SoftBank COO Marcelo Claure — Investing, Dreaming Big, and the Golden Era of Entrepreneurship!
Miguel Armaza is joined by the one and only, Marcelo Claure, CEO of SoftBank Group International, and all-around fascinating business leader and entrepreneur.
Born and raised in La Paz, Bolivia, Marcelo immigrated to the US for college and later founded Brightstar, a company he built into a global category leader and also became the largest Hispanic-owned business in US history.
Most recently, Marcelo, alongside Softbank Chairman & CEO Masayoshi Son, oversees the strategic direction of Softbank along with a vast portfolio of operating companies and investments, including SoftBank’s $5B dollar Latin America Fund.
As a fellow Bolivian, Miguel has been a longtime admirer of Marcelo so this was a particularly exciting interview where they discuss:
- Marcelo’s background from entrepreneur to global business and fintech leader
- Challenges of building a company without much access to funding
- The story behind building the Softbank Latin America fund and why there’s no doubt this is the golden era of entrepreneurship in the region
- His take on the state of the fintech industry and why several of their portfolio companies have a strong fintech component
- The importance of backing diverse and minority entrepreneurs and what Marcelo and the Softbank team are doing about it
- Valuable entrepreneurial advice for founders
- And a lot more valuable information!
Full interview → Spotify | Soundcloud | Apple
It’s been close to three decades since Marcelo moved to the US from Bolivia and it’s safe to say he’s been living the American dream. But success did not come easy and is the result of very hard work and big ambitions. His first company, Brightstar, started with a couple of cell phone shops in Boston, but over the next 17 years evolved into the world’s largest global wireless distribution and services firm. Although Marcelo today is a Venture Capitalist, back then he did not have access to many early sources of funding and had to build Brightstar using traditional bank lending and private equity investors, which actually forced him to become profitable from day one.
“It took me seven years to get to a billion dollars and 15 years to get to 10 billion in revenue. I think if the ecosystem that exists today, existed back then, it would have taken me five years to get to 10 billion.”
Joining Softbank, Leading Sprint, and Becoming an Investor
In 2014, Marcelo sold Brightstar to SoftBank and shortly thereafter was asked to lead Sprint, one of Softbank’s most important US assets and a 120-year telecom giant. He came in at a challenging time when the company was losing billions of dollars and millions of customers. Marcelo led a five year turnaround plan, delivering the best financial results in Sprint’s history, followed by a successful and highly contested merger with T-Mobile.
“As part of the sale to SoftBank, I found out that they really didn’t want Brightstar, but they wanted me. So I became the CEO of Sprint.”
The turnaround and merger coincided with the creation of Softbank’s famous $100B Vision fund, for which Marcelo was invited to move to Tokyo and work with Softbank CEO, Masayoshi Son (Masa), to “learn” how to invest in early stage startups. He spent the following 18 months meeting and backing some of the most groundbreaking entrepreneurs of our time and in the process realized they were seeing few founders from Latin America — so he decided to do something about it.
“[Masa] invited me to go live with him in Tokyo for 18 months, where we sat everyday together from eight o’clock in the morning till 10pm and we invested to the tune of a billion dollars a week into many different companies from mainly India, China, US, some Southeast Asia, and all sorts of companies that were true disruptors.”
Unlocking The Latin American Opportunity
“So, imagine I’m sitting here in Tokyo. And all we do is talk to entrepreneurs, probably eight to ten meetings a day. And you have the world’s most aggressive, growth-oriented disruptors showing up to our headquarters in Tokyo. And it pissed me off that I did not see a single Latin American!”
If we take a step back, venture funding in Latin America totaled around $1 billion in 2017. While this sounds like a big number, it’s actually laughably small for a region with over 650 million people and a combined GDP of almost $5 trillion. In fact, as Marcelo explained, Latin America’s economy was half of China or even twice as big of India, yet China and India received $100 billion and $20 billion in VC funding, respectively. So he set out to find the root of the problem.
Mr. Claure quickly understood that all the necessary ingredients for a successful entrepreneurial ecosystem were there, except for availability of funding. Sensing a massive opportunity, he set out to apply his learnings from Tokyo and launch a Latin America-focused fund.
