Taizo Son

Taizo Son was born September 29, 1972 in Tosu City, Saga Prefecture, Japan, into a Japanese family of Korean ancestry. He is the youngest brother of SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son. He studied business administration at the University of Tokyo, and while still a student joined his brother's Yahoo Japan project — meeting Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang and leading content development, reportedly managing 100 staff and helping launch Yahoo Japan within three months.

In 1998 he co-founded Onsale, which became GungHo Online Entertainment, serving as CEO through its IPO on March 9, 2005 (Nippon New Market Hercules, later JASDAQ). GungHo became a mobile-gaming powerhouse on the strength of *Puzzle & Dragons*, reaching a market value around $10.4 billion in 2013 and making Son a billionaire. He remains associated with GungHo as chairman.

Son then pivoted toward building startup ecosystems. In 2009 he founded the seed accelerator MOVIDA JAPAN, which supported roughly 47 startups (including translimit, flier, trippiece, nana music and U-NOTE) before winding down its acceleration program in 2014 and spinning its investing into the fund Genuine Startups. In 2013 he founded Mistletoe, an entrepreneurial hub and investment firm that backs founders tackling global challenges. He relocated to Singapore in 2018 and co-founded the innovation hub SPECTRUM. He also founded VIVITA, a children's creative-education venture with "maker" centers (3D printers, laser cutters, no fixed curriculum) in Japan, Estonia and Singapore.

In 2023, Son and Mistletoe director Atsushi Taira co-founded The Edgeof, an ecosystem builder and VC entity that acquired SoftBank Ventures Asia (SBVA) from his brother's SoftBank Group — establishing a pan-Asian platform for early-stage startups.

• Backs founders, not spreadsheets: For very early-stage startups, Son says he doesn't examine business plans or financials but listens to the founder's vision and *why* they started — "If their reason is to earn big money, that is too weak to sustain."
• Impact over returns; his own money: Mistletoe invests capital he personally funds. "Usually, I will lose money because most of the entrepreneurs will fail. But it is ok since it is my own money."
• "Start fast, fail fast": He treats failure as a necessary, valuable learning process for entrepreneurs rather than something to avoid.
• Frontier tech for global good: Believes AI, robots, biotechnology and blockchain have matured enough for individuals to harness them to improve lives — steering capital toward education, health, food, mobility and sustainability.
• Stage & structure: Seed to Series A, often as a hybrid incubator/ecosystem builder rather than a passive check; has invested roughly $150M+ across ~80 startups personally, with aggregators citing up to ~170 companies and ~$400M across the broader Mistletoe platform.
• Guiding motto: "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."