Marcelo Claure (Photo/AP)
Sprint has selected the founder of Brightstar, Marcelo Claure, as its new president and CEO, the company announced today.
Claure, 43, was born in La Paz, Bolivia, he spent two years living in Guatemala, his family moved to Morocco and then to the Dominican Republic, before returning home to La Paz, where he spent much of his childhood. According to Forbes, he is now worth more than $900 million.
Claure will start his new position on August 11, replacing current Sprint CEO Dan Hesse.
He founded Brightstar - a specialized wireless distributor - 17 years ago, and it became the largest Hispanic-owned business in the U.S., with a presence in approximately 40 countries.
According to The Miami Herald, while passing through Boston in 1995, Claure went into a cellphone store to buy a phone, and by the time he walked out, he owned the store.
“The owner hated owning a retail store, was looking to get out, and said to me, ‘If I could find someone who wanted this store, I’d hand them the keys right now for nothing,'” Claure told The Miami Herald. “I told him I’d take it, and if the store made money, he’d get 49 percent of the profit.”
Within two years, Claure owned 150 stores in the Northeast and had set up a network of drivers, who carried phones in their car trunks, and delivered them to customers to make the purchase hassle-free. In 1997, he moved to Miami to launch Brightstar.
Let’s see where the fearless entrepreneur takes Sprint.