Marcelo Claure and Shu Nyatta on Building Bicycle Capital in Latin America

Marcelo Claure and Shu Nyatta tell Harry Stebbings how their partnership began at SoftBank. They met when their daughters were born on the same day, then worked together on the Latin America fund. After leaving, they decided to build Bicycle Capital together.

Nyatta calls Claure a master of momentum who can bring people and capital together around an idea. Claure says Nyatta complements his operating experience with investment analysis and a more conservative approach. Their assessments come from business partners describing each other.

Claure says when to move fast depends on the circumstances: he describes SoftBank as a time for speed and their new venture as a time for more caution. Once a company has established what works, he argues, it can accelerate. Nyatta says the bicycle name evokes a simple, durable technology that empowers its rider.

Stebbings challenges their view that investors should help founders, citing the idea that the best founders do not need help. Claure says even excellent founders can benefit from a call, a contact or an operating perspective. Nyatta adds that a strong board discussion can help founders seek truth without replacing their judgment.

Claure says he and his partners are bringing more than $200 million of their own capital, alongside experience and relationships. They believe investing their own money makes each partnership personal. Nyatta does not think financial independence is a prerequisite for a good partnership; in his view, caring about the outcome is what matters.

On hard feedback, Claure recommends sharing mistakes and being direct, while choosing a setting the founder can hear. He says a relationship is difficult if an investor can never give candid advice. Nyatta, who says he has not built a company himself, emphasizes listening and asking a question that makes a founder pause rather than filling a boardroom with pronouncements.

Nyatta sees potential misalignment when early investors prioritize rapid valuation markups and fundraising while founders need durable companies. He thinks growth-stage incentives can be more aligned because the business is more established. Claure also advises founders to listen to others but retain their own judgment; his claim that intuition is usually right is a personal rule of thumb.

Nyatta says Bicycle’s proposed $500 million growth fund targets a financing gap beginning around Series B in Latin America. In his 2023 assessment, early-stage capital existed and later crossover investors could appear at scale, but fewer investors would lead and price the rounds in between. The funding figures he cites are estimates from the discussion.

Claure says the fund had not yet undertaken a broad fundraising process: Mubadala, a handful of other limited partners and his family office had committed or participated. He calls $500 million, perhaps a little more, a starting point. These are the partners’ fundraising statements at the time, not an independently audited final fund size.

At SoftBank, Claure says the mandate was to build a broad portfolio with substantial capital, and he describes its first Latin America fund as successful. At Bicycle the partners intend to be more selective. Nyatta says a portfolio of roughly 10 to 14 companies is intentional so the team can develop a close relationship with each.

Nyatta describes a core team that includes three people who worked together on the SoftBank Latin America fund. He wants to build capabilities over time without damaging the trust and shared working style they already have. Claure, the fund’s chairman, hopes the younger team can ultimately run it and avoid some of his mistakes.

Both investors argue that Latin America has a large population and successful technology businesses, citing Nubank, Mercado Libre and Globant as different examples. Their GDP comparisons and descriptions of regional digital adoption are their own 2023 observations. As fund managers seeking investments in the region, they have a direct commercial interest in that case.

Nyatta says the central challenge is proving that Latin America can support a multi-fund growth equity firm. He expects concrete outcomes, including major public listings, to persuade skeptics over time. This is the firm’s ambition rather than evidence that its new fund has achieved those returns.

Claure rejects a view of Latin America defined only by crime, inflation and political instability. He argues that nearshoring to Mexico and demand for commodities involved in electrification could be tailwinds over the following decade. His lithium shares, commodity-price expectations and growth outlook are claims and forecasts made in 2023, not established future outcomes.

Stebbings asks whether Latin America is one large opportunity or a fragmented set of markets. Nyatta highlights Brazil and Mexico as distinct large markets, with Portuguese making Brazil different from Spanish-speaking countries. He also notes difficulties in Argentina and short-term challenges in Colombia while expressing long-term optimism about Colombia.

Claure sees Argentina’s engineering and services talent as an export opportunity despite local economic difficulties. Both speakers believe that building a firm around Brazil and Mexico can provide meaningful scale. Their market outlook and economic rankings are judgments in the interview, not investment guarantees.

Foreign capital leaving the region has costs and benefits, Nyatta says. High 2021 valuations and liquidation preferences can make later financing and secondary purchases difficult, while less competition can mean more rational prices. Claure welcomes the departure of investors he sees as temporary tourists; that view reflects Bicycle’s competitive position.

Nyatta says the firm is willing to co-invest with other established regional investors and wants to price and assess risk itself. He stresses visiting companies locally to avoid seeing only founders who travel to New York or San Francisco, citing a visit to Goiânia in Brazil. Claure argues that knowledge of local problems and languages helps investors understand opportunities.

Claure points to gaps in health, education, transport and retail as reasons technology can find demand, and uses SHEIN as an example. He has a commercial connection to SHEIN, identified in the episode description. His comparisons about prices and adoption are his claims, not independently verified measurements.

