Wag Buys Shares Back from SoftBank
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-12-10/the-dogs-ate-softbank-s-money
Wag was looking to raise $75 million. It went to SoftBank and was like “will you give us $75 million?” SoftBank was like “no haha we’ll give you $300 million,” because that is SoftBank’s whole thing, it loves to give startups vastly more money than they want or need. And so Wag took the money. And then like a year and a half later Wag will get rid of SoftBank by giving back, I don’t know, but I am going to say some number less than $225 million (“well below” the valuation at which it invested). Wag got the $75 million it needed for free.
So under the right circumstances, you can make more money with a flop than you can with a hit!
Wag wasn’t exactly a flop, but SoftBank’s aggressive investment strategy does result in some pretty unusual situations.