In the past two years, the Japanese SoftBank Group, which has been at a shared office originator WeWork, has been fainted by a serial thunder recently.In addition to Fitch's two -gear to CCC+with WEWORK credit rating, and the rating outlook is negative, WeWork also clearly announced the cancellation of the listing plan (IPO), and informed employees to start layoffs from October.Affected by this, Sun Zhengyi, the founder of SoftBank, had previously valued WeWork up to $ 47 billion and plunged to less than $ 12 billion.
On the investment runway of the sharing economy, Sun Zhengyi and the SoftBank led by his leadership are not the first time.Before investing in WeWork, Sun Zhengyi's vision fund also invested $ 7.7 billion in the shared private car platform, and added 1 billion US dollars to invest in Uber before listing, but the valuation was US $ 75.4 billionOn the day of listing, Uber fell below the offer price. The current market value has shrunk by about $ 50 billion. The vision fund has been stunned.
The European and American markets, especially the United States, actually rarely bring good luck to Sun Zhengyi.Seven years ago, SoftBank spent $ 22 billion to acquire Sprint, the third largest telecommunications operator in the United States. After the acquisition, Sprint's debt has increased to $ 30 billion, which has not yet stopped bleeding.Not only that, Sun Zhengyi wanted to fight hard to match Sprint with T-Mobile, the fourth largest telecommunications operator in the United States. Helplessly, the US telecommunications industry regulatory agency stirred the situation on the grounds of antitrust, and the merger was finally blown.Tens of billions of investment returns have become far away.
Sun Zhengyi is the god of investment?
It should be said that in addition to being actively investing in a row, missing business opportunities due to decision -making errors is also a distressed record for Sun Zhengyi's investment.According to Sun Zhengyi himself, he could have reached an agreement with Amazon's founder Bezos to acquire 30%equity of Amazon, but at that time, Bezos asked for $ 130 million, and Sun Zhengyi insisted on bid for $ 100 million.The difference between the demand of 30 million US dollars is not happy.However, today's Amazon's market value exceeds 860 billion US dollars, and 30%of the shares correspond to the value of $ 260 billion in corporate value. This kind of hidden pain due to small loss is probably unforgettable for Sun Zhengyi for life.
Perhaps it is precisely in the European and American market that it is not good for the fact that the Fengshui treasures invested by Sun Zhengyi should be in Asia, and this inference is based on SoftBank's investment in Yahoo and Alibaba's investment and victory.
Since 1995, SoftBank has injected 360 million US dollars of real gold and silver from Yahoo, with more than 35%of the shares. When Yahoo was listed three years later, Sun Zhengyi's personal net worth increased to 70 billion US dollars; timesIn the year, Sun Zhengyi spent $ 20 million to invest in Alibaba, and then invested in an additional $ 80 million in investment, becoming Alibaba's largest shareholder. In the end, Alibaba's listing allowed Sun Zhengyi to receive an amazing return of $ 58 billion.Since then, Sun Zhengyi has also set up a vision fund of $ 100 billion in a scale. In addition to the Saudi Saudi Rights Fund Fund, there are also technology leaders such as Apple and Qualcomm.
In fact, Sun Zhengyi is not the god of investment at all. The Asian market, especially Chinese companies, is not his ideal sacred place for him to pick up gold.In the next year, Sun Zhengyi once took out $ 1.5 billion to acquire a corporate company in China to produce a packaging of memory chip, Kingston, with a control ratio of 80%. After three years of operation, not only the remaining $ 300 million acquisitions could not be paid, but in the endAt a price of 450 million US dollars, Kingston was sold back to the original founder. In one fell swoop, Sun Zhengyi lost $ 1,500 million, which was equivalent to buying Google, Alibaba, Tencent, which will be dominated by the Internet world at that time.Second-rate.What's more interesting is that after Kingston returned to the founder, he created a miracle all the way until it grew into the world's largest producer in the world's largest memory and glitter storage products.
Of course, it was not only Kingston who allowed Sun Zhengyi to invest after investing in a needle felt.After spent $ 40 million to invest in Shanda Network, Chen Tianqiao, who finally started from online games, failed to persist, and the SoftBank's investment ended without illness.Sun Zhengyi is optimistic about blogging, network space and other products, so he spars up 10 million US dollars to the blog China. At the same time, he invested in a bumper network that claims to create a Chinese version of My Space. Now it seems that it has basically been drifting.Similarly, Sun Zhengyi once bet 400 million US dollars to Renren.com, but under the impact of Sina Weibo and WeChat, Renren.com can only bring the reward to Sun Zhengyi to only disappointment.
Some people have invested in the investment process of Sun Zhengyi for more than 20 years and found that although SoftBank made a total of more than 170 billion US dollars of real gold silver, the contribution of Alibaba's contributions accounted for 80%. If you add the return of Yahoo, it meansSun Zhengyi has rarely obtained the investment in most projects, and even statistical data show that Sun Zhengyi has invested more than 800 companies, of which 100 were almost defeated.In this regard, Sun Zhengyi's own explanation is that the success rate is only about 5%, that is, of that is, of the more than 800 companies invested by SoftBank, only more than 40 are successful.
