SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son Speaks to an Almost Empty Room at Saudi Summit

Re:SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son Speaks to an Almost Empty Room a... by rossdavidh on Thursday October 31, 2019 @01:47PM (#21411577)

Mostly agree with you, but I would just like to point out that it might be that some of those founders would have done prudent and useful things if they had been given 1/10th the amount of money. Just like Softbank, they may have felt the pressure to spend that money somehow.

I don't know enough about Adam Neumann to say, and the current media environment for him is too negative for me to get an unbiased opinion. Maybe he was always going to be an unwise investment. But it is just possible that he (and Uber, and Lyft, and Peloton, and...) would have built productive, profitable companies if they had not felt they had to somehow justify being given 10x the amount of money they deserved.

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Re:SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son Speaks to an Almost Empty Room a... by NotSammyHagar on Thursday October 31, 2019 @02:52PM (#21412290)

No one made him get the trademark for we and then try to sell it back to the company. That's not justifying the amount of money they had. No one made him get control through the super-powered voting shares and control of the board. No made him sell the $700 odd million he did, well before the crash to make sure he got something out of it.

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Re:SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son Speaks to an Almost Empty Room a... by rossdavidh on Friday November 01, 2019 @09:27PM (#21425289)

For sure, he's culpable for his own behavior. But, I think a lot of what you mention, would not have happened if he had not been in such a "take all this money please and pretend you're spending it on technology" atmosphere. Because, people like him cannot spend do stuff like that if they're not enabled by someone, but if you're willing to sling money around there will always be somebody willing to take it and spend it.

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