The Exchanges

Q Not at all. Listen, it is so good to make it happen, as I said, but I always love a little bit of a story, so tell me, how did you make your way into the world of venture and come to be, you know, CEO of SoftBank Group International today?

A So there's a story behind it, right, and first thing that I did is I created a company. I was the founder of a company called Brightstar, which Brightstar grooved From a small shop in Miami to being the world's largest mobile phone distribution and supply chain services in the world. That company grew. Then I had a chance to meet Massa, who fell in love with the concept of Brightstar. He offered to buy Brightstar with only one condition, and that condition was that I would become the CEO of Sprint. I became the CEO of Sprint. There's a long story about Sprint that I'm sure we're going to talk about it. When we finished the turnaround of Sprint and we did the Sprint and T-Mobile merger, you know, I was ready to go back and be an entrepreneur again, but Massa asked me to Not leave SoftBank and to move to Tokyo with the purpose of learning how to invest, and I became the COO of SoftBank and the CEO of Old International Group at SoftBank, and after hanging out with Mazda for a year and a half and helping him lead the Vision Fund in Japan, then I became an investor because I decided to open a fund mainly focused on Latin America, and that's how I became my own venture capital, and that's how I got here.

AI assessment note: “move to Tokyo with the purpose of learning how to invest”

Q I, I totally agree. I think Neil is awesome, so a line there. Marcelo, what's your biggest miss, and how did it change your mindset as an investor?

A Probably Nubank. We didn't get there earlier on, and we were stubborn. Eh, we were stubborn in evaluation, and the founder was more stubborn, and the founder won. Eh, and I think now, you know, at the end, you know, I'm a huge personal investor into Nubank. I got SoftBank to be an investor into Nubank, but we were so new, I think it was our first week, and we just said, no, this is it. And we were wrong. So I always, I always tell people it's hard to say you're a great Latin American investor having missed Nubank at the beginning, and I say it publicly. And we bet on another horse, and that horse didn't perform as well, you know, as Nubank did. So I say, I mean, I made a lot, a lot of bad investment decisions in my life, but that one bothers me because it's within my region, it's within my knowledge, and if there's one thing that I learned is don't be stubborn, and I was very stubborn.

AI assessment note: “Probably Nubank. We didn't get there earlier on, and we were stubborn.”

Q Not at all. Listen, it is so good to make it happen, as I said, but I always love a little bit of a story, so tell me, how did you make your way into the world of venture and come to be, you know, CEO of SoftBank Group International today?

A So there's a story behind it, right, and first thing that I did is I created a company. I was the founder of a company called Brightstar, which Brightstar grooved From a small shop in Miami to being the world's largest mobile phone distribution and supply chain services in the world. That company grew. Then I had a chance to meet Massa, who fell in love with the concept of Brightstar. He offered to buy Brightstar with only one condition, and that condition was that I would become the CEO of Sprint. I became the CEO of Sprint. There's a long story about Sprint that I'm sure we're going to talk about it. When we finished the turnaround of Sprint and we did the Sprint and T-Mobile merger, you know, I was ready to go back and be an entrepreneur again, but Massa asked me to Not leave SoftBank and to move to Tokyo with the purpose of learning how to invest, and I became the COO of SoftBank and the CEO of Old International Group at SoftBank, and after hanging out with Mazda for a year and a half and helping him lead the Vision Fund in Japan, then I became an investor because I decided to open a fund mainly focused on Latin America, and that's how I became my own venture capital, and that's how I got here.

AI assessment note: “that's how I became my own venture capital, and that's how I got here”

Q When you think about kind of helping build companies, how do you think about one thing that's always tough for investors is when you invest in a lot of companies, how do you think about managing conflict when investing in competitors?