“And I said, Masa, we should start a one billion dollar fund. And then Masa looked at me and said, Why do you think so small? I said, What do you mean? He says, Latin America is 7% of the world’s GDP, you should be asking for at least seven, not one. I said, that’s good. So why don’t we settle on five? He says, great. So we started a five billion Latin American fund.”
Launched in early 2019, in the last two years the Softbank Latin American fund has made a big splash in the region, with more than $2 billion invested across over two dozen tech companies in industries like Fintech, E-Commerce, Real Estate, and it seems they are just getting started!
Doing More for Diversity
Although Marcelo was a successful entrepreneur and built an industry leading company, he still remembers how hard it was to raise money and attributes some of his challenges to being Latino. So when he was watching the George Floyd movement back in the summer of 2020, Marcelo was inspired to take action and do something tangible to help increase diversity amongst entrepreneurs and spearheaded the creation of a $100 million fund dedicated to investing in enterprises founded by entrepreneurs of color in the US.
“So I talked to Masa at 7pm and he said let’s do it. And then the following morning we were on CNBC, announcing the launch of a $100 million Opportunity Fund to do two things: one is to provide access to capital to entrepreneurs of color. But two, more importantly, to entice others to stop just standing with the black community and to do something about it. And it worked! Goldman is launching a fund, Apple is launching a fund, PayPal is launching a fund… so everybody is launching a fund.”
Golden Era of Entrepreneurship
After building and leading multiple successful companies, Marcelo had one big reflection for aspiring entrepreneurs:
“You’re lucky that you’re living in a moment where everything that you need to be successful is there. All the ingredients for the recipe exist today. Every single traditional business and industry vertical is going to be disrupted and there’s tremendous amount of hunger for disruption… So I just find that there has never been a better time to be an entrepreneur. But make sure you think big!”
Marcelo Claure
Marcelo Claure serves as Chief Executive Officer of SoftBank Group International and Chief Operating Officer of SoftBank Group Corp., where he oversees SoftBank’s strategic direction. He also spearheads the $5 billion SoftBank Latin America Fund dedicated to investing in technology growth opportunities throughout the region, as well as the newly-launched SB Opportunity Fund, a $100 million fund focused on investing in entrepreneurs of color; and the Softbank Miami Initiative, a $100 million funding commitment dedicated to supporting and building the community of technology start-ups in Miami.
Previously, Mr. Claure served as President and CEO and then as Executive Chairman of Sprint, where he is widely recognized for delivering the best financial results in Sprint’s 120-year history and architecting its merger with T-Mobile U.S. Prior to Sprint, Mr. Claure founded Brightstar, which he built into the world’s largest global wireless distribution and services company and the largest Hispanic-owned business in U.S. history, with operations in more than 50 countries and revenues exceeding $10 billion.
Mr. Claure is a member of the Board of Directors of ARM and serves as Executive Chairman of WeWork and Chairman of Fortress. He is also the president of Club Bolívar, Bolivia’s most popular and successful soccer team; co-owner and Chairman of Inter Miami CF, this year’s newly debuted MLS team; and most recently, co-owner of Girona FC.
Mr. Claure immigrated to the U.S. from Bolivia and was featured in the Carnegie Corporation of New York’s “Great Immigrants: The Pride of America” initiative.
About SoftBank Group
The SoftBank Group invests in breakthrough technology to improve the quality of life for people around the world. The SoftBank Group is comprised of SoftBank Group Corp. (TOKYO: 9984), an investment holding company that includes stakes in telecommunications, internet services, AI, smart robotics, IoT and clean energy technology providers; the SoftBank Vision Funds, which are investing up to US$100 billion to help extraordinary entrepreneurs transform industries and shape new ones; the SoftBank Latin America Fund, the largest venture fund in that region, and the SB Opportunity Fund, a US$100 million fund dedicated to investing in enterprises founded by entrepreneurs of color in the U.S.
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Miguel Armaza is Co-Host of the Wharton Fintech Podcast and Co-Founder of Gilgamesh Ventures, a seed-stage investment fund focused on fintech in the Americas.
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