Taizo Son (孫泰蔵 손태장, born September 29, 1972) is a Japanese businessman of Korean ancestry. He is CEO of Mistletoe, a company that he founded in 2013, and chairman of mobile gaming company GungHo, which he founded in 2002. GungHo's market value in 2013 was $10.4 billion, making Son a

billionaire A billionaire is a person with a net worth of at least one billion (1,000,000,000, i.e., a thousand million) units of a given currency, usually of a major currency such as the United States dollar, euro, or pound sterling. The American busin ...

. He is the youngest brother of

SoftBank is a Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo which focuses on investment management. The Group primarily invests in companies operating in technology, energy, and financial sectors. It also runs the ...

magnate

Masayoshi Son Masayoshi Son ( ja, 孫正義, translit=Son Masayoshi, ko, 손정의, translit=Son Jeong-ui) (born 11 August 1957) is a Korean-Japanese billionaire technology entrepreneur, investor, financier and philanthropist. A 3rd generation "Zainichi Kore ...

Early life

Taizo was born in Tosu City,

Saga Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located on the island of Kyushu. Saga Prefecture has a population of 809,248 (1 August 2020) and has a geographic area of 2,440 km2 (942 sq mi). Saga Prefecture borders Fukuoka Prefecture to the northeast and Nagasak ...

, Japan. After he graduated from a secondary school connected to

Kurume University is a private university, established in 1928. Kurume University is located in Kurume ( Chikugo district), Fukuoka (on the island of Kyushu), Japan. History *1928 Kyūshū Medical School established. (A precursor of Kurume university) *1949 F ...

, he enrolled into the

University of Tokyo , abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project by ...

and studied business administration. While he was still considering his career after graduation, his older brother Masayoshi asked him to join the Yahoo Japan project, where he met

Jerry Yang Jerry Chih-Yuan Yang (born November 6, 1968) is a Taiwanese-American billionaire computer programmer, internet entrepreneur, and venture capitalist. He is the co-founder and former CEO of Yahoo! Inc. As of February 2022, Yang has a net worth ...

, co-founder of

Yahoo Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo! Inc. (2017–present), Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds ma ...

. Taizo pitched Yang his idea of how to efficiently launch Yahoo Japan. Eventually the position of content development leader was given to Taizo although he was still a student. During the project Taizo successfully managed 100 staff and launched

Yahoo Japan is a Japanese internet company originally formed as a joint venture between the American internet company Yahoo! (later divested by Verizon into Altaba) and the Japanese company SoftBank. It is headquartered at Kioi Tower in the Tokyo Garden Terr ...

within 3 months.

Career

In 1998 he co-founded Onsale, a company which later became GungHo. He then managed the company as CEO and it went public on

Nippon New Market Hercules , renamed from , is the largest derivatives exchange in Japan, in terms of amount of business handled. , the Osaka Securities Exchange had 477 listed companies with a combined market capitalization of $212 billion. The Nikkei 225 Futures, intr ...

(which later became

JASDAQ , formerly the is one of the sections of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. It was formerly an independent stock exchange. JASDAQ is not related to NASDAQ in the United States, but has operated an electronic trading system similar to NASDAQ. History In 1 ...

) on March 9, 2005. The company’s market value in 2013 was $10.4 billion due to its gaming mobile app

Puzzle & Dragons is a puzzle video game with role-playing and strategy elements, developed and published by GungHo Online Entertainment for the iOS, Android, and Amazon Fire platforms. ''Puzzle & Dragons'' is a match-three puzzle game, requiring players t ...

which was the top revenue earning app globally for the year. In 2009 he founded a seed stage accelerator MOVIDA JAPAN which supported 47

startups A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an Entrepreneurship, entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses t ...

. Some of those startups are translimit, flier, trippiece, nana music, U-NOTE, and Shiroyagi Corporation. The company finished offering its seed acceleration program in June 2014. The investment function has been separated into a venture capital fund Genuine Startups. In 2013 he founded Mistletoe, a hub for startups and the overall entrepreneurial ecosystem. With the company he and his members provide learning opportunities for entrepreneurs, facilitate startup communities, invest in and support startup companies and venture capitals. Son relocated to Singapore in 2018 and was one of the co-founders of the business and innovation hub, SPECTRUM.

Boards and honors

He serves on the board of ETIC, an institute which provides young people with opportunities to develop their capabilities as social entrepreneurs.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Son, Taizo Living people Japanese billionaires University of Tokyo alumni 20th-century Japanese businesspeople 21st-century Japanese businesspeople 1972 births Japanese people of Korean descent