Marcelo Claure is a Bolivian tech entrepreneur who founded Brightstar which was later sold to Sprint after they reached $10 billion in revenue, becoming the largest Hispanic-owned business in US history. Currently, Claure serves as Chief Executive Officer of SoftBank Group International and Chief Operating Officer of SoftBank Group Corp. 

Claure oversees the vast portfolio of the Group’s operating companies, including Arm, WeWork, Brightstar, Fortress, SB Energy, Boston Dynamics, among others, along with SoftBank’s ownership in T-Mobile US. He also runs Club Bolivar, Bolivia’s most popular and successful soccer team, and is Chairman and Owner of Club Internacional de Futbol Miami (Miami Beckham United).

Today, he talks about why he decided to invest in Career Karma and why data is now the future of work.

#126: Marcelo Claure - Why Softbank Invested in Career Karma

Albrey Brown, is a Berkeley native who does not take ‘No’ for an answer. He was rejected on his first attempt to becoming a Hack Reactor graduate and went on to become a founder of Telegraph Academy. Most importantly, he found a love for teaching and is an educator that has completely changed the career trajectories for hundreds of students. Although he never graduated from college, he always knew that he was going to be a teacher. He grew up in a single family home where his mom raised him to become the man who he is today.

Key Points:
1. When you’re learning a new skill, it’s good to have resources (see below), but try to find someone to double check if you’re doing the steps “correctly”

2. Bootcamps need to be more accessible and there are resources like Telegraph Prep and Climb that are working to democratize this form of education

3. You’re always going to find another bug (another hill to climb, a new thing to conquer) so don’t be afraid of that. Take risks.

4. Mentorship comes through various channels. If someone invests time into helping you, the best thing that you can do is succeed.

SHOW NOTES (FOCUS ON THE  STEPPING STONES):
[1:12] – Albrey grew up in Berkeley, CA in a single family home with his mother and his aunt. He had no idea of what a startup was.

[3:15] Albrey’s mother got diagnosed with Cancer during his sophomore year and he took a couple of years off after he graduated high school (never graduated college)

 [5:32] Beginner Resources – What resources did you use to learn how to code? First, a mentor. Then, he started with The Odin Project and Learn Ruby the Hard Way

[6:35] What was your motivation to learning how to code?

[10:47] What led you to choose Hack Reactor instead of all the other bootcamps?

[11:52] How did you do with Hack Reactor’s Interview Process?

[15:10] Don’t let money stop you from acquiring a new skill – How did you pay for your tuition ($18,000)? When he passed his interview and got accepted into Hack Reactor he needed to figure out how to pay tuition. He had no more money and used a crowdfunding platform called GoFundMe to raise $18,000 in 30 days

[18:19] Tell us more about the Bootcamp Model as a new model for education

[19:06] What makes Telegraph Academy different from all of the other Bootcamps?

 [21:40] Take a Bootcamp Preparation Program if you are starting from scratch and need someone to guide you  

[22:22] What financing packages are available at Telegraph Academy? 

[24:58] What are some of the outcomes for Telegraph Academy?

[26:17] What do the demographics look like at Telegraph Academy? 

[29:00] How did you put this all together? He is a big advocate of taking the road less traveled. 

[30:40] What do you have planned for the future? Thoughts on education in general? 

[33:37] The Lightning Round
1. How would you get back to this point in your career if you were dropped into a new city with only $100? (assuming your food and shelter is taken care of)

Albrey: Become a Lyft or Uber Driver to get a car (here’s the Uber option), make money, learn about your city, and meet people

2. When you ran into roadblocks or struggles, was there any piece of music or a movie that you watched that helped you get over that situation?

Albrey: Always Be Closing by Glengarry Glen Ross

3. Looking back, what is one piece of advice that you would give to someone now that you’ve been through this journey?

Albrey: The best resource that you can have is a mentor

4. Have you been able to speak with anyone that Sponsored your GoFundMe now that you have executed on your promise to start a school?
Yes; His cousin Brian Tippens, who never told him what he did when he originally contributed. Now that Albrey reconnected with him after the launch of Telegraph Academy, he just realized Brian is the Head of Diversity

#1: Albrey Brown - Self-taught Engineer who founded Telegraph Academy to teach people how to code.