A So first of all, in Latin America, it's even harder because it's tough to manage conflict when you're geographically focused, right? For example, in the past, we invested in Uber, but we invested in every ride sharing company in every continent. So it was easier to do it because you chose a winner in every country. Here it's harder. And it even gets tougher because sometimes companies They don't start off as competitors, but eventually they evolve into competitors and they expand their business. I'll give you an example. You know, you invest in a company that specializes in helping people rent apartments because the rental system is destroyed in Brazil. At the same time, you invest in a company in Colombia called Javi that is the iBuyer of Colombia. Well, guess what? They both want to go to Mexico and they both now want to capture the entire real estate transaction for anybody who's buying or renting an apartment. Or home. So then that's when conflicts happen, and what we do at that point in time is we basically split the responsibilities within investment partners. We build these Chinese walls to make sure nobody except me can see what they're doing, and we're very careful in information sharing. But one of the things that has allowed us to play that role is being very straightforward with an entrepreneur. You know, tell them ahead of time what you're going to do. Never caught…

AI assessment note: “we basically split the responsibilities within investment partners. We build these Chinese walls”

Q When you think about kind of helping build companies, how do you think about one thing that's always tough for investors is when you invest in a lot of companies, how do you think about managing conflict when investing in competitors?

A So first of all, in Latin America, it's even harder because it's tough to manage conflict when you're geographically focused, right? For example, in the past, we invested in Uber, but we invested in every ride sharing company in every continent. So it was easier to do it because you chose a winner in every country. Here it's harder. And it even gets tougher because sometimes companies They don't start off as competitors, but eventually they evolve into competitors and they expand their business. I'll give you an example. You know, you invest in a company that specializes in helping people rent apartments because the rental system is destroyed in Brazil. At the same time, you invest in a company in Colombia called Javi that is the iBuyer of Colombia. Well, guess what? They both want to go to Mexico and they both now want to capture the entire real estate transaction for anybody who's buying or renting an apartment. Or home. So then that's when conflicts happen, and what we do at that point in time is we basically split the responsibilities within investment partners. We build these Chinese walls to make sure nobody except me can see what they're doing, and we're very careful in information sharing. But one of the things that has allowed us to play that role is being very straightforward with an entrepreneur. You know, tell them ahead of time what you're going to do. Never caught…

AI assessment note: “we basically split the responsibilities within investment partners. We build these Chinese walls”

Q I mean, you've got to be honest, it's cooler than most stories of Of going to HBS and then becoming an associate of the fund, isn't it? I do have to ask though, you mentioned Sprint there, and before we dive into matter and the investing, it's such an incredible turnaround story. What do you think allowed you to turn Sprint around so successfully? What drove that renewed success?

A So first was, you know, it was a big shock to me from being a, my own CEO, my own founder, my own company, to basically selling my company and then landing in Kansas City to become the CEO of a 120 year old Well-known American company sitting in the Midwest. I showed up there, and the first thing that I did was look at the financial statements of Sprint, and I figured that Sprint was losing five billion dollars a year. So I met with my CFO, and I told him that this was a pretty bad year, five billion, and I told him, well, tell me what has happened the last five years, and they said, well, combined, we have lost about twenty-five billion dollars a year. So we figured that we needed to do something relatively fast, and so I would say the first thing that we had to do was to empower The workforce, we had an expanded workforce of more than a 100,000 people from people who used to sell the phones in the stores or dealer agents or call centers, and it was just enormous. And the first thing that we had to do was to make sure that everybody believed that we could actually turn around and sprint. I would say it was a company that was in the verge of bankruptcy, in the verge of disappearing, and most employees actually didn't believe in the company. I always tell the story that imagine if you're the last team on the NBA, and it's just hard to show up to work knowing that you're going to…

AI assessment note: “the first thing that we had to do was to empower The workforce”

Q the dilution that would be standard with each round, most often say 20%. If you give them the money they need though and you're doing this A thirty million check or a fifty million check, that means you're doing a two hundred million pre, which totally works, but I guess my question to you is how do you think about price sensitivity for yourself, and is price a major consideration?

A So this is the key. The key is to determine in advance if it's a company where price matters or it doesn't. For some companies with an immense opportunity, think of Alibaba, think of Facebook, think of Google, think of Amazon, whatever, it was worth coming in at almost any price. Because the market was so large, because the size of the pie is so large that it really doesn't matter what you're paying at the beginning. Other times, when the market size is smaller or the opportunity is smaller, then you have to be a lot more disciplined. So the most important part that we do is we make that distinction in advance. I'll give you an example, a big mistake. You know, I passed on Nubank because of the price at the beginning when we started the fund, and it was the wrong decision because the opportunity was huge. Now, I made that mistake. I said, oh my God, it's too expensive. But I didn't realize that the size of the pie was so large that it really didn't matter. Now, in other companies, we've done incredibly well because we've learned to make that distinction where price matters and where it doesn't.

