14 Leaders The EconomistOctober 17th 2020
2 than any female. The second concerned the role of testosterone,
the male sex hormone and anabolic steroid that is responsible
for much of that sporting advantage. The iocpermits trans wom-
en to compete in women’s events only if they suppress the
amount of testosterone circulating in their blood.
The evidence presented to World Rugby was not perfect, but it
was enough to suggest strongly that this compromise does not
work. Suppressing testosterone appears to have only a minor im-
pact on strength—too small to undo the advantages bestowed by
male puberty. And no amount of hormone therapy can shrink
skeletons. That was enough for World Rugby to decide that the
risk posed by trans women to other players in the women’s game
would be too great. It has said it is ready to fund more research
and will review its decision regularly. But in a risky sport already
worried about the long-term impact of common injuries like
concussion, its conclusion makes sense.
That evidence matters for non-contact sports, too, for it also
concerns fairness. Women’s sport exists precisely to exclude
males. That is true at both the elite level, where rewards are
greatest, and at the recreational one, where the vast majority ofsport is actually played. Without it, half the population would be
left struggling against an insurmountable advantage granted by
mere biological chance to the other half. If testosterone suppres-
sion cannot remove that advantage, then it is unjust for those
who still possess it to compete against those who never did. (It is
worth noting that this leaves room for trans men—those born fe-
male—to play in men’s sports if they wish, since they possess no
biological advantage, and in contact sports are unlikely to pose a
danger to their fellow competitors.)
Advocates for trans women often argue that inclusion should
trump such worries. But sport is a zero-sum game, which means
inclusion cuts both ways. If trans women possess a biological ad-
vantage, then allowing them to compete risks depriving others
of victories they might otherwise have won, or a place in a team
they might otherwise have earned. Most sports acknowledge
that trade-off, at least in principle. The iocitself notes that “the
overriding sporting objective is and remains the guarantee of
fair competition.” It is, in the end, simply a question of fact
whether testosterone suppression can guarantee that fair com-
petition in practice. And the evidence so far suggests it cannot. 7“I
f i’m going to do a fund it has to be big enough to disrupt the
whole technology world.” So declared Son Masayoshi four
years ago, on a trip to the Middle East to drum up cash for a new
investment vehicle to take on Silicon Valley’s venture capitalists
(vcs). His Vision Fund eventually raised $98.6bn and bought
stakes in some of the world’s most exciting companies, includ-
ing ByteDance and Uber. Yet as we explain this week, Mr Son’s
mission has so far had mixed results (see Business section). Per-
formance has been soggy, despite a boom in tech stocks, as the
strategy of pouring money into private firms has at times be-
come rather like spoiling perpetual adolescents. Instead, the Vi-
sion Fund’s most striking legacy may be that it has marked the
start of a new era in which American capital and
startups no longer call all the shots.
For decades an elite of vcfunds in San Fran-
cisco have spotted promising startups and nur-
tured them to adulthood, in the form of a stock-
market listing or a takeover. The Vision Fund
played by different rules. It dragged vcout of its
Californian cul-de-sac. Its anchor investor was a
Saudi Arabian sovereign-wealth fund, it was
controlled from Tokyo and it paid as much attention to Asia’s
tech scene as to America’s. It viewed capital as a weapon in a win-
ner-takes-all struggle. By channelling vast sums to startups you
could speed up time and help them reach critical mass more
quickly while intimidating their rivals. The Vision Fund also
tried to reinvent governance. It let firms stay in private hands for
longer, as part of its global family of startups which could share
ideas and co-operate or fight it out—the fund has bought stakes
in 92 firms, some of which compete with each other.
How has the experiment fared? Having invested $82.6bn, the
Vision Fund has so far made net gains of $8bn. Mr Son’s opti-
mism about tech was spot-on but his fund has lagged far behindthe nasdaq tech index, which has risen by 99% since May 2017,
when the fund was officially launched. That underperformance
reflects flaws in its strategy. Throwing cash at firms raised valua-
tions and encouraged entrepreneurs to fight damaging price
wars, from ride-sharing to food-delivery. Mr Son’s freewheeling
view of governance was a mistake. Without the scrutiny of public
markets, egotistical founders went astray, most obviously at We-
Work, a property firm. Bad bets had cost the Vision Fund $14.5bn
by June this year. It proved hard to get the portfolio of firms to co-
operate, or merge, especially given geopolitical tensions.
The tech industry is now rushing in a different direction, tak-
ing firms public so they can raise capital from diverse sources
and face the discipline of institutional inves-
tors. Of the top 30 “unicorns”—private tech
firms worth over $1bn—in 2018, over half have
listed or are about to, including Ant Group and
Airbnb. Many have used alternative techniques
to go public, such as direct listings, which avoid
the clunky initial-public-offering process. Mr
Son’s fund will benefit as its firms leap into the
public market at high valuations. But his second
fund, Vision Fund 2, reflects a chastened reality, with only $3bn
of assets and 13 investments so far, many of them small.
Although it has failed to turn tech investing into alchemy, the
Vision Fund has shown that the vcestablishment does not have a
monopoly in dealmaking—so far this year 82% of vcdeals in
America have involved non-traditional investors, including
sovereign-wealth funds and companies. And most important, by
taking a global view and placing giant bets in India, South-East
Asia and China, it has underlined that the future of technology
lies as much in Asia as on America’s west coast. Like many start-
ups, the Vision Fund has helped change the world—just not in
the way it originally expected to. 7A vision in hindsight
The lessons from Son Masayoshi’s super-sized tech experimentTech investing and the Vision Fund