Edgar Pabon is a New York-native who, prior to his current position as a software engineer at Amazon Music, was a rapper, a communications degree graduate, and an active duty military. 

He knew that being a software engineer is what he has always wanted to be doing that even during his military years he never stopped learning about the tech industry. Edgar’s journey was not an easy one, having experienced police brutality, undergoing rigorous military training, dealing with the impostor syndrome, and overcoming rejections. Yet through it all, his passion for tech was what has always kept his fire burning.

#16: Edgar Pabon - Army Captain who became an Engineer at Amazon Music

Kush Patel is the Founder of App Academy, which is considered to be the MIT of coding bootcamps. Prior to breaking into startup, Kush previously worked at hedge funds until he finally decided to pursue his passion for learning how to code through and joined the first coding class of Dev Bootcamp. 

Seeing the huge gap between the amount of software engineers produced each year and the amount of software engineers needed in Silicon Valley and through the US, Kush, alongside co-founder Ned Ruggeri, saw great opportunity in the bootcamp space, thus the birth of App Academy.

#15: Kush Patel - Founder of App Academy

Max Rencoret grew up in Chile where he first got exposed to its education system, startup culture, economic climate, government and other things that led him to a career in Growth Marketing, where he felt like he could make the most impact in his life. One of Max's teachers explained the scale of technology, focusing on people, and led Max to start a company (similar to Snapchat) that he grew to 80,000 daily active users targeting Latin America. After Snapchat took over their market and realizing his interest in growth, Max finished his degree and moved to San Francisco to do a 3-month immersive program at Tradecraft. On this episode, Max talks about what it takes to be successful as a Growth Marketer, why learning to code is important, and how the Chilean community supported him here in San Francisco in his work as a Growth Marketing Manager at Samsara.

#7: Max Rencoret - Deep dive into Growth Marketing and building a product

A South Californian native, Neil Shah would never have thought that a walking tour of Tenderloin with Del Seymour could practically change his life forever as well as the many lives of homeless people around the Tenderloin neighborhood. Neil basically never stopped hustling, jumping from med school to law school to business school, getting an MBA at UC Irvine, and getting locked up in prison for his third DUI. But it was his passion for helping people that got him volunteering at different non profit projects and organizations. Neil is now the Head of Business Development and Partnerships at Code Tenderloin where they have partnered with a whole bunch of startups and organizations in order to relentlessly help homeless people break into tech, basically disrupting the career pathway and transforming people’s lives.

#8: Neil Shah - Quit his Finance job to help Homeless folks get Jobs

An Alaskan-native, Ben Creasy wanted to pursue engineering since a young age but due to health issues, he ended up getting a degree in Economics and Philosophy in Oregon. At 24, Ben held elected office in Alaska but his passion for coding never faltered so he ultimately joined Hack Reactor. Currently, he works as a Software Engineer at BrightIdea. Ben is also an editor at Wikipedia, something he has been doing for 9 years now. He has also co-created the Bay Area WikiSalon where Wiki enthusiasts gather around to mingle and learn about new projects and ideas.

#9: Ben Creasy - Alaskan Government Official turned Software Engineer

A Boston-native and freelance designer, Melanie Araujo is the Founder of Front & Center, a company that helps underprivileged people break into tech through design. Prior to design, Melanie has a professional background in neuroscience, which she leveraged to position herself as a unique designer. Investing a few thousands to learn design at General Assembly, what she got in return was 10x as she is now making six figures. Melanie believes that if you have your heart and mind set on something, there is absolutely nothing that will get in your way to get into your goal.

#10: Melanie Araujo - Designer and Founder of Front & Center that helps people break into tech

An East Coast native, Richard Purcell travelled cross country and courageously took the risk of taking an entry level job even though he was overqualified because it meant a chance to break into tech. Through persistence and overcoming objections, he landed his first tech sales job in Palo Alto at Medallia Inc. Currently, he serves as the Sales Director at Performance Horizon. 