AI assessment note: “The key is to determine in advance if it's a company where price matters”

Q Can I ask, sorry, I'm just too intrigued. I know it's a bit of a weird question, but when you're sitting down with Massa investing this billion dollars a week, what does it look like? How do you structure your day? How does it actually come together? Can you help me describe that?

A Sure. In normal days, you know, we basically, if you imagine the setup on the office in Tokyo, there's Massa's office, there's my office next to Massa, and there's a conference room. And in that conference room, we had meetings with entrepreneurs who basically came over to Tokyo. This was pre-COVID. Before they had been vetted by the investment teams, We had eight, nine, 10 meetings a day. Pretty much with the access to data that was prepared for us and how we felt about that entrepreneur, we were able to make decisions right there. And then after that, we went through traditional investment committees and on all the other stuff. But decisions were made when we're sitting in front of an entrepreneur, when we evaluated their passion, their business plan, their desire to win. And there were days in which, you know, it was interesting. There was a meeting in which we wrote a fifty million dollar check, and there was a meeting that we wrote an eight billion dollar check. And that could happen the same day.

AI assessment note: “there's Massa's office, there's my office... We had eight, nine, 10 meetings a day.”

Q Well, this is the criticism that I always hear for LASAM, which is LASAM is fantastic, but it creates copycat businesses of Other business models elsewhere in the world. Do you think that's a fair criticism?

A I would say that they are a tropicalized version of other business models, and there's nothing wrong with that. We basically go and learn from other businesses. However, Latin America is different, so you have to give it a Latin American touch, because you're disrupting what happens in banking in Latin America. It's unheard of. I mean, half the population is unbanked, right? That doesn't happen in China. It's happened anywhere else, but you're able to bring the same logic of how can you bypass banks How can you make transfer more efficiently? How can you open a credit card in less than a minute where the traditional way was go to a branch and wait for four hours for somebody to see you, and then they would approve you for credit maybe a month later. So that's one. But at the same time, there are some Latin American companies that are basically better than any other global companies. I mean, there's a company called Jim Pass. They develop a specific concept, and they started in Brazil, and then they move all over the world, and now they're a global company, which is To me, as a former entrepreneur, that's what motivates me. When I did PriceStar, it became the first Latin American company ever in the services business to become number one in the world. My joy here is to see these Latin American entrepreneurs win in Brazil, expand outside of Brazil, and then hopefully someday we'l…

AI assessment note: “they are a tropicalized version of other business models, and there's nothing wrong with that.”

Q So I'm obviously very much behind the LATAM ecosystem. I've done four investments in the last couple of months, and incredibly excited. The big question, though, that I still get from a lot of people is like, where's the exit opportunity? Is it local markets? Is it NASDAQ? How should we think about exit availability for the companies that we back in LATAM?

A I mean, first and foremost, the American market is open to Latin America. You know, people gotta understand the size of Latin America is huge. Latin America is only half of China. It's two X India, two X Southeast Asia. So by the way, people make money in Latin America. The income per capita is two X India and two X Southeast Asia. So if you think about it, it's another China. And it has been proven. I mean, two weeks back, we just took Vitex public at a very high valuation. I think it's whatever, 10 X what we invested. And the desire for banks to take Latin American companies public is very large. And the desire for investors to basically come into Latin America via public stocks In the technology sector is huge. So I look at my expectation, I remember this, and we can check a year later, we'll still be recording. My expectation is that we take at least eight of our companies public between this year and next year of the Latin American fund.

AI assessment note: “first and foremost, the American market is open to Latin America.”

Q Can I ask, we spoke about, you know, the incredible entrepreneurs that come to you in Tokyo and that you met with Masa. When you think back to that, kind of think back to those many incredible meetings, was there one or two that really stood out?

A Oh, we have a lot. I mean, meeting with Jack Ma as he was thinking of where was Alibaba going and where was Alipay going, where was Ann going. Meeting with Yiming in the early stages of Piedance. And that is Masa's gift, the ability to understand an entrepreneur at an early stage. Be able to see around the corner, and be able to make an enormous bet, right? If you look at most other ones, they want to see more before they write that big check. We don't, right? And that's what makes Massa incredibly different. I mean, meeting ByteDance, meeting Travis in his early days at Uber, you know, there was always an interesting meeting. You mean of ByteDance TikTok? I mean, I can go on and on. We've had so many amazing entrepreneurs, you know, walk the halls of Tokyo.

