Marcelo Claure, former CEO of SoftBank Group International, details his mistake of investing $150 million of SoftBank capital into crypto exchange FTX.
Assertion Partly supported
Claure: Pitching Steve Jobs Created the Mobile Phone Trade-In Model
“So back then, I used to own Brightstar. And I had an idea of how could Apple actually double their sales. And after many emails to Steve Jobs, which he wrote me back, no interest. One day he got tired of everybody pinging him that he had to meet me. So he agre…”
Opinion
Claure: SoftBank disrupted venture capital just like Uber disrupted taxi drivers
“The same way Uber disrupted the taxi drivers, we disrupted the venture capital industry. While people used to write these small checks, we suddenly showed up with a hundred billion dollars, and we disrupted the way venture capital works today, and therefore, w…”
Opinion
Claure: Tiger Global replicated SoftBank's model, forcing faster dealmaking
“Tiger basically has replicated the SoftBank model, and there's nothing magical about what they're doing, and it's great, because what Tiger does, it forces my teams to make quicker decisions now.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Claure: The Era of Passive Dumb Capital Is Over
“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…”
Opinion
Claure: Advice From Non-Operator VCs Is Cheap and Confuses Founders
“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.”
Disclosure
Claure: Bicycle Capital Raised $500M Fund With Just Five LP Calls
“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 real…”