U.S. investors may not be as familiar with Softbank (NASDAQOTH:SFTBY) compared with other headline-grabbing tech names, but they should be. Softbank, founded by the colorful Masayoshi Son (known as the "Bill Gates of Japan"), has grown from humble beginnings as a 1980s software distributor into a global tech conglomerate with a market capitalization of almost $80 billion.