AI assessment note: “meeting with Jack Ma as he was thinking of where was Alibaba going”

Q Can I ask a really direct question, and your team can take it out, I'm sure, but I'm just too interested in it. It's like the SoftBank brand in Latam is incredibly premier. It's a really coveted brand, and you've absolutely nailed it. More so bluntly than around the world in terms of desirable brands for the best founders. Why do you think that is?

A We're long-term thinkers, right? This is long-term capital. If you look at all other funds, they have bosses. Their bosses are LPs, people who give them money, who they are forced to make decisions to please them as it relates to deployment cycles and expected returns. We don't. It's our own capital. So therefore, you know, we don't mind. We might invest in a startup that will longer follow in series A, B, C, D, E, F. Then we might even help them buy more shares during the IPO, and we might stay with their shares for 15 to 20 years. So that is what is called true long-term patient capital. That's number one. Number two is anytime we have a chance to get in front of an, of an entrepreneur, Maz or myself, right? We're both founders. We both understand how the most painful career in the world is to be a founder.

AI assessment note: “We're long-term thinkers, right? This is long-term capital.”

Q What is SHU world-class at, on the flip side?

A SHU brings an incredible, diverse knowledge. You know, hardly ever do you see an African, a Kenyan, thriving the US that wants to invest in Latin America. And secondly, he's a great investor, right? I don't, I don't think I'm a good investor. I think I can spot good businesses, I can spot good entrepreneurs, but there is a master to invest in, and what I can do is I can bring opportunities, and I can then pass them up to Shu, and Shu often analyzes them a lot better than me, It's a little more conservative than I am, so we make a good balance. I think I'm a good operator, and I think Shoe is a great investor. And at the end, I believe that the new firms are going to be the ones that have the ability To help entrepreneurs alter the course of their business. I think the days of just dumb capital with access are long gone. Those were the days in which capital was free, and it was readily available. Today capital comes at a high cost, and it's not readily available.

AI assessment note: “SHU brings an incredible, diverse knowledge. You know, hardly ever do you see an African”

Q know, when I heard a billion a week, I was quite taken aback by it, but then when you look at, you know, bluntly, The brands that we have today, SoftBank and Tiger, you know, we've changed the game in terms of capital deployment. How do you think about deployment cycles, and how would you advise me on this? We lost the three-year deployment cycles that funds always usually had.

A I mean, SoftBank is different, right? Because one thing that makes us completely different is we only invest our own capital. We don't have our own LPs. We don't have specific cycles. We don't have specific sizes. We don't have a specific Type of security. What we do is we're looking for the best companies that have the ability to utilize AI, artificial intelligence, data, machine learnings to disrupt traditional business models. That's what makes us, you know, a little bit different in terms of, you know, not playing within a specific cycle. That's the logic that we have. And we're playing the game every single day, trying to find the best companies. And, you know, we have over a hundred investors finding the best unicorns all over the world.

AI assessment note: “We don't have our own LPs. We don't have specific cycles.”

Q you is when you said about the models of the future being where you really help, and help some builders, operators, I actually tend to find that always, in the same vein as like a founder's fund, the best founders never need me, and they just operate in isolation, and I might be there, but they don't need me. How do you respond to the best founders don't need you?

A Every founders, every founder will always need something, right? You know, I believe that we're lucky to have had an experience to have done a lot, right? This, at least in my career, I'm lucky to have 32 years of probably some of the most diverse experiences that few people have had a chance to build a company that became the number one company in the world, to merge a company that became the largest telecommunications company, In the planet today, the most valuable one, but more importantly, I think sitting at SoftBank for two years, and seeing so many industries, so many different founders, so many different models, how do you scale, how do IPO, how do you grow, how do you hire, how do you expand, and so on, I think we can always set a little bit, and there will be founders who will ask for a lot, and we'll be there to provide them, and there'll be founders who will ask for a little, and that little might be a phone call, That might need some guidance. You know, by no means do we think we know it all, but it's nice. I think every founder that I met, doesn't matter how smart they are and how, and every executive in the world, we've always had something to add. Us, we're lifelong learners, right? Every time we meet a founder, I walk out of that room smarter than I was before because I learned so much from founders. So I think we'll always be able to add a little bit or a lot.

