“‘At night I would cry on my own in the hospital room — the treatment [to reduce inflammation of the liver] was really horrible. I kept on asking myself why I had to die at a time like this…’”

Masayoshi Son was 24 years old and on top of the world. But he had chronic hepatitis. Doctors had given him 5 years to live.

Masa ran his budding empire from his hospital bed, determined to recover. And with the help of an innovative treatment from a doctor in Tokyo, recover he did.

It wasn’t the first time this young man had overcome impossible odds. Masa’s rise from destitution to become one of the richest men in the world is the subject of the excellent new book Gambling Man, by Lionel Barber.

The Pig Farmer’s Son

Masa was born in a shantytown in rural Japan, the son of a pig farmer. His family were ethnic Koreans, a group discriminated against by the government at the time and hated by many Japanese.

But Masa’s father Mitsunori was enterprising. He grew the pig farm, eventually using the profits to buy a pachinko parlor, then another.

Soon, the Sons owned a large chain of pachinko parlors. They’d gone from utter destitution to opulence before Masa graduated high school.

A Born Businessman

When it came time to go to college, Masa chose Berkeley. That put him right in the center of the world technology industry.

Masa wasn’t content with just going to class. He worked with a professor to design a pocket Japanese-English translator, an incredible product for its time.

Masa shopped the translator tech to major Japanese electronics firms. Those connections would serve him the rest of his career.

Building SoftBank

After he sold the rights to Sharp for about $1 million, Masa began to ink software distribution deals. He convinced companies to let him distribute their product in Japan, pulling in large profits.

He also published tech magazines and even bought the massive Comdex trade show. Everywhere you went in the world of tech, in the US or Japan, Masa seemed to show up.

Next, he wanted to create products of his own. In a partnership with Yahoo, SoftBank brought broadband to Japan for just $21 a month. It was eight times faster than broadband connections in America.

Wrap-Up

If there’s one theme in Masa’s career, it’s that nothing is ever enough. So despite owning several major businesses of his own, Masa decided to start investing.

It wasn’t enough to run some great technology businesses. He wanted to own them all.

We’ll take a look at his massive swings, huge losses and staggering gains in tomorrow’s post…

More on tech:

Elon Musk (Part 1): Overcoming the Odds

Hetty Green: The Witch of Wall Street

The Contrarian

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