Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son is one impressive guy.
But the most impressive thing about the SoftBank CEO is that he remains Japan's second-richest person years after losing $70 billion of his net worth.
You read that correctly.
Son was once reported to be worth $78 billion before the dotcom crash.
But losing all that money didn't stop him, and under Son's leadership SoftBank's profits have skyrocketed in the past few years.
Now he has his eye on acquiring Sprint. After upping his bid to $21.6 billion, the "maverick" CEO is on the precipice of winning the company over its other main suitor, Dish.
Bloomberg has the 55-year-old "Bill Gates of Japan" at a net worth of $13.8 billion.
Grade school classmates threw rocks at Son because he was Korean.
Son was born in 1957 in Japan to a Korean immigrant family. His original name was Son Jeong-ui, signifying his family's Korean roots, but they took the Japanese name Yasumoto to fit in when Son was a child.
Son's idol told him to go study in America.
McDonald's Japan founder Den Fujita told him to go to school in the U.S, and that's exactly what Son did.
He went to California at 16 to learn English.
Son went to Serramonte High School just south of San Francisco. Then after two years at a local college, he transferred to the University of California-Berkeley and majored in economics.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider