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Softbank's CEO Bet Billions on the iPhone—3 Years Before It Existed
How the SoftBank CEO convinced Steve Jobs to make the deal of the century.
There are a lot of stories about Masa (some told for the first time in the book): how he bankrolled Alibaba, China’s internet colossus, after a six-minute speed-dating session with Jack Ma; how he personally supersized hundreds of Silicon Valley startups; how he recruited ex-Googler Nikesh Arora with a $320 million remuneration package signed on a napkin. The missing piece was a breakthrough consumer product to compete with his archrival, NTT Docomo, the dominant incumbent in Japan and the most valuable company in the world by market capitalization. Steve Jobs’ decision to stake all on SoftBank was vindicated, but the success also pointed to Masa’s ability to scale up rapidly, overcoming a maze of logistical, regulatory, and marketing obstacles.
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