#126: Marcelo Claure - Why Softbank Invested in Career Karma

**Ruben Harris** (0:00)
Welcome to the Breaking Into Startups podcast, where we teach you how to get high-paying jobs in tech in less than a year. Today, March, 2021, we're dropping our first podcast since we announced Career Karma's $10 million Series A, led by Gary Tan and Kim McCutler at Initialize Capital. Initialize was joined by several amazing, amazing investors in this round, including one of the most powerful venture capital firms in the world known as SoftBank.
You all get to listen to Marcelo, CEO of SoftBank International today. Well, he doesn't just talk about entrepreneurship and why they invested in Career Karma, but they really talk about the thesis on singularity for the Vision Fund. They talk about how software is reorganizing the world, how software is eating the world. And if you want to break into tech, the trends that you need to be paying attention to so that you can not only survive in this world, but so you could thrive in it. If you want to take action to break into tech today, make sure you download the Career Karma app or go to careerkama.com/apply. If you're already learning or you're in the job search and you need to network, make sure you download the app and you join our live audio rooms where we have amazing engineers from the top companies and the world that can network with you and help you with your job search. If you have any feedback about this podcast, please send us an email to Ruben, Archer, or Timor at breakingintostartups.com. If you haven't joined our Facebook community, please do that like our Facebook page, drop us a comment, drop us a tweet, and without further ado, let's break in.
And growing up we're told that in order to be successful you need to be a banker, a doctor or a lawyer. That's what the gatekeepers want you to think. But we're part of something bigger. We're part of a technological revolution. Either you're at the table or on the table.
Yo, yo, yo, this is Ruben Harris. I'm here with the homies, Archer and Timon Meister, and this is the Breaking Into Startups podcast. Timor, can you please tell the people what we're doing today?

**Timor Meister** (2:05)
Yeah, so we're actually, we have a very special guest on our podcast today. We're still doing remote interviews coming from different parts of United States, different parts of the world, but everyone is staying safe and we're excited for COVID to end and help more people get jobs in 2021 And we have a really special guest tonight.
Ruben, do you mind introducing who the guest is?

**Ruben Harris** (2:30)
Yeah, we're here with the man, the myth legend, Marcelo Claure. He's a Bolivian tech entrepreneur who founded Brightstar, which is ranked as the largest Hispanic-owned business in the United States for six years that he sold to Sprint after they reached 10 billion in revenue. He's currently the CEO of SoftBank International, National COO, SoftBank Group Corporation, overseeing things with MASA.
Together, they've invested in companies like DoorDash, Coupang, Uber, WeWork and others, where he's the executive chairman, running things like the $100 billion Vision Fund. He's also the former CEO of Sprint that led to the merger with T-Mobile. He's a philanthropist with the founder of One Laptop Per Child and the Million Project Foundation to give computer access to kids. And in its free time, he's a skier, he's a cyclist and a sports lover. He's the owner of a soccer team, Club Bolivar, believer in the media. He's on the board of Univision. And most importantly, he's a family man. I think you got six kids, correct?
Six kids.
Six kids. He has an amazing shoe collection. And finally, he's an investor in our company, Career Karma. So we're very grateful to have him on our cap table. Before getting into why he invested in Career Karma, let's just say welcome Marcelo.

**Marcelo Claure** (3:38)
Thank you, Ante, thank you for having me here.

**Ruben Harris** (3:41)
Awesome, man.

**Marcelo Claure** (3:41)
And I'm glad we're finally getting together to do this.

**Ruben Harris** (3:45)
Yeah, man, likewise. I don't know if you remember this, but you and I met for the first time at the Brazil Silicon Valley Conference with Nana. Do you remember that conference?

**Marcelo Claure** (3:54)
I do. That was, I think, a couple of weeks after we decided to launch a Latin American fund. So we were testing the waters at Brazil Silicon Valley in San Francisco, right? Or in Silicon Valley.

**Ruben Harris** (4:07)
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

**Marcelo Claure** (4:09)
Two years ago.

**Ruben Harris** (4:10)
Yeah, so a lot of people on the podcast, they're used to listening to people that got jobs in tech.