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Comment by neural_thing | Hacker News Reader

This is your annual reminder that Masa Son once lost $70B

Right after making 70B?

I don't think this quip makes any sense. It's like the reverse of a gambler telling you how much they made without telling you how much they lost.

Edit: For clarity, I think if you want to ask how much he made/lost in the dotcom boom, you have to compare his worth before the boom to his worth after the crash. Not his worth at the peak of the boom to after the crash. If you think that's wrong I'm interested to hear why.

I believe Son is underwater on Uber as well, and if Slack falls somewhat below $10, would be eating a loss even there.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/07/uber-wework-and-slack-public...

And that he is far from being the genius investor the Japanese media tries to make him

I suddenly feel better about some of my underperforming assets lol

And is now worth $23B.

So I would assume he knows a little about business.

I'd argue that assumption, [correlation of: current net worth -> knowledge about business], is flawed logically.

You do understand how he made that money right ?

Knowledge about business -> Current net worth

His entire net worth can be accounted for with Softbank's investment of $20m in Alibaba in 1999. That's now worth ~$110B... and he has a 21% stake in softbank.

Remove that.. and he's at 0 or even negative. Is that luck or skill?

Reminds me of Bill Ackman and General Growth Properties.

In what way, please? I only know about Ackman through his Don Quixote-esque battle with Herbalife. What happened with GGP?

I only had the general impression in passing that GGP was his big success that gave him the resources to engage the more recent nonsense. I first heard of him in connection with Valeant more than Herbalife.

It's like, maybe the order in which you have your life experiences is everything.

Well, you can infer that, and people do often infer that from losing a lot of money and then coming back.

But it could be just one-in-a-billion luck.

https://xkcd.com/1827/

What’s this in reference to?

He lost a lot in the dotcom collapse around 2000. https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/a-key-figure-in-the-...

To be precise:

> ... having the distinction of losing the most money in history (approximately $70bn during the dot com crash of 2000).

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

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