Indeed, the 5%success rate is not matched with Sun Zhengyi, who is regarded as the great god, but Buffett's golden partner Munger said that if the 20%stocks with the best investment rate of their investment, theirThe performance is almost terrible.In contrast, Sun Zhengyi can also cultivate several whales such as Yahoo and Alibaba in investment ponds while achieving a 5%success rate. His achievements can naturally be compared with Buffett, and no one has ever questionedThe outside world gives him the name of the Internet Emperor.
Of course, Sun Zhengyi himself may not care very much about the success and defeat of each investment. According to his words, he invested in passion and vision.Therefore, for Sun Zhengyi, people do not need to deified him too much, but it is necessary to make more detailed and in -depth experience and lessons of the success or failure of his investment.
SoftBank's investment is slow
Some people say that Sun Zhengyi's investment has obvious magical colors.When investing in Didi was rejected by Cheng Weiyan's words, Sun Zhengyi said that if you don't accept my investment, I will invest in your opponent's overbearing response, so that Cheng Wei can only open his arms.After the step was to be rejected, Sun Zhengyi directly shouted at the founder of Uber, saying that he would put the funds to his competitor Lyft.
It now appears that this kind of hostile investment method can only be done by Sun Zhengyi.What I want to emphasize this is that the strong capital chariot can form a crushing momentum, but any aggressive or plunder investment can not achieve a happy business marriage, especially the founder's initiative to take the initiative to cooperate with the subsequent cooperationUnder the premise, the possibility of finally being able to get a stable premium return is very small.
Looking back, whether investing in Yahoo or investing in Alibaba, it shows Sun Zhengyi's courage and vision, but this ability of wisdom to know beads and fast people seems to have rarely reproduced from Sun Zhengyi since then.Whenever the movement of investment is much slower than competitors.
Some people have found that from the beginning of the facebook, Twitter, Square, Audemars Piguet, Uber, WhatsApp, Snapchat, to WeWork, almost all US unicorn with a valuation of $ 10 billion in market value(Even later) SoftBank has not appeared before; similarly, today's six companies with the highest valuations, such as headlines, Meituan, Didi, Xiaomi, Kuaishou, Pinduoduo, etc. Before the C round, I did not see SoftBank.The figure.Whether Sun Zhengyi, who is in his 60s, is really old, or SoftBank must break Sun Zhengyi's investment management system alone. The cruel facts may force the great emperor to make more thinking.
It must be acknowledged that Sun Zhengyi is a first -class investment entrepreneur worldwide.At the beginning of entrepreneurship, Sun Zhengyi first carried out a one -and -a -half -year market survey. After obtaining 40 commercial projects in the end, he woven the 10 -year predictive gains and losses of each project, the weekly turnover of funds, and the organizational structure diagram.Standards queue up one by one for the project, and the final computer software wholesale businessStand out from it.
In Sun Zhengyi's opinion, today's Japanese companies have to wait until 90 % of them are grasping and invest, which is too late, and Chinese companies often start investing when they are grasped. At this timeSun Zhengyi believes that 70 % of the winning percentage can be invested.Perhaps it is precisely this kind of cautious and positive investment style that there are 43%of the return on investment in SoftBank in the past 20 years.
In addition, Sun Zhengyi also has the ability of investment challenges that ordinary people do not have.When SoftBank invested Yahoo, shareholders were unanimously opposed. Only Sun Zhengyi insisted on it; Alibaba had no financing, and Ma Yun had no fate. Sun Zhengyi had generous bets after learning about it.Collective opposition, but Sun Zhengyi did not change his mind.
In Sun Zhengyi's view, when major investment decisions, almost everyone opposes is worth thinking about carefully. After all, there are a few people with foresight. On the contrary, if an important investment decision is passed by the company's shareholders, then it is then it is, then it isIt will not generate great value.Adhering to and showing this strategic and valuable investment thinking, Sun Zhengyi was regarded as a long -term capital gambler by the outside world.
Another obvious investment style of Sun Zhengyi is that as long as you are optimistic about a industry, you will vote for leading companies in different markets, and each one will hit billions of dollars in order. Therefore, scan the latest capital layout of SoftBank,The characteristics of centralized investment and building cluster effect have clearly surfaced.For example, in the shared economic track, in addition to investing in Uber and China, SoftBank also invested in Grab and OLA in Indonesia (Singapore), and SoftBank controlled one -third of the travel market in the world.
Coincidentally, in the field of artificial intelligence, while acquiring ARM, SoftBank also bought two robot companies, Boston Dynamics and Schaft, from Golash.Coupled with the invested satellite network companies, Oneweb and Sprint, Sun Zhengyi named this layout as the AI group strategy. To put it bluntly, it is to achieve a large -scale chain investment effect through industrial collaboration.
(The author is a professor of economics professor in economics at the University of Foreign Studies of the Chinese Market Society)
On the investment runway of the sharing economy, Sun Zhengyi and the SoftBank led by his leadership are not the first time.Before investing in WeWork, Sun Zhengyi's vision fund also invested $ 7.7 billion in the shared private car platform, and added 1 billion US dollars to invest in Uber before listing, but the valuation was US $ 75.4 billionOn the day of listing, Uber fell below the offer price. The current market value has shrunk by about $ 50 billion. The vision fund has been stunned.
