What I don't get about the Vision Fund is how so many of its investments lack (pun intended) vision.
Other than the ARM, Nvidia, and a few billion in biotech (about $3 billion[1]) investments, so much of the fund has gone into pretty "obvious" traditional startups.
If I had a $100 billion fund, I wouldn't be swinging for these singles and doubles (which Uber and WeWork were by the time Softbank got involved, although these companies can still provide value to customers).
Vision Fund should've been out-competing Google X to become the financial backer of basically the next Bell Labs. Instead of 3% biotech and 20% Uber and WeWork and Wag, I'd have flipped those two numbers.
The biggest loss from the Vision Fund is the opportunity cost of all the great disease-eliminating, fundamental-science research that could've had much greater upside than WeWork. And I never hear that opportunity cost discussed.
EDIT: I've added an additional comment with more supporting arguments for taking bigger risks but more ambitious risks when managing large sums: https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=21096651
[1]: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/softbanks-vision-fund-deployi...
Other than the ARM, Nvidia, and a few billion in biotech (about $3 billion[1]) investments, so much of the fund has gone into pretty "obvious" traditional startups.
If I had a $100 billion fund, I wouldn't be swinging for these singles and doubles (which Uber and WeWork were by the time Softbank got involved, although these companies can still provide value to customers).
Vision Fund should've been out-competing Google X to become the financial backer of basically the next Bell Labs. Instead of 3% biotech and 20% Uber and WeWork and Wag, I'd have flipped those two numbers.
The biggest loss from the Vision Fund is the opportunity cost of all the great disease-eliminating, fundamental-science research that could've had much greater upside than WeWork. And I never hear that opportunity cost discussed.
EDIT: I've added an additional comment with more supporting arguments for taking bigger risks but more ambitious risks when managing large sums: https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=21096651
[1]: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/softbanks-vision-fund-deployi...