Nyatta contrasts a cash-only experience in New York with digital payments in Brazil and describes a sophisticated local financial market. He claims Latin America accounts for about a quarter of the world’s fintechs; the interview does not substantiate that statistic. His statement that debt can make a company capital-efficient does not mean borrowing carries no risk.

On liquidity, Nyatta points to listings in Brazil and acquisitions as alternatives to a New York IPO. He mentions a reported Pismo acquisition as a rumor in the conversation, not a confirmed transaction here. Stebbings asks whether smaller exits can return a fund; Nyatta says the answer depends on entry price and portfolio construction.

Claure expects some Latin American companies to reach public markets and sees building that ecosystem as part of the opportunity. Nyatta contrasts growth equity with early-stage investing: the former can aim for a range of roughly two to four times on investments instead of requiring each to have 10- or 20-fold potential. These are underwriting targets, not realized returns or a guarantee of lower losses.

The partners say strong seed and Series A funds need later-stage investors to help companies progress toward exits. Claure describes the SoftBank effort as unfinished business after its regional focus changed. He says $500 million is a start and believes more capital will be needed; that reflects his fund’s mission and commercial interest.

Nyatta sees talent emerging from established companies and from people moving to the region. He cites Rappi alumni founding new companies as an example of a possible cycle of experience and entrepreneurship. These are his observations, not a comprehensive measure of regional talent flows.

Asked what they would change from SoftBank, Nyatta says the large fund pursued capital gaps aggressively and built a substantial support organization. For Bicycle, he favors a smaller, more personal approach. Claure says they want to choose carefully and minimize major losses, targeting doubles and triples rather than relying on a grand slam.

Nyatta suggests 2023 and 2024 could be attractive deployment years but warns against investing too quickly simply because opportunities appear exciting. He imagines deploying the fund over roughly three years. This is an estimate made at the interview, not evidence of subsequent deployment.

The conversation turns to work and family. Nyatta admires Claure’s view that work and play are parts of life rather than separate compartments. Claure says he integrates family with travel and work and believes doing work one loves helps. Stebbings asks whether this flexibility is a privilege of success; Claure says he used a similar approach when he was struggling, while acknowledging his life differs from many others.

Nyatta says people should make arrangements that work for them rather than assume inherited rules apply to everyone. Claure encourages founders to find their own paths. These are personal reflections, not universal prescriptions for balancing work and family.

On difficult partnership conversations, Claure says Bicycle began with three partners and became two after lengthy discussions. He and Nyatta describe learning to compromise and change each other’s minds in investment committee meetings. Nyatta sees the urge to avoid a conversation as a signal that it may need attention.

In quick questions, Claure names persuading people that Latin America is a good place to do business as a near-term challenge. Nyatta argues that larger markets can matter greatly, using East Africa as an example, and clarifies that his provocative comment concerns sovereignty rather than peace. These are his political and economic opinions.

Claure says working with Nyatta has made him more thoughtful; Nyatta says he has learned to channel Claure’s momentum. Both expect future venture winners to add value and select investments carefully. Nyatta argues that simply making many bets on a popular theme may miss the companies that generate the biggest outcomes; this is their forecast and investment philosophy.

Claure would choose Steve Jobs as a board member and recalls pursuing a meeting while running Brightstar. He describes discussions about phone buybacks and trade-ins and Jobs’s insistence on detail. His account of how the practice originated is his recollection and does not establish a complete history of the industry.

Nyatta chooses investor Neil Shen for his experience as banker, founder and investor. Claure says a major missed opportunity was not investing in Nubank earlier, attributing it partly to stubbornness over valuation. He discloses that he later invested personally and helped bring SoftBank into Nubank.

Nyatta recalls considering OpenAI at SoftBank around 2017 but not investing. He says investors can dismiss businesses that must build a great deal of missing infrastructure, even when that work is essential to the opportunity. The missed investment is his retrospective account, not evidence of an available or guaranteed return.

Claure says he made a $150 million SoftBank investment in FTX despite not truly understanding it, influenced by fear of missing out and the list of other investors. He apologizes for the decision and says it taught him not to invest in what he does not understand or merely follow others. The amount and decision process are his account; the interview does not independently calculate SoftBank’s realized loss.

He says he now uses outside expertise and academic connections to learn about AI rather than claim to know everything. Stebbings and the guests discuss calling knowledgeable people for advice. Claure distinguishes learning from specialists from investing solely on momentum.

Nyatta would change venture’s fixation on speed and expiring term sheets, arguing a somewhat slower process allows better information and decisions. Claure says the market had become overly excited about technology investing and expects a reckoning for investors who relied on rapid markups. Their judgments and predictions reflect their own investing approach.

Claure expects more founders to approach limited partners directly and believes funds will need to demonstrate value. Stebbings notes that fund structures can keep weak managers alive for years; the guests agree change can take time. They also caution against treating all Middle Eastern capital as one undifferentiated source.

Over a ten-year horizon, Nyatta wants Bicycle’s decisions to carry weight with founders and investors. Claure cites Sequoia China and Neil Shen as an example and says Bicycle has a close alliance there. They hope to play a role in great Latin American companies; this is an ambition, not a demonstrated outcome for the new fund. The interview ends with thanks.