AI assessment note: “Every founder will always need something, right?”

Q you is when you said about the models of the future being where you really help, and help some builders, operators, I actually tend to find that always, in the same vein as like a founder's fund, the best founders never need me, and they just operate in isolation, and I might be there, but they don't need me. How do you respond to the best founders don't need you?

A Every founders, every founder will always need something, right? You know, I believe that we're lucky to have had an experience to have done a lot, right? This, at least in my career, I'm lucky to have 32 years of probably some of the most diverse experiences that few people have had a chance to build a company that became the number one company in the world, to merge a company that became the largest telecommunications company, In the planet today, the most valuable one, but more importantly, I think sitting at SoftBank for two years, and seeing so many industries, so many different founders, so many different models, how do you scale, how do IPO, how do you grow, how do you hire, how do you expand, and so on, I think we can always set a little bit, and there will be founders who will ask for a lot, and we'll be there to provide them, and there'll be founders who will ask for a little, and that little might be a phone call, That might need some guidance. You know, by no means do we think we know it all, but it's nice. I think every founder that I met, doesn't matter how smart they are and how, and every executive in the world, we've always had something to add. Us, we're lifelong learners, right? Every time we meet a founder, I walk out of that room smarter than I was before because I learned so much from founders. So I think we'll always be able to add a little bit or a lot.

AI assessment note: “Every founders, every founder will always need something, right?”

Q is like, you're a very, very busy man. To understand an industry, sometimes you have to study it. The big challenge that I have is I, I run media companies as well. We do a lot, and our media teams are big now. I don't have time to study industries well enough to make an investment decision in a week. Do you? And if so, how do you do it?

A Just, we are lifelong learners, right? Like, I am bothered of my Not so big knowledge within the AI ecosystem. So now, I became a Harvard Executive Fellow, and I'm in charge of, of one of the biggest lab, which is the Digital Cube, the D-Cube lab at, at Harvard, which is the AI lab at Harvard, and I worked very closely to always be my, keep myself informed. And you're able to leverage an incredible ecosystem of incredibly intelligent people, Harvard, and be able to bring that knowledge into what I do for everyday living. If not, it would be impossible for me to try to learn it all myself. So now, I wouldn't consider my expert, but I have pretty good knowledge of what is going on in the AI world. And you always have to find clever ways to be that. I tried to do that within blockchain, and it was so massive. And people weren't sharing information, and you were just investing in momentum, that, that is never gonna happen. I'm never, ever gonna invest into something that I don't have a good level of understanding.

AI assessment note: “you're able to leverage an incredible ecosystem of incredibly intelligent people”

Q I'm naive, Marcelo. How do they think differently? If I, you know, I, I could describe how Europeans think differently to U.S. If you were to compare U.S. to Latin American people, how do they think differently?

A We have different issues, right? Our education is way worse. Our health systems are broken, so anytime you bring technology to help you with health, it is incredibly, people adopted extremely fast. Education in many cases is pretty bad, so suddenly when you start bringing online learning methods, it's really, really helpful. Uh, transportation was broken. This is why Uber exploded. Uh, The way retailers used to mark up their goods made it so expensive that they were charging interest rates up to 80%. So when the data she shows up with something that's 70% cheaper, guess what? It, it grows beyond what anybody can ever dream of because you're solving people's needs. It's a different approach to solving. You have to understand what are the problems so you can solve them, and I think we have a deep understanding of that, and this is why we can partner with these companies And help them grow their businesses, and it's very different. And that, and I think that, that's why founders like us, and you will see that in investments that we're starting to make, our founders who truly appreciate the experience that we can bring to help them.

AI assessment note: “It's a different approach to solving. You have to understand what are the problems”

Q Can I ask one for, I have to ask this one, which is, you mentioned the mistakes that you often tell founders. Is there one common one that you find yourself saying more than others? A mistake that is the most commonly told for you, where you find founders most resonate with it?

