These past few months have been endless blunders and bad news for SoftBank. They’re definitely not putting $100 million into a goodwill and equality fund. They’re putting 100 million into PR and advertising with the benefit of getting some returns.

But companies do this because they know it works, so I guess I can’t say it’s a dumb financial move.

> with the benefit of getting some returns.

I've never understood this argument in the context of investing. If there was an opportunity to get outsized returns by investing in the people this targets, then investors would already be going after these opportunities, motivated by the returns alone. They wouldn't even need the social signaling aspect of announcing a fund like this. If anything, they'd probably keep such details of these good deals to themselves to avoid having too much money chase after such deals and raise the price of the deals and make their investing terms worse.

If maximum returns meant picking people based on race, they’d do it. If it doesn’t, they’ll announce that they’re picking people based on race as a good-will move. They’re probably not burning money with this decision, but they’d probably make more if they picked based on some other metric. The PR is the important thing here, which is why they’re making a point of announcing it to the world.

Yeah. I wasn't disputing what you're saying. I'm just disputing the point I was replying to where they talked about getting returns.

That thesis makes sense in some markets such as lifestyle products and services catering to a market segment. Fashion and entertainment are a perfect examples.

In the context of technology however, there's nothing about building the next platform as a service for example that would lend itself to be more successful if it were built by a specific demographic. If that were the case, investors would already be chasing those opportunities.

Assuming everyone acts rationally and without bias.