Yahoo!

"For example, in 1995, he invested $2 million in America’s Yahoo! (then 200 million yen). The following year, a joint venture was established with Yahoo! JAPAN. Note that Yahoo! America formally established the company and started its business in March 1995, and SoftBank decided to invest in the company in November of the same year. That is to say, shortly after Yahoo!’s inception, the president saw its value and made a decisive investment decision. As everyone knows, Yahoo! has become one of the world’s largest search engines, and Yahoo! JAPAN has an overwhelming advantage as a portal site in Japan. Today, as the leading shareholder of Yahoo! JAPAN, SoftBank has an off-balance sheet profit of 1.2 trillion yen. The 200 million yen initially invested in Yahoo! is just a tiny fraction of today’s return on profits."

"The “lottery box strategy” behind investing in Yahoo! The “lottery box strategy” is actually extremely simple! Never give up before winning, that’s all. For example, you attend a cultural festival and encounter a lottery game, costing 100 yen per draw. You win a game console if you hit the jackpot, but you leave empty-handed if you don’t. You spend 100 yen to draw once, but unfortunately, you don’t win, and you don’t have extra money to try again. If it ends here, your goal of “winning a game console” is not achieved and you might complain: “What bad luck!” But, if a generous relative happened to pass by and said: “I’ll give you money so you can keep drawing until you win!” If the relative gives you 1,000 yen or 2,000 yen, you can draw 10 times, 20 times, or even more. If the game is fair, you’ll surely win eventually."

"When Yahoo! offered to buy Facebook for $1 billion in July 2006, I thought we should at least consider it. But Mark Zuckerberg walked into the board meeting and announced: “Okay, guys, this is just a formality, it shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes. We’re obviously not going to sell here.” Mark saw where he could take the company, and Yahoo! didn’t."