A So what I've learned from founders and from myself is, you know, trust your gut. You know, you, you know the answer. In many cases, I've seen so many board meetings, VCs who've never built businesses, or who've never been around great businesses. I'm just, everybody gives, advice is, is cheap, it's free, right? And many founders sometimes get confused. At the end, a great founder, well, you know what they'll do? They're gonna listen to all of us, but at the end, they're gonna trust their God. And their God is 90, or our founder is 90% right. And when you go back to them and say, look at the last 10 decisions you made. And which ones were yours? And which ones was because you listen to the last person that talked to you, you realize that most of them are always right. That's why they build great companies. And by the time we get to, in the growth stage or in other areas of our businesses, they will, they already have a proven business model. They already know what they have to do. So that's, and that's often, ah, you know, that's often the case that they, they sometimes don't trust themselves and they listen to others and At the end, listen to others just so you can check that your gut was correct.

AI assessment note: “they sometimes don't trust themselves and they listen to others”

Q What is SHU world-class at, on the flip side?

A SHU brings an incredible, diverse knowledge. You know, hardly ever do you see an African, a Kenyan, thriving the US that wants to invest in Latin America. And secondly, he's a great investor, right? I don't, I don't think I'm a good investor. I think I can spot good businesses, I can spot good entrepreneurs, but there is a master to invest in, and what I can do is I can bring opportunities, and I can then pass them up to Shu, and Shu often analyzes them a lot better than me, It's a little more conservative than I am, so we make a good balance. I think I'm a good operator, and I think Shoe is a great investor. And at the end, I believe that the new firms are going to be the ones that have the ability To help entrepreneurs alter the course of their business. I think the days of just dumb capital with access are long gone. Those were the days in which capital was free, and it was readily available. Today capital comes at a high cost, and it's not readily available.

AI assessment note: “SHU brings an incredible, diverse knowledge... he's a great investor”

Q of VCs maybe don't also provide the value that you can. I mean, bluntly, few people can open the doors, have the momentum for companies that you can. I think that might be why. If you are a bluntly tier two, tier three firm, as Non disparaging as I can be. There's little that you can do. Do you see what I mean? And maybe that's where it originates from.

A But I'll tell you a big difference about us, right? When you look at Bicycle Fund One, We're bringing our own capital. We're probably one of the few funds who, we're bringing more than two hundred million dollars of our own money, right? So we're bringing our own capital. We're bringing many years of experience, and we're blessed by all the stuff that we've seen, and we're bringing pretty good contacts, right? We've been in so many different industries. And we bring that to the founder, and I'll go back and I'll say, there are some founders who will say, no, I got it, and they will eventually need some help, and there are some founders who will just take as much as they can from you, and doesn't make, one is not better than the other one, right, and, and we're there, we're on demand, and when you bring your own capital, it's a different game, right, because we're putting a significant amount of our wealth behind every single one of those investments.

AI assessment note: “We're bringing more than two hundred million dollars of our own money”

Q Can I ask, is the fund size big enough? If you think about a Series B being forty million, say, 30, forty million, and you want to lead a Series B, it's 25, thirty million check from you. Is that big enough you've got 12 to 14 checks in the fund?

A To start, right? We didn't have a lot of time. You know, we had an idea of what we wanted to do. I had a non-compete. Our non-compete was announced My, the end of my non-compete was a couple of weeks from when we announced the fund, and to be quite honest, we haven't even fundraised yet, right? It's a Mubarala, who, Mubarala wanted to make a bet in Latin America, and we've known Mubarala for a while, both you and myself, and then we called five other LPs. We made five phone calls, and the five of them said yes, and it was my family office, so we really haven't started, but what we want to make sure is This time around, we don't want to be the biggest. The biggest doesn't necessarily mean you're the best. We want to get started. I think five hundred million, maybe a little more, is a good start, and then we'll see where it takes us, but we're, I think we're lucky. I mean, we're grateful to be able to pick up the phone, call six people, and raise a fund, which is probably the largest first-time fund launched in Latin America, and I think in this time where nobody's raising money, or very hard to raise money, to shop with a five hundred million Fun a couple of weeks after your non-compete expires, you know, we're lucky, we're blessed, we're, we're grateful. A lot more will come. I mean, we have big aspirations, but we need to deliver, you know, you win a game playing minute by min…

AI assessment note: “I think five hundred million, maybe a little more, is a good start”

Q six kids, a career in football, the soft bank career, and I was speaking to Bruce Dunleavy, who sits on the WeWork board with you, and he said, you do so much, so much more than anyone else. How do you get so much done, and what systems and processes do you do to manage all that you do? Help me out here, Martello. How do you do so much?

