I am not counting WeWork and Uber out yet. They still might come back. But Elon Musk is hellbent on eating Uber's lunch. And it is hard to bet against Elon Musk.
What I note is both Uber and WeWork have had culture problems. When your company's valuation goes into dizzying heights, it is easy to congratulate yourself. It is easy to take all the credit. It is easy to say you did it all by yourself. It is easy to get giddy. It is easy to lose your fulcrum. It is easy for the corporate culture to deteriorate. When the corporate culture is poisoned, it is only a matter of time before a company goes belly up.
What do I think of Masa Son? I think he is a genius. He ranks with Steve Jobs. What Steve Jobs was to technology, Masa Son has been to finance. But I would not give Imran Khan a cricket bat today. He is better off running a country. Maybe Masa is past his prime. Maybe Masa became lazy. His specialty was spotting Alibaba before anyone else. He went big on Yahoo before anyone else. But in recent years he went into WeWork and Uber after everyone else had spotted them. He went into WeWork and Uber for all the wrong reasons. He went into them because they were grabbing headlines.
The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia put a lot of money into Masa Son's kitty. Masa talked him into it. I say to MBS, congratulations, you have failed spectacularly. And I don't mean that in a sarcastic way. The number one quality of the Silicon Valley culture is that failure is celebrated. If you have a bunch of failed tech startups in your past as a tech entrepreneur, venture capitalists find that highly attractive.
Where technology is going to go in the next 25 years is going to be 100 times more spectacular than whatever has happened in the past 25. So it is not that MBS' timing was not right. And it is not that he bet on the wrong person. Masa is rightfully a legend.
If I were MBS, I would plot to put something like 100B into some company (or companies) that firmly rest on the Blockchain and target the poorest two billion on the planet. That 100B would become 1T or even 2T in a 10-year timeframe.
Maybe I can help!
Saudi Arabia needs to make a few bold moves like this one if it is not to see a decline in 10 years. Clean energy is good news for everybody. It does not make sense for there to be no planet. If there is no habitable planet left, it does not really mean much that a country is rich. Rich loses meaning in that scenario. But a country like Saudi Arabia must diversify. That is the mantra.
I am a very political person. I can't think of Saudi Arabia (or any country, for that matter) and not think politics. And let me say at the very outset, as an avid student of American politics for decades now, it is my strong opinion that the American political system is severely lacking, and requires fundamental change. Not only that, I see enormous resistance to any suggestions for change. And not only from people who might in the short term not benefit too much from the change. The very people who might benefit drag their feet.
I don't think the American political system is the ideal that every country needs to move towards. Even if the idea is a western-style liberal democracy, look at the many countries of Europe. Each so-called western democracy seems to carve out its own unique path. And so it can be said every country on earth is destined to carve out a unique political path.
If the United States will move up to its next level of economic development, it must transform its politics. If China is to avoid the middle-income trap, it must transform its politics. If Saudi Arabia is to diversify and not see decline in 10 years, it must transform its politics.
My recommendation to every monarchy in the Gulf is to create a path to a constitutional monarchy. Again, the pace will be unique to every country. And the monarch need not be as laid back as Queen Elizabeth. It is possible to create a constitutional monarchy where the monarch stays a fairly active figure. As to the unique path for each country, and the shape of that particular constitutional monarchy, there can be debate and discussion.
A more participatory political system is likely to exert that requisite pressure that will force the Gulf economies to diversify and maintain their vibrancy even during the fast-approaching clean energy era. There is a major economic incentive for political reform.
And this is the least disruptive way to transform. Arab Springs, by definition, are phenomenon that blindside you. They come out of seemingly nowhere. So it makes sense to be proactive about it.
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