TAIZO SON

Taizo grew up as the youngest of the Son brothers, in the long shadow of Masayoshi. His big break came young.

While still a University of Tokyo student, his brother pulled him into the Yahoo Japan launch. Taizo helped get the site live in three months while managing 100 people, and even met Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang.

In 1998 he co-founded an internet venture that grew into GungHo Online Entertainment, which he launched in 2002 and still chairs. GungHo went public in 2005.

Then in 2012 it released Puzzle & Dragons, a mobile puzzle game full of monsters. It exploded.

By 2013 it was the top-grossing app in the world and GungHo was briefly worth $10.4 billion. That one hit made Taizo a billionaire in his own right.

GungHo is the money machine. It is the Tokyo gaming studio behind Puzzle & Dragons, one of the highest-grossing mobile games ever made.

Taizo is its chairman. In 2009 he started MOVIDA JAPAN, an early accelerator that helped launch 47 young startups.

His main vehicle today is Mistletoe, founded in 2013. Mistletoe is part fund, part community for founders tackling big problems in health, food, education, and transport.

He also founded VIVITA, which builds creative tools and spaces for kids to invent things. The through-line is clear.

He backs builders, especially young ones.

Taizo invests like a gardener, not a stock picker. He calls Mistletoe a collective, not just a fund.

The idea is to grow a whole ecosystem of founders who help each other, rather than making cold bets on single companies. He leans toward mission-driven startups, ones trying to fix health, food, energy, or education.

He is patient and hands-on. So what does that mean?

He would rather nurture 97 companies over a decade than chase quick flips. He has put around $155 million into startups this way, and he treats the founders almost like family.

The standout is Garena, the Southeast Asian internet company that became Sea. Taizo backed it early through his investing work.

Sea went public in 2017 and grew into one of Asia's biggest tech companies, spanning gaming, e-commerce with Shopee, and digital payments. Getting in early on that was a massive win.

His other giant win is GungHo itself. Puzzle & Dragons turned a modest game studio into a company briefly worth $10.4 billion and made him rich enough to spend the rest of his life backing other people's dreams.

Taizo's challenge is the flip side of his one-hit fortune. GungHo has never really matched Puzzle & Dragons.

That game was lightning in a bottle in 2012 and 2013, and the company's value fell hard from its $10.4 billion peak once the hype cooled. Riding a single mega-hit is a known trap in gaming, and GungHo fell into it.

On the investing side, his spread-it-wide, mission-first style is admirable but slow. Backing 97 idealistic startups is a great way to feel good and a hard way to guarantee big financial returns.

Taizo believes money should fund solutions, not just pile up. He built Mistletoe around the idea that entrepreneurs are the best tool humanity has for fixing hard problems.

So he funds founders working on health, food, education, and energy, and tries to connect them into a supportive network. He also believes in backing people young, before they are obvious winners.

His approach is closer to a mentor than a banker. Grow the founder and the returns will follow, even if they take a decade to show up.

The family story is the headline. Taizo is the youngest brother of Masayoshi Son, the SoftBank founder and one of the most famous investors alive.

The family is Japanese of Korean descent, which shaped their outsider drive in Japan. Taizo could have easily ridden his brother's coattails.

Instead he built GungHo and Mistletoe on his own name. There is clearly some sibling influence in how both brothers think about technology and bold bets.

But Taizo carved out a separate identity as the founder-friendly, mission-driven Son.

Taizo studied business administration and economics at the University of Tokyo, Japan's most prestigious university, from 1989 to 1993. No dropout story here.

He finished his degrees. The bigger education came while he was still a student.

His brother Masayoshi pulled him into the Yahoo Japan launch, where he managed 100 staff and got the site live in three months. He even met Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang.

That was a masterclass in building fast, and he was barely out of school.

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