All human beings are the same. In the United States, people come from all over the world, all races, all backgrounds. And they're all doing what they want, many scoring huge successes. When I saw that, I became more open. It freed my soul.
I started Softbank in 1981, a year and a half after I came back from the United States, after graduating from Berkeley. I wanted to start my own company when I came back to Japan.
Being educated in the United States gave me a good understanding of American culture. I think I got a lot of influence from the entrepreneurial mind in the United States.
My original intent for investing into Sprint - the main strategy was to buy Sprint and T-Mobile at the same time, so we'd have a critical mass to fight against AT&T and Verizon. The U.S. government didn't accept that. They rejected it. So my fundamental strategy was broken.
The energy in Silicon Valley is because of the very talented engineers immigrating from around the world, especially Indians and Chinese. They are the best engineers, and Japan doesn't have enough of them.
We saw a big bang in PCs; we saw a big bang in the Internet. I believe the next big bang is going to be even bigger. To be ready for that, we need to set the foundation, and that foundation is SoftBank Vision Fund.
Best thing for a government to do is to eliminate obstacles like filing registrations, getting licences, and so on... tedious steps slow everything down.
SoftBank is not a specialist on any instrument. We did not invent any instrument. Not the best player. But we would like to be a conductor of this information revolution.