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Comment by OnlineGladiator | Hacker News Reader

> Invest in a lot of different things, most of which will fail, and make up for the losses with the Ubers of the world.

Ironically, SoftBank is one of few investors to lose money by investing in Uber.

I wasn't aware of that. So it's a bad example but the idea behind VC investing still stands.

I understand your point. My point (which I didn't really explain, so that's my fault) is that SoftBank is an especially terrible VC firm - at least when it comes to making money.

Eh, in general, but equating the reasonableness of a fund by the percentage of their total is not sound. $100B can still be dumb money, and inventing valuations as a product of this is actually harmful to actually-viable companies. It sucks the air out with bad money (if you can believe in such a thing).

"VC" is not a synonym for "smart money," and "the idea behind VC" being "everybody is betting tho" doesn't explain their outsized presence and outsized effects.

How? Uber’s market cap is higher than the investment by SoftBank. Plus they had possible deals during IPO.

How did SoftBank manage to lose money by investing in Uber?

Join late at a very high valuation.

> “There were many naysayers when SoftBank invested last year at a valuation around $49 billion,” said Chris Lane, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. “The successful IPO of Uber at a valuation anywhere near $100 billion will be a strong validation for SoftBank and its Vision Fund. This is also very good news for SoftBank’s other ride-hailing investments.”

Oops.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-12/softbank-...

> “There were many naysayers when SoftBank invested last year at a valuation around $49 billion,”

> Oops.

But the current UBER market cap is $68 billion. So if softbank invested at $49 billion and now UBER is worth $68 billion, how exactly is that an oops?

The market cap of Uber is higher than the investment valuation.

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