelligent, staying in the United States in high school and graduating from the Economics Department of the University of California, Berkeley. Sun is proud of his first start-up in college: In the busy study life of the university, Sun believes that he cannot earn enough money by working part-time, and he is determined to make money by inventing and creating. He wanted to develop a portable translation machine, but not only was he unable to develop it himself, but he did not have even the most basic development costs, but he whimsically moved his classmates and computer science professors and promised that their remuneration would be paid when the product was contracted. The geniuses of the University of California were impressed by this young man who was not afraid of tigers, and the prototype was successfully released soon after with everyone's efforts. Sun took advantage of the holidays to return to Japan with the prototype, and after several twists and turns, found Sharp's responsible director, who was once again touched by the young man and bought the translation machine patent for a high price of 100 million yen. A year later, Sharp successfully developed the world's first portable translation machine, which is the prototype of "Quick Translation", which is indispensable for us to learn foreign languages now.

Another thing made the conformist Japanese hate Son to the bone. When SoftBank first entered the broadband market, it had neither customers nor equipment, and as we all know, network equipment is essential to provide broadband services to customers. The only way is to borrow equipment from the communications service boss NTT (Nippon Telecom Telephone Co., Ltd.), the so-called borrowing chicken and egg, and the price of the broadband service provided by SoftBank is less than a quarter of the same business of NTT, although it can be legally used, no fool will pick up the stone and drop it on his own foot, NTT of course said that he agreed to act but ignored it. Son Zhengyi rushed to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (equivalent to China's Ministry of Electronics Industry) with a barrel of fire oil and threatened the bureaucracy: If you do not order NTT to connect, I will burn myself here. No one would have imagined that the president of a grand listed company would make such an arbitrary and unreasonable threat, and finally could only reluctantly agree to Sun's request.

A well-known commentator once wrote in his blog that Sun would not have been able to succeed in this way in the United States, and that he had a spirit of adventurism that the average Japanese did not have. Sun's success is inextricably linked to his talent, character, and effort beyond the imagination of ordinary people, but his Korean-Japanese complex has undoubtedly become a catalyst for him to move forward. He used his Japanese name before starting his company: "Masayoshi Abemoto", and starting a business under his Korean name may be a kind of self-challenge for him, perhaps a challenge for Japanese society.