you are walking confusion TV
hi welcome to another ColdFusion video
Softbank it's one of those companies
that you hear a lot about but are never
really sure or what they actually do as
it turns out answering that question
what do they do is surprisingly
complicated today we're going to see how
softbank's founder miss aoshi son was of
business prodigy and from the start he's
always had an eye for opportunity
especially when it comes to technology
in the future son was born in Japan in
1957 and his grandparents were
immigrants from Korea his family worked
their way out of poverty when he was a
young teenager at age 16 he read a book
by Dan Fujita the founder of Japan's
McDonald's the book had such an
influence on him that he decided to meet
the popular entrepreneur sons calls and
letters went ignored
I called his his assistant and no
distance call back then it was so
expensive I made almost hundred calls
sixty goes could you ask him oh I will
try but he's not gonna meet with the
student I said well don't decide by
yourself let him decide so I spoke with
with the assistant different assistants
so many times they don't give me the
right answer so I said okay this is
waste of my telephone bill so I flew
into Tokyo and I said I came because the
the phone call become becoming more
expensive than air ticket he gave you
some advice which was to learn yeah I
asked him what business should I the
computer that's the one if I were you at
your age at this time don't look at the
past industry look at the future
industry that's the one computer
industry that's the one you should focus
if I were you that's the one so I said
wow great
he resolved to follow Fujita's advice
and study both computer science and
English those skills were quickly put to
use when he moved to San Francisco and
blew through high school in just three
week
he did this by studying insanely hard
and attempting the college entrance exam
almost as soon as he got there and he
passed all six subjects
he's a quote from son at the time quite
I don't have much time to waste one can
think as much as he likes however I need
to act and follow through with my
ambition because we only live once I
want to do something that will be
remembered in history if I do the same
as the others do I will never be able to
make history end quote
after passing the test he could enter
American University Messiah she son
decided to study computer science and
economics while he was still a student
in 1976 Sun started his first business
enterprise here is an interview at Sun
explaining the story of how he did it
well I was a good student I have to make
money I want to earn $10,000 per month
and I will allow me myself five minutes
a day so I asked my friends isn't the
good job that I can hang ten thousand
dollars in five minutes a day that's two
my friend said you're crazy it's
impossible nothing like that do you
wanna sell drag no no I don't wanna do
that so I said okay what is the best
most efficient use of my time it's
invention it's invention and I have to
file patent if I get the pattern five
minutes if I focus and can come some
idea I can make some idea so I set alarm
clock five o'clock five minutes and take
the information come invention car
oh I did that and it worked it worked
you invented a machine that helped
people translate languages yeah that one
was the electric dictionary the first
electric dictionary the many student use
the electronic dictionary the first one
ever made was by myself first electric
dictionary yes after this a son saw the
technology to electronics giant sharp
for 1.7 million dollars he was just 19
years old while most of us were taken
the year off perhaps with cocktails and
on sunny beaches Sun made another 1.5
million dollars by importing used video
game machines from Japan son graduated
in 1980 and although he had already had
some great success in his early few
years in America he decided that the
Japanese work ethic and staff loyalty
were valuable assets for any company so
he moved back to Japan and started
looking for opportunities unlike many
business founders he had a fixed passion
and turned that into a business the son
took a much more analytical approach he
set up a matrix and ranked every
potential business against his own fixed
criteria this included things like he
must love the business for 50 years it
must be unique and he must become a
market leader within 10 years he looked
at a broad range of options from obvious
choices such as software development to
completely new industries like health
care management in the end he chose
something close to his expertise in 1981
Japan's Softbank was formed son saw a
big gap in the market many PCs needed
software to run in their systems but the
software developers lacked the money and
sales skills to reach hardware
manufacturers he quickly won a contract
with the country's largest PC retailer
Justin Deng Kiko making Softbank their
exclusive software purchaser within a
year the company was selling over 2
million dollars of software a month son
quickly diversified in May of 1982 they
started a publishing monthly computer
magazine they took heavy losses at the
