Gambling Man: Lionel Barber on Softbank’s Masayoshi Son

Join us for an illuminating conversation with Lionel Barber, author of Gambling Man: The Secret Story of the World’s Greatest Disruptor, Masayoshi Son. Gambling Man is the first Western biography of the enigmatic founder of Softbank — written with Son’s cooperation but not authorized by him. Barber’s character study of Son reveals a man of contradictions — both a hero and a villain, a strategic visionary of the future and a gambling addict prone to placing bets on gut instincts, leading to billions in earnings but also billions in losses. To unpack one of the boldest investors in modern times, Barber would travel around the globe to interview many of the players in Son’s story — including five trips to Japan in a span of of a year. There he was granted the opportunity to interview Son four times, and Son’s father — Mitsunori — once the pachinko kingpin in Japan.