Having a multi ethnic background gives Richard an interesting perspective on race and privilege. He firmly believes that talent is universal and opportunity is not. That’s why he co-founded Medallia Medley to help give access to opportunity to underrepresented talent.

#11: Richard Purcell - Sales Director who worked his way up from an entry level role

Shawn Drost is the Co-Founder of Hack Reactor, a coding bootcamp founded in 2012 along with his college friends Tony Phillips, Marcus Phillips, and Douglas Calhoun with the primary motive to set people up for success as software engineers. 

They envision themselves transforming higher education to be more transparent, accessible and outcomes-driven. 

Hack Reactor’s community involvement is remarkable as they continue to offer curriculum, volunteer support and training to their nonprofit partners in their conscious effort to bridge the gap between underserved communities and the tech industry.

#12: Shawn Drost - Founder of Hack Reactor

With a huge appreciation for writing and journalism, Elaina Koros majored in Government and English Studies while attending Georgetown University. Today, Elaina works as a Content Strategist at Facebook. During this chat, Elaina discusses the importance of building relationships and having mentors which helped her tremendously in getting an internship that eventually led to a full-time offer.

#13: Elaina Koros - Content Strategist who hustled her way into Facebook

Born and raised in Taiwan, Chia Lin has traveled far and wide. She came to Tennessee when she was 11, moved to California in high school and college, and lived in Tokyo for a year. Her love of food and travel has landed her a job as a flight attendant and a chef at a Michelin star kitchen, until she finally discovered her true passion for design. 

She believes that knowing who you are and being able to tell your story well will get you places. In fact, Chia wrote a blog post called 5 Things I Learned About Design in a Michelin Star Kitchen that got people coming to her and opened new doors for her.

#14: Chia Lin - From a Pastry Chef at a Michelin Star Restaurant to a Product Designer at a Startup

Ina Herlihy is a San Francisco local who knows what’s it like to hustle your way to get the thing that you want right at a very early age. She is passionate about journalism and was an editor-in-chief of her high school newspaper. She got to cover the 2008 Presidential Campaign and was the only high school student in the country to get a press pass for President Obama’s Inauguration. 

Leaving a would-be promising career in finance to break into tech, Herlihy attended Tradecraft and soon landed a job as a Growth Analyst at Zumper. Her prolific writing in Medium, called How I Hustled to Get the Perfect Job: From Tradecraft to Zumper got a lot of attention that it became one of the most popular blog posts on Medium in 2015.

#17: Ina Herlihy - How a young journalist hustled her way into Growth Marketing

Rodney Urquhart grew up in a North Philly neighborhood ridden with gang violence and effects of the crack epidemic. After seeing people around him get involved with gangs and crime, he realized that staying in high school would result in getting arrested or shot. 

At 16, Rodney dropped out of high school and moved in with his grand mother. Being a high school dropout and having no college degree, Rodney had his fair share of companies casting doubt on his ability. But his willingness to learn and work well with others was what got him to create an impressive company portfolio including Comcast, Microsoft’s Yammer, and ThoughtWorks. He didn’t just want to survive, he wanted to thrive. 

Rodney currently heads the test infrastructure team at Slack. He is also part of a program called /dev/color, a non-profit organization that aims to maximize the impact of Black software engineers in the tech space.

#28: Rodney Urquhart - How a 16-year-old High School Dropout became a Software Engineer at Slack

It is his love of tech that got Carlos González de Villaumbrosia to immigrate from Spain to the United States. Being good at numbers and video games, led him to study computer science at one of the top universities in Spain where he spent five years learning how to code. 

Although he once dreamed of becoming a soccer player as a child, Carlos is a coach, not on the playing field, but rather in the educational space. He is a serial entrepreneur having started three companies including Product School that teaches product management to people who have the passion to do it.

#32: Carlos González de Villaumbrosia – Product School Founder on How to Become a Product Manager

For Michael Jay Walker, his career was more likely driven by the motivation to do what people thought he couldn't do, fearlessly working his way up the marketing ladder until a decision to take a passionate leap into the tech space. 