A So first, Bruce is a gentleman. As you know, we had a big lawsuit against each other in the WeWork dilemma, but we both told each other, it's okay to have disagreements, but we're going to learn how to play with class and no low punches and all that. And I can tell you that in that process, I've gotten to admire him the way he is as a human being, the way he's an investor, as a board member and all that. So he's gotten to know me as an opponent, and now we're as partners in the turnaround of WeWork. And I will say the most important part Find good talent. Provide the talent, the power and accountant to execute for you. If you can do that, then you can do this over and over and over. And having a strong team of good people, you know, enables you to get more stuff done and allows you to continue to pursue new opportunities. You know, today I manage all the operating companies of SoftBank. I'm heavily involved in the Vision Fund. I launch Opportunity Fund. I manage the Latin American Fund. I'm the executive chairman of WeWork, and I can go on and on and on. And the reason why I can do all this is Because I have amazing teams at each of those specific business opportunities. And, you know, it allows me to basically wake up every Monday and figure out where do I want to spend my time this week? And where can I be more helpful to my management teams?

AI assessment note: “the reason why I can do all this is Because I have amazing teams”

Q the best, you deployed, you know, 7.5 to ten billion dollars, there were different numbers that I saw, so I'm not sure which one it was, but seven and a half to ten million dollars, uh, billion dollars, sorry. Okay, so combined we have a 10, but seven and a half, uh, you know, in your time with SoftBank. What were some of the biggest lessons from that deployment period?

A Different times, right? At that point in time in SoftBank, the mandate was to build a portfolio play. I wanted to make sure that we were investing into most successful technology companies. That was the mandate of SoftBank. And I wouldn't call it unlimited capital, but we had a significant amount of capital, so that was our job to go deploy that. The Latin American Fund, Fund One, is a very successful fund and will continue to be very successful because we were able to fund the best Latin American companies. This time, it's all about quality and our quantity because we have a different amount of capital available to us and because we need to make sure that the returns that we provide are Absolutely the best. So we're a lot more cautious in terms of which companies we're going to invest, and which founders we're going to back, and how we're going to allocate our time. Because I do believe that we can add a lot to the core, you know, to altering the course of a lot of the great businesses that are being funded in Latin America.

AI assessment note: “This time, it's all about quality and our quantity because we have a different amount”

Q is like, you're a very, very busy man. To understand an industry, sometimes you have to study it. The big challenge that I have is I, I run media companies as well. We do a lot, and our media teams are big now. I don't have time to study industries well enough to make an investment decision in a week. Do you? And if so, how do you do it?

A Just, we are lifelong learners, right? Like, I am bothered of my Not so big knowledge within the AI ecosystem. So now, I became a Harvard Executive Fellow, and I'm in charge of, of one of the biggest lab, which is the Digital Cube, the D-Cube lab at, at Harvard, which is the AI lab at Harvard, and I worked very closely to always be my, keep myself informed. And you're able to leverage an incredible ecosystem of incredibly intelligent people, Harvard, and be able to bring that knowledge into what I do for everyday living. If not, it would be impossible for me to try to learn it all myself. So now, I wouldn't consider my expert, but I have pretty good knowledge of what is going on in the AI world. And you always have to find clever ways to be that. I tried to do that within blockchain, and it was so massive. And people weren't sharing information, and you were just investing in momentum, that, that is never gonna happen. I'm never, ever gonna invest into something that I don't have a good level of understanding.

AI assessment note: “able to leverage an incredible ecosystem of incredibly intelligent people”

Q the best, you deployed, you know, 7.5 to ten billion dollars, there were different numbers that I saw, so I'm not sure which one it was, but seven and a half to ten million dollars, uh, billion dollars, sorry. Okay, so combined we have a 10, but seven and a half, uh, you know, in your time with SoftBank. What were some of the biggest lessons from that deployment period?

