Amit Lubovsky

There was this moment where it felt like everyone had suddenly founded a startup. My background was in engineering, and I had spent several years in the army, but I didn’t have much experience in tech. After meeting people working in the industry, I quickly fell in love with the whole ecosystem. 

Looking back, I think that excitement about the promise of broadband, of mobile tech, and of social media was incredibly important. When I’m assessing a potential investment, I want to see that founders have the same energy and enthusiasm that was palpable all around Tel Aviv then. At the same time, it’s clear to me that building a company is a marathon, not a sprint. As an avid Ironman participant, I don’t say this lightly. The founders from that era who succeeded were the ones who were in it for the long haul, who carried that excitement with them for years.

I came to SoftBank with a well of technical knowledge, which was sourced from two decades as a founder and operator, working as a software engineer and product manager at companies like Infineon, Texas Instruments, and Salesforce. That allows me to form deep relationships with founders. We speak the same language. I’m not just this investor writing a check. I’m someone who has a sense of the pain and the difficulty that goes into founding a startup. Perhaps most importantly, I understand the feeling of uncertainty that comes with not knowing if your idea will succeed or fail. With startups, you often begin in one direction and end up turning 180 degrees. The fact that I’ve experienced all of this firsthand—and have come out in one piece—tends to resonate with founders.

It’s great to have a sleek, nice mobile app, and it’s important because that’s what users are interfacing with. But in order for that mobile app to work, there are many underlying layers—a whole onion to peel. Silicon is at the core of everything. Silicon investments require patience during extreme cycles in the market. If you arrive too early or too late, it can cost you a lot of money. You’ll have bad years and then, suddenly, a company like Arm will have a winning streak. You have to be able to handle the duration of those cycles and judge carefully.

I call it the four Ms: management, market, model, and money. The most important thing is the management, the people who make up your company and either help it succeed or crash the whole thing. Second is the product and the market: Does this beautiful thing fit the needs of the market, today and in the future? Then there’s the model: You have to be viable and scalable. At the end of the day, you also want to make sure that you can make money. Your product could be great and the valuation could be stellar, but if you don’t have a path to monetization, it’s hard to make a case to invest. If you’re able to come up with these four Ms, then hopefully you’re on your way to a good investment.