AAA November 2020 – Page 17

Adding value in the most effective ways

Entrepreneurs have traditionally looked for five things from their investors: capital, customers, product development, hiring and, eventually, an exit. Getting customer feedback as quickly as possible has been well-understood thanks to professor Steve Blank and author Eric Ries’s work at the start of the past decade and built into the National Science Foundation’s i-corps platform. But making it a reality is still challenging.

SoftBank bounces back

“The door is always open for a second and third [Vision] fund, but we’re not very popular,” according to Masayoshi Son, founder of Japan-listed internet conglomerate SoftBank in the Financial Times.