FROM THE VAULT: MASA’S MASTER PLAN— JULY 5, 1999

Masayoshi Son’s strategy to invest in internet companies—for the next 300 years.

EvEn bEforE graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, Masayoshi Son nurtured big dreams, brainstorming 40 potential startups and working out how he’d “start a business, amass capital and eventually hand the creation over to a chosen successor,” Forbes wrote. Son got going after he left college, founding Softbank, a software distribution business, in 1981. By the late ’90s it was a sprawling venture firm with investments in more than 100 internet companies (Yahoo, E-Trade, GeoCities) worth nearly $20 billion. “The digital revolution will make mankind happier and more productive, and that won’t change over the next 300 years,” Son told us.

Son, whose wealth totaled $6.4 billion, didn’t want to control “a single behemoth like Amazon.com,” we wrote, but sought “sizable stakes in top players in myriad niches.” Said Gary Rieschel, a Son lieutenant: “We’re drinking from a fire hose. There are more good opportunities than we can pursue.”

Yet when the dot-com era ended, Son’s fortune sank 92% from its $78 billion peak in 2000. Softbank survived, though, thanks partly to its still-valuable stake in Yahoo. Nearly 20 years later, it’s hard to overstate Son’s reach in Silicon Valley. His roughly $100 billion Vision Fund—much of which was raised from Saudi Arabia—is the largest fund in history, and Softbank has put money into virtually every major recent startup, including Uber, WeWork and Slack. With a $21.6 billion fortune, Son, 61, is the world’s 43rd-richest person—with another 280 years left in his plan.