Closing the Deal

Three big-time investors have rolled into Miami to listen to 33-year-old whiz kid Marcelo Claure try to sell them a chunk of his company--and, my God, he's late!

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These guys are money--$5 billion at least, probably $10 billion. They don't look like money; they look like duffers playing euchre on the 19th hole, the way they're kicking back in khakis and golf shirts, one of them scratching his sockless ankle. They don't look like much, today, because they're not expecting much: They've turned this Thursday into their own casual Friday because they're going to be stuck all day in a Miami industrial park, listening to a boy genius yap about how he's going to conquer the world. With their money, of course.

Not all day, actually--there is a later flight back to New York, but these three venture capitalists are catching the first one out at 3 p.m. That's all the time they need, they figure, to hear everything worth hearing from Marcelo Claure, a 33-year-old Bolivian who was hustling cell phones out of a car trunk 10 years ago, and his Brightstar Corp., which frankly doesn't sound a whole lot different than his car-trunk operation, except by scale. The VC trio wouldn't have even bothered getting on the plane this morning if it weren't for two things:

1) Marcelo Claure raked in a billion dollars last year.

2) They have no idea how.

The Brightstar basics aren't hard to understand. Marcelo buys cell phones from Motorola and sells them to wireless carriers across Latin America. Couldn't be simpler. Except--how come no one else can do it, while Brightstar has seen near triple-digit growth every year? Marcelo could barely get manufacturers' credit in 1997; still, his annual revenue hit $14 million that year, and $73 million the next, and $355 million the next. Though 2000 was the year that telecommunications took a nosedive, Brightstar was banking $631 million. Today, Brightstar has 700 employees working out of 21 facilities in 16 countries, selling or reselling cell phones to 160 wireless network operators and an assortment of 15,000 other agents and retailers. Its 2003 revenue will come in north of $1.2 billion.

And now, even though the telecom industry is still smoldering from the wreckage, Marcelo is looking to raise $50 million so he can hustle yet more phones. He's got world domination plans for Asia, Europe, and Africa and deep veins of untapped consumers right here in the United States--even though rival distributors have well-established beachheads on all those fronts. Marcelo is sure he can beat them; he's sure he's got a system that will let him move cell phones faster and cheaper than anyone else in the world.

He's also sure he can convince this VC trio, no matter how skeptical they are. Marcelo is a showman, a charmer, a bit of a braggadocio, and accustomed to winning over doubters. He'd better--the stakes are high, and he won't have many chances. Marcelo will only be making his pitch to a small number of specially chosen potential investors (including a very well-known big fish, one of the world's richest men) because he's determined to keep maximum control of Brightstar and only wants investors who will give him cash, frankly, and leave him alone. If he fails in this round, time will be short for another: If Brightstar doesn't grow, it could suffer the same fate that it once dealt to its competition.

The VCs are impatient; one is already checking his watch. Until they know a lot more about this Brightstar, they don't even want anyone to know they're in this room. It's 8:59...no, make that 9 a.m. on the button. Marcelo wants their money, and he has exactly five hours to get it.

Set?

Go.

Five hours...

Hold up--he's late. The future of his company is waiting in his conference room, but Marcelo is stopping for a sweet, Cuban coffee from the sweet, Cuban coffee woman pushing a cart down the hall. It's hard to blame him: The Coffee Lady is so well known, one Brightstar client even cites her when asked to rate the company's performance. "I'm telling you, she makes the best coffee in Miami," he says. She's also powerful subliminal advertising. "This old woman with her espresso pot sets the perfect tone," he says. "It tells people, 'We respect Latin American tradition here. We take time to do things right."

Four hours, 50 minutes...

Okay, here he comes, smiling and sort of sleepy-looking. At times, Marcelo looks like Friends star David Schwimmer, even down to the gelled black hair, the sly-goofy grin, the awkward big-guy mannerisms. This morning, he's wearing a dark-blue suit and cloud-blue shirt, like he's got nightclub plans after punch-out time. He just might: Paulino Do Regos Barros Jr., the head of Latin American operations for BellSouth, confides that the divorced Marcelo likes to "party" an extra night when he's in Mexico City, hitting the clubs after business calls. But Regos Barros also stresses that "he's the hardest-working guy around--he'll work 16, 18 hours, then hop a flight to Brazil at a moment's notice if a customer needs something."

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