anomatopoeia

Yes this was and remains my thoughts since the fund was first announced - this whole thing very much echoes the previous strategy in certain respects.

Two key differences:

1. Stage of investment

Last go round Son was writing a vast number of (relatively) small checks in early stage companies before stumbling into late stage investments like Webvan. Standard VC stuff - playing the averages and buying a lot of lottery tickets. Alibaba was only $20MM investment as I recall

This time around he seems to be making massive investments in much later stage companies. What is the rosiest possible outcome for his $7BB Uber investment? and how does this compare to the alternatives for an investment of this size?

2. Makeup of the fund

This article touches on it but important to note that this is not a $100BB pile of equity from the partners. The fund is structured with a substantial debt component - ie the fund needs to pay out a coupon every year so very different structure than typical VC funds. I understand the reasoning behind this but things could get difficult in a hurry should the market take a big turn at the wrong time in the funds cycle.

Will be fascinating to follow

Similar situation, our sick child was passed off by initial doctors as having something minor. We were fortunate to try a different ER where a nervous young doc took a more skeptical approach and ran down the checklist fully before correctly diagnosing with bacterial meningitis. The doctor had never even seen a meningitis case before.

Per discussions with the infectious disease specialists this timely diagnosis likely saved our child's life.

Xi seems to have overplayed his hand over the past few years. Instead of China quietly amassing power as it had done since the early 90s, Xi pushed China into a much more assertive role before it was necessarily ready.

The US and others had looked the other way on China’s mercantilist actions in the past on a strategic gamble that China would slowly evolve into a more democratic state, with open markets, freedoms and rule of the law. This strategy had worked out well with South Korea and Taiwan as they made their transitions from poor dictatorships to wealthy democracies (and peaceful US allies).

During the reign of Xi’s predecessors this did seem to be a possibility but Xi’s policies and perhaps most importantly his ascension to President for Life ended any illusion that China would make this sort of evolution.

The Made in China 2025 program for example explicitly codifies what many had long assumed - that China is directly targeting the most advanced foreign industries with a state backed industrial policy.

With China moving away from even playing lip service to liberalization and now directly threatening US/European interests with Made in China 2025 and other initiatives, there is no longer any reason for the US to play nice with China.

Frankly if China had simply continued quietly moving forward as they had under Hu and made perhaps some nominal reforms or concessions they probably could’ve continued their plans unabated.

Yes this is critical - free trade benefits the economy/country as a whole but the benefits do not accrue evenly across society.

Laymen have basically been saying this for years while being ignored by the ruling elites but economists have been slowly starting to get on board.

Even post Trump I suspect that the global attitude toward free trade will become much more nuanced than it had been over the past 20+ years.

Interested in seeing where the funding is coming from at that valuation. Potentially the biggest buyout of all time?

Other buyouts of such scale involved companies with huge cash flows/profits - think RJR Nabisco, Hilton, TXU (big US utility).

Tesla of course is a very different animal. Hard to imagine any kind of conventional financing working for this type of deal.

Beyond the Saudis maybe some other SWF or deep pocketed individual investors?

The world is quite lucky that the current batch of terrorist orgs are relatively unsophisticated - mostly using small arms and driving cars into crowds.

The mass terror potential from even just slightly more sophisticated methods is chilling to consider.

Not at all cost competitive for my brand either.

Contacts are a commodity item - whenever I need to reorder contacts I do a lazy 2 min search for the cheapest price online and order there. Customer experience is same everywhere.

Not sure what sort of competitive edge JetLenses has, seems like the idea would've been great in 1995. As a long time contact wearer this market has already been disrupted pretty severely .

For me costs going down fairly steadily since the advent of 1-800-Contacts and the subsequent federal law which put an end to the shenanigans of eye doctors trying to block online fulfillment.

I have long believed that the real solution to Boston's housing crunch is high speed transit to Worcester, Fall River, Lowell, New Bedford etc.

Build HSR out to these areas and drop in lower cost high density density housing. Essentially use these old mill towns as Boston's Brooklyn -as none of the closer in cities are willing to take on the role.