i was an entrepreneur for my from my early earlier days i think my first business was a very iconic business was selling my mom's clothes while she was away it's a really good business he had a hundred percent profit margin until one day i got caught and then my mom shut down the business [Applause] hi everyone mike sievert here welcome back to another episode of sidekicks conversations where we sit down at the iconic sidekicks pub here at t-mobile's bellevue headquarters to talk to some of the most interesting people whose lives and stories affect the t-mobile
community today i'm joined by none other than marcelo clare who actually used to lead our company as ceo of sprint from 2014 to 2018 and executive chair from 2018 right up to our merger in 2020. today he serves along with me on our board of directors which makes him one of my bosses as the number two guy at softbank he was one of the world's biggest investors and also engineered that famous turnaround that wework he's a wildly successful entrepreneur and an investor and so much more marcelo welcome to sidekicks hi mike so good to be
here so good to see so many familiar faces so i'm excited to have a chat with you well no kidding so you started at sprint in 2014 when masa asked you to join the company and do that so why did you say yes to him and come here to sprint in 2014. having a chance to you know run a company at that point in time was 120 years old had an iconic name was fighting for survival and was probably one of the toughest jobs i just found it as an amazing challenge and something that i
was excited to go and lead and move my family to kansas city and go for it and put up a good fight against you and the other guys and you've played a role in creating a truly iconic company i want to come back to your time at sprint and at softbank but maybe we start at the beginning you know you're an incredibly successful entrepreneur you grew up in bolivia how did you find yourself in entrepreneurship i was an entrepreneur from my from my early earlier days i think my first business was a very iconic business
was selling my mom's clothes while she was away you were selling her clothes while she wasn't around correct without her permission right that didn't last too long and then you know my second business is i went to school in boston and i was really frustrated by being the poorest guy in in campus probably so then i started buying and selling frequency miles and made it a business and i think i was like the richest kid in one semester because i had a lot of employees and making a decent amount of money so that taught me
that hey i was in the u.s and anything was possible [Music] like john ledger and i here on the t-mobile side you worked really hard to bring about this new company of ours and i got to watch you in action doing all that when we were partners trying to make this happen what what drove you during that time why did you work so hard to create this version of t-mobile that we have today it was like i would say a merger made in heaven i mean all the stars were aligned we could actually have an
amazing network we could actually not only win by price or win by being scrappy but actually win by having the best product and i knew that it was it was up to us to actually put the us back in leadership on 5g and force verizon att to really compete i mean if you look what we've accomplished is amazing i mean you know we force verizon to get rid of all their media assets with force at t to get out of that business so they can focus on compete and i remember having those conversations at congress
remember in those congressional hearings or at the fcc or the doj where we actually made a commitment i say if you approve this merger we're actually going to make the u.s market more competitive and at first they didn't believe us they say it's not going to happen three players are going to make it less competitive but i think we all knew at heart that it was easy to sell because it was the right thing to do it was going to be the right thing for the country for consumers well part of it i i hear
you saying we knew we were right and that's sometimes when you're right it's worth fighting for i mean i think today almost two and a half years after the creation of this company most objective people if they're willing to be honest with themselves would look at this market and say you know what those guys made it a lot more competitive they were right it's more competitive on price head-to-head competition and it's more competitive on quality because we brought about an environment where at t and verizon have spent tens of billions of dollars trying to catch
the 5g lead that we have and that's exactly what we promised would unfold what gets you excited about the new era of the uncarrier today's t-mobile how a dream that we all put together is finally evolving and it's just such a pleasure to you know be proud in the product that you're selling right and be able to tell people about it and see you know story that we started writing how it has evolved and that to me that's a lot of pride i think we have an incredible future you know we have the best network
we have the best spectrum assets we have momentum well you see our competitors fading so i think we're an incredible position in terms of continuing with this leadership and i'm going to be here until we celebrate the day that we are number one and that we beat verizon in total number of subscribers which is something that i think this company deserves obviously a huge concern on our customers mind our employees minds is the economy no one can really predict it but you are obviously a highly successful investor and you're looking across a wide lens right
now how do you view the months ahead from the standpoint of inflation the risks of recession and do you see not just risks but do you see any opportunities ahead as a function of all that depends who you ask right and time will tell but you know i look at opportunities like today most of the best companies ever were founded in times of crisis even if times get more difficult i think it's an opportunity for us for t-mobile to continue to grow to provide you to continue to provide great products and to continue to do
it at a lower price which was original promise we're going to have to run our company very smartly very efficiently but if we do it right i just love that opportunity that you just described you know it's a chance for us to stand up for the american consumer and business because when you're stressed out this is an essential product people aren't just going to drop it it's different than 2008 i mean a wireless device is the primary connection to your world it's your life but there might be a flight to value meaning a better product
at a lower price as you just said and if we can stand up for more people and give them what they're looking for and have their back with something like price lock at the exact moment that at t and verizon are using inflation as an excuse to ought their customers it's just a wonderful opportunity for us if we run the company smartly to stand up for that you know i love that and there could be other opportunities out there as well as you said dynamics change things and opportunities present themselves you know we have to
be ready to seize on them and be ready to serve customers who need us more than ever what do you see out there in technology or in consumer trends that has you excited right now as an investor or as a consumer there's going to be more innovation and disruption in the next five years than in the whole history the entire lifetime and that is you know the fact that we're going to be part of that how the world is evolving and we're in the middle of three revolutions obviously everybody knows about ai artificial intelligence and
how ai is redefining the world then we're also living i like to say the blockchain economy i know you're going to see blockchain play a prevalent role especially in financial services and then lastly i'm a big believer in electric revolution or electric vehicles and we're seeing that you know we're going to have such a rapid emergence and i like to say that electric vehicles will do to cars to traditional combustion engine cars what cars did to horses in the past we're in the middle of so much change and you know i look at teemo you
know we sit right in the middle you know we power a lot of these things a lot of people don't give us the credit that we deserve because guess what there's no ai if people are not connected there's no autonomous driving vehicles in the future a fully autonomous city unless cars will be connected and blockchain requires metabours will require massive connectivity so the key and this is where mike and myself get excited is how can we you know be able to get part of all those revolutions apart from just providing the connectivity that we do
which by the way is great any advice for me as the leader of our company going forward embrace technology and i think we have such an incredible opportunity ahead of us with all these changes and sometimes we're just so focused on our day-to-day of how many net ads we have and all that that we forget of what's coming and hey a lot of change a lot of disruption a lot of innovation and we have to be at the forefront of that because remember there will be no technology revolution unless we provide that amazing connectivity that
we do that's great advice marcelo thank you for spending the time with all of us today we really appreciate it it's so great to have you in the building thank you you bet cheers good to see you thank you and that is sidekick's conversations for today i look forward to bringing you more stories in the future from the people most of interest to the t-mobile community from right here at sidekicks or maybe even from out on the road thanks for watching
