our next guest has held a wide variety of roles and when we've spoken to him over the years among the challenges he's taken on stepping in at wework after Adam Newman was ousted helping orchestrate Sprint's merger with T-Mobile and leading SoftBank Group International joining us right now to talk about his next chapter announcing this morning Marcelo Clary is the executive chairman and managing partner at bicycle capital good morning to you sir hi Andrew how are you good to see you again uh exciting day here and we should also uh note that the bicycle capital's managing
partner uh shoot nyata is with you as well tell us about uh this next chapter what you're doing uh and then I've got so many questions about so many other things that are going on in the world but uh this is this is your your next foray I mean is first of all it's great to be back being able to work it's great to be back I've been an entrepreneur it's been a an amazing ride to be part of the softball ecosystem for so many years and it's just great to be back at you know
I've been an entrepreneur so we're launching a I would say Your First Act which is a adventure Capital firm that's going to be focused on Latin America I'm launching with my partner he's in the line with us and we're very excited because we've always been incredibly passionate about Latin America uh the potential of the region and it's a place where a lot of people have not put a lot of focus so we decided to launch a fund that is launching today I'm incredibly excited about it and and Marcel I mean just for the audience it
doesn't know that go back to your your history of bright star I used to tell people when we first met you were effectively uh selling you know uh used phones out of your trunk but I mean it was more than that that's how it all started you know brycester was the first Venture when I started it was a small distributor who ended up being the world's largest distribution and Supply Chain Services Company with with pretty much presence all over the world and it all started in Latin America and you know after that I went to
Sprint I went to South Bank I went to wework into many different places but it all comes back to the place where you know we're most passionate about and that's Latin America and this is why the and now that I'm back allowed to go back to work the first place wanted to go back was like in America right they call that gardening leave it's over for you now you gotta you got to stop gardening this summer uh shoe uh how did you get involved with this well I'm Kenyan so I'm not from Latin America at
all I just see an incredible commercial opportunity I've been at SoftBank for seven or eight years investing around the world and no region has been as ignored yet is as rich with potential as Latin America is they're great Founders solving big problems but they don't have enough Capital so that's where we come in that's what gets me excited um a Marcelo South Bank question for you uh a lot has gone on on the good side I mean that Sprint T-Mobile deal I think will go down as one of the great transactions of all time uh
it is now overtaken as you know 18t and Verizon you can look at the stock I mean it's been a remarkable thing uh but on the other side there have been a number of deals uh that happened at SoftBank that have not worked out that way I was looking at wework stock this morning by the way it's now at 20 cents it was once obviously ten dollars because it was part of a SPAC how should the the public think about that how should investors think about that I mean all I can give to my point
of view right I love South Bank I I think Massa is an amazing Visionary and people who always written off Masa have always been wrong and I think Masa it's always going to be strong so I think is going to be incredibly strong in my opinion I'm a shareholder of South Bank and I believe that a you know Masa has always made bets in the right technology right and you look you look at it he started talking about what we are all talking every day which is artificial intelligence three four years ago and that's what
the whole world is talking about so I'm sure Master will be fine I'm I'm a big believer in the future of softball as I'm a big believer in you know in what we did together with Masa throughout our journey in Sprint in South Bank in arm in Fortress in so many different companies that we manage together so I I have I only have a good five stores master and I hope he does incredibly well in this whole software family Dare I ask what you think is going to happen to wework you know I like not
to comment on that I I just give you I think we work as a great company I it's uh it's unfortunately what is going what has gone to the pandemic and the whole real estate market and I only wish you know good stuff that we work as it was it is a great business that I believe it has the wrong capital structure and I hope I hope there's a future for wework and shoe you know uh Marcella just mentioned the is sort of AI and we're all talking about AI how do you think that works
itself through uh in in terms of the way you're thinking about investments in Latin America in particular and I asked because I think there's a big question mark right now given where AI is whether the incumbents win that game or whether there's emerging companies that will come out of all of this that win that game the wonderful thing about Latin America Andrew like most Emerging Markets is a vast majority of the population consumers and businesses are deeply underserved so unlike the story in Western countries in the US which is all about disruption innovation in Latin
America is much more about inclusion it's about bringing simple Technologies to people in the middle and the bottom of the pyramid that's where the equity value is and so it's less about what's happening with openai at The Cutting Edge of research much more about propagating Ai and other tools Cloud mobile basic tools deeper into the population so it's much more than distribution angle than an innovation angle and that's equal opportunity incumbents and startups have a lot of room to run because as I said before most of this population is under third so it's really about
inclusive Innovation not disruptive innovation