beginning but by the 90s
Softbank dominated the market for
high-end tech magazines they would use
the magazines to heavily promote their
own products so cross-promotion was very
valuable
to reflect it's increasingly diverse
portfolio Softbank was renamed Softbank
corp in 1990 and the following decade
saw them become a huge negotiator and
tech based business deals it was this
decade that would CSUN be named the Bill
Gates of Japan in the 90s the company
began to grow every facet of their
business for the magazines they bought
up publishers in the United States and
took control of many major trade shows
including Comdex the largest computer
Expo at the time for Hardware they
bought a majority stake in the memory
card maker kingston and bought shares in
media companies and satellite
broadcasting companies in australia and
japan the next big step was to join the
dot-com boom in 1996 Softbank became the
biggest shareholder in Yahoo and set up
here who Japan this ended up being a
common tactic investing in US companies
and then setting up a Japanese version
Sun has stated that he believed that
localizing these businesses made them
more likely to succeed Yahoo Japan till
this day is still the country's most
widely used search engine even though
it's now powered by Google however all
this internet investment meant that
Softbank was seriously exposed when
the.com bubble popped at the turn of the
millennium Sun himself had just passed
Bill Gates to have the highest net worth
in the world but suddenly in just one
day it all imploded he dropped from a
net worth of 78 billion dollars to just
8 billion dollars overnight while others
may have thrown in the towel son simply
just went to look for more opportunities
even saying that maybe this was a good
thing because now he was able to find
rock-bottom prices
Softbank invested in broadband providers
telecom companies such as Vodafone and
spent 30 million dollars on an unknown
Chinese startup called Alibaba this
original 30 million dollar stake is now
worth close to 150 billion dollars
so that leads us to today what about the
rest of their portfolio
what does Softbank do currently today
the Softbank group has an annual revenue
of 82 billion dollars making it the 72nd
largest company in the world and the
seventh largest in Japan in addition to
the companies that mentioned before
Softbank also owns Sprint Corporation a
company that made over thirty billion
dollars in revenue last year and also
owns Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile
Softbank group also owns the
microprocessor design company arm ARM
processors are designed to be light on
power cost-effective and very efficient
for this reason ARM processors are the
basis for pretty much all of our mobile
devices from the iPhone 10 to the iPad 2
Samsung devices and the Google pixel
lineup in fact over 100 billion ARM
chips have been sold to date so that's
all well and good but perhaps the most
fascinating area is their foray into
robotics if any of you have seen the
Atlas robot or the superb mini robots
you'd probably know that they're made by
Boston Dynamics well Boston Dynamics is
owned by Softbank when you combine this
with their commercially available pepper
robot that went on sale in 2015 then you
pretty much have a company that's very
prepared for robots to be a part of
daily life there are already hundreds of
thousands of robots in use across Japan
pepper already works in many customer
service positions for example so almost
at the end of the video let's just take
a look at how Softbank analyzes the
feature softbank's approach to the
future is a much more long-term vision
than any other company sun has set up a
plan for house Softbank will continue to
grow for the next 300 years this is
fueled by the Softbank vision fund they
have multiple investors in the fund with
big hitters like Apple the Saudi
government and Foxconn they aim to raise
100 billion dollars in 2017 and came
close raising 93 billion a third of that
money has already been invested the
vision fund has a 15% share Anubha 20%
share and Flipkart
5% share an Nvidia and another 5% share
in the messaging app slack as well as
various other shares and about a
thousand come
nice Softbank has even spent three
hundred million dollars on a walking dog
service called wag the other areas that
are looking to include biotech financial
systems mobile apps Internet of Things
devices and almost anything with the
technological element to it so it
Softbank strength is in its diversity
and the fact that they get in early on
many different industries looking at all
the stuff they're investing in it seems
that funds 300 year plan doesn't seem
quite so crazy so I guess we'll check
back in 2318 for an update so there you
have it that's the story of Softbank the
brainchild of the very intelligent
master Yoshi
Shawn otherwise known as the Bill Gates
of Japan so anyway thanks for watching I
hope you've enjoyed this video this has
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catch you again soon for the next video
cheers guys have a good one
cold fusion is me thinking
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