MASAYOSHI SON, THE BILL GATES OF JAPAN 

Did you know that Masayoshi Son, despite being mocked by some and dubbed as the worst investor ever having experienced colossal failures, still ranks as the 73rd on the Forbes list of The World's Billionaires 2022, and the world's 45th most powerful person by Forbes Magazine's List of The World's Most Powerful People?

In 2012 University of California, Berkeley, professor Steven Vogel told Ars Technica that Masayoshi Son is “the closest thing to Bill Gates in Japan” – an indicator, then, of Son’s power and influence in his native country and beyond. And while Vogel did add that Son has been both “colossally successful and had some colossal failures,” it’s fair to say that the entrepreneur’s time with SoftBank falls squarely into the former camp. 

Masayoshi Son, born 11 August 1957, is a Korean-Japanese billionaire technology entrepreneur, investor, financier and philanthropist. A 3rd generation "Zainichi Korean", he naturalized as a Japanese citizen in 1990, and is the founder, chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of the Japanese holding company SoftBank, CEO of SoftBank Mobile and chairman of UK-based Arm Holdings.

Masayoshi Son was born as the second of four sons in Tosu, a city in the eastern part of Saga Prefecture on the island of Kyushu, Japan. Son is a 3rd generation Zainichi Korean. Zainichi Koreans are ethnic Koreans with permanent residency or citizenship in Japan. Son's grandfather, Son Jong-kyung, moved from Daegu to Japan during the Japanese colonial period, where he worked as a miner. His father is Son Sam-heon.

Son pursued his interests in business by securing a meeting with Japan McDonald's president Den Fujita. Taking his advice, Son began studying English and computer science. He left to study in the U.S. on the advice of Den Fujita. At age 16, Son moved from Japan to California and lived with his friends and family in South San Francisco. He finished high school in three weeks by taking the required exams at Serramonte High. Son attended the University of California, Berkeley. At age 19, Son became confident that computer technology would ignite the next commercial revolution after being enamoured by a microchipfeatured in a magazine.

He began his first business endeavours while still a student. With the help of some professors, Son created an electronic translator that he sold to Sharp Corporation for $1.7 million. He made another $1.5 million by importing used video game machines from Japan, on credit and installing them in dormitories and restaurants.

Son graduated from Berkeley with a B.A. in Economics in 1980, and started a video game company called Unison World in Oakland, CA. He later sold the company to an associate for close to $2 million, and the company was eventually acquired by Kyocera.

Son used his family's adopted Japanese surname for much of his childhood. However, after he returned to Japan, Son decided to use his family's original Korean surname instead. For this action and other similar ones, Son is considered to be a role model for ethnic Korean children in Japan.

Since Son founded SoftBank in 1981, he has made many investments, but the vast majority of those deals failed, and his reputation as an investor rests almost solely on his $20 million investment in Alibaba Group in 2000, a stake that was worth $130 billion in 2018. The morphing of his own telecom company SoftBank Corp. into an investment management firm called SoftBank Group Corp. made him noted worldwide as a stock investor. 

However, after a number of high-profile setbacks, Son's investing strategy in the first and second SoftBank Vision Funds established in 2017 and 2019, has been described as one reliant on the greater fool theory. A controversial figure, Son has been mocked by some specialized media and dubbed the worst investor ever.

As of September 2022, Son ranks 73rd on the Forbes list of The World's Billionaires 2022, despite having the distinction of losing the most money in history (approximately $70bn during the dot com crash of 2000). Son was named the world's 45th most powerful person by Forbes Magazine's List of The World's Most Powerful People.

His business nous even stood him in good stead while he was still just an economics major at UC Berkeley. SoftBank, a telecommunications giant, now has stakes in over 1,000 companies, including the likes of Yahoo! Japan and Sprint.

Sources:

https://internationalbusinessguide.org/powerful-people-international-business/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masayoshi_Son