SoftBank is suing portfolio company IRL after it admitted 95% of its users were fake. VCs are stressing the need for ‘uncomfortable’ due diligence::undefined
How is it uncomfortable verifying how many customers you have? As someone who works in the legal sector I am staggered by how many anyone nebulous software companies are bought without the buyer conducting minimal due diligence like a review of the top 20 customers.
SoftBank is astoundingly bad at this. This is the same company that acquired Sprint, among other bad decisions. Last fall they were happy that they only lost $6 Billion in the quarter because they’d lost $10B the previous quarter. The financial system is really fucked up when companies like this just stay in business despite this type of incompetence.