A Different times, right? At that point in time in SoftBank, the mandate was to build a portfolio play. I wanted to make sure that we were investing into most successful technology companies. That was the mandate of SoftBank. And I wouldn't call it unlimited capital, but we had a significant amount of capital, so that was our job to go deploy that. The Latin American Fund, Fund One, is a very successful fund and will continue to be very successful because we were able to fund the best Latin American companies. This time, it's all about quality and our quantity because we have a different amount of capital available to us and because we need to make sure that the returns that we provide are Absolutely the best. So we're a lot more cautious in terms of which companies we're going to invest, and which founders we're going to back, and how we're going to allocate our time. Because I do believe that we can add a lot to the core, you know, to altering the course of a lot of the great businesses that are being funded in Latin America.

AI assessment note: “This time, it's all about quality and our quantity because we have a different”

Q Can I ask one for, I have to ask this one, which is, you mentioned the mistakes that you often tell founders. Is there one common one that you find yourself saying more than others? A mistake that is the most commonly told for you, where you find founders most resonate with it?

A So what I've learned from founders and from myself is, you know, trust your gut. You know, you, you know the answer. In many cases, I've seen so many board meetings, VCs who've never built businesses, or who've never been around great businesses. I'm just, everybody gives, advice is, is cheap, it's free, right? And many founders sometimes get confused. At the end, a great founder, well, you know what they'll do? They're gonna listen to all of us, but at the end, they're gonna trust their God. And their God is 90, or our founder is 90% right. And when you go back to them and say, look at the last 10 decisions you made. And which ones were yours? And which ones was because you listen to the last person that talked to you, you realize that most of them are always right. That's why they build great companies. And by the time we get to, in the growth stage or in other areas of our businesses, they will, they already have a proven business model. They already know what they have to do. So that's, and that's often, ah, you know, that's often the case that they, they sometimes don't trust themselves and they listen to others and At the end, listen to others just so you can check that your gut was correct.

AI assessment note: “they sometimes don't trust themselves and they listen to others”

Q of VCs maybe don't also provide the value that you can. I mean, bluntly, few people can open the doors, have the momentum for companies that you can. I think that might be why. If you are a bluntly tier two, tier three firm, as Non disparaging as I can be. There's little that you can do. Do you see what I mean? And maybe that's where it originates from.

A But I'll tell you a big difference about us, right? When you look at Bicycle Fund One, We're bringing our own capital. We're probably one of the few funds who, we're bringing more than two hundred million dollars of our own money, right? So we're bringing our own capital. We're bringing many years of experience, and we're blessed by all the stuff that we've seen, and we're bringing pretty good contacts, right? We've been in so many different industries. And we bring that to the founder, and I'll go back and I'll say, there are some founders who will say, no, I got it, and they will eventually need some help, and there are some founders who will just take as much as they can from you, and doesn't make, one is not better than the other one, right, and, and we're there, we're on demand, and when you bring your own capital, it's a different game, right, because we're putting a significant amount of our wealth behind every single one of those investments.

AI assessment note: “But I'll tell you a big difference about us, right?”

Q Can I ask, is the fund size big enough? If you think about a Series B being forty million, say, 30, forty million, and you want to lead a Series B, it's 25, thirty million check from you. Is that big enough you've got 12 to 14 checks in the fund?

A To start, right? We didn't have a lot of time. You know, we had an idea of what we wanted to do. I had a non-compete. Our non-compete was announced My, the end of my non-compete was a couple of weeks from when we announced the fund, and to be quite honest, we haven't even fundraised yet, right? It's a Mubarala, who, Mubarala wanted to make a bet in Latin America, and we've known Mubarala for a while, both you and myself, and then we called five other LPs. We made five phone calls, and the five of them said yes, and it was my family office, so we really haven't started, but what we want to make sure is This time around, we don't want to be the biggest. The biggest doesn't necessarily mean you're the best. We want to get started. I think five hundred million, maybe a little more, is a good start, and then we'll see where it takes us, but we're, I think we're lucky. I mean, we're grateful to be able to pick up the phone, call six people, and raise a fund, which is probably the largest first-time fund launched in Latin America, and I think in this time where nobody's raising money, or very hard to raise money, to shop with a five hundred million Fun a couple of weeks after your non-compete expires, you know, we're lucky, we're blessed, we're, we're grateful. A lot more will come. I mean, we have big aspirations, but we need to deliver, you know, you win a game playing minute by min…

AI assessment note: “This time around, we don't want to be the biggest.”