Masa Madness

Sometimes I wasn’t sure what motivated John. It certainly wasn’t money. To most investors, the prospect of a quick sellout to IBM would be irresistible. But for John, investing in high technology was a calling, and monetary reward was the byproduct of a successful mission. The higher goal was to create something enduring, a growing enterprise that

growing field of artificial intelligence and believed that exploiting this coming revolution was how SoftBank would bring people happiness—

SoftBank was not a democracy. Masa liked to say that while his team might perform months of diligence on a company, “my first insight in the first few minutes is sometimes more meaningful.”