It sounds good - they come in and offer a huge investment at a high valuation, higher than anyone else. About time someone recognizes how valuable your company actually is!
So you take it. You make an announcement, everyone oos and aahs over your new valuation. Talent flocks to you, fuck yea. Things are going great!
Fast forward some time. You need some more investment to go chase opp X. Or maybe you burned thru cash, who knows. So you start fundraising. investors look at your numbers and say...umm...you've shown some good growth but we dont agree with Softbank's valuation. We will invest in a downround, or come back when you've posted even more growth.
Crap. You need money NOW not later. You did NOT realize that high valuation was a double edged sword. And a downround is totally out of question.
Also working with them is...challenging. Gotta love those 8am calls (latest they can do Tokyo time). They ask for metrics that kind of make sense but are different than how you run things so it is a complete waste of time. On the phone they are oh so polite, but you're never sure what they're actually thinking.
You're asking yourself why you took their money again? They have had zero strategic impact (they're a Japanese telco) and now it's making fundraising more difficult.
Fun times. If I see a company take SB money I assume they are declining (or soon will) or greedy / short sighted. Or there is the rare actual strategic benefit sure. But most times there is none.
So why did we work take the money? Sounds like they wanted to avoid going public. But I wonder if they did their homework on this one.