Michael got his MBA at Ross School of Business and took on executive marketing roles for large corporations such as Ford Motor Company, Kraft Foods, PepsiCo, EA, and Mattel.  

25 years later, he went out to co-found a mobile app startup and served as a Chief Marketing Officer and Operations Officer at a few other tech companies. He then decided to learn how to code at Dev Bootcamp until he was later asked to join the team as a Chief Academic Officer and Campus Director in San Francisco.

#34: Michael J Walker - How a Marketing Exec Became an Engineer at 51 Years Old

Coming from a nontraditional background as an educator living in China for years, Quincy combined his passion for education and technology to launch Free Code Camp, an open-source community that helps people learn how to code and practice their coding skills by building projects for nonprofits. 

Quincy has indeed built a massive network of “campers” with close to a million developers learning how to code around the world. Free Code Camp has helped over 5,000 people find their first engineering jobs and 6,000 developers level up by getting better jobs. 

Being a prolific writer that he is, Quincy is also the editor of freeCodeCamp, Medium’s largest technical publication read by 100,000 people every day.

#40: Quincy Larson - Founder of Free Code Camp, Community of 1,000,000+ People Learning How to Code

Melissa has been teaching negotiation tactics for the last 22 years. 

Today, Melissa Hereford is going to teach us how to negotiate, not only in terms of salary, but life in general - deadlines, relationships, friendships, etc. She's going to give you actionable strategies you can use to negotiate a higher salary with your manager. 

Previously, Melissa worked for BayGroup International, the biggest negotiations consulting company in the world. She's worked with huge clients like Cisco, At&T, Oracle, GE, and several pharmaceutical companies.

Stop selling yourself short! You’ve got to ask for more. But the biggest question is how. Negotiation can be scary, but it doesn’t have to be. You just have to know how you can prepare for it!

#81: Melissa Hereford - How to Win in a Salary Negotiation

Our guest on the podcast has a remarkable story. 

Madelyn Tavarez did a part-time bootcamp, while holding a full-time job. 

She taught herself how to code. 

And became a software engineer at Pinterest now building products for hundreds of millions of people. 

She is also a Dominican Republic-native who grew up in Washington Heights and due to her own drive and curiosity was able to change her circumstance. 

Her senior year of college she went from being a bartender to an “eat, pray, love” moment which took her to Italy. Which eventually played a big role in Madelyn deciding to teach herself how to code.

Fast-forward to today, she works as an Android engineer at Pinterest. She also continues to get actively involved in different community projects, including the TECHNOLOchicas among others.

#103: Madelyn Tavarez - How a Part-time Bootcamp helped her Become an Android Engineer

Phaedra Ellis is the CEO of Promise, a startup that uses technology for good in the process to change the criminal justice system.

Prior to this, she was the leader of the South Bay Labor Council, managing over 110,000 members. 

Before that, Phaedra was also the CEO of Green for All and is known as a music industry icon for having helped Prince get his master's back as his manager, without having any legal background. 

What’s interesting is Ruben met Phaedra when he worked with her at Honor. She became his mentor and also was responsible for hiring former podcast guests Rita Henderson and Natasha Vianna.

#114: Phaedra Ellis - CEO of Promise on How to Build Power and Take Control of Your Career

Angela Ceresnie is the CEO of Climb Credit. She has experience working in and starting multiple startups. She has led teams at Citibank and American Express. Interestingly, she studied computer engineering at the University of Michigan with a technical background. 

Today, Angela talks about skill-building and the work she's doing at Climb Credit as she tries to build the future for her own kids.

#115: Angela Ceresnie - CEO of Climb Credit on Helping to Finance People's Career Transitions

Today, we have a special group of people joining us who go by the #FFTSquad. 

#FFTSquad is a group of people on Career Karma who are working together to help each other grow, learn how to code and switch careers into tech. 

They were with us early from the very beginning. In fact, a lot of the members of the FFT Squad were part of Career Karma before the app even came out.

Here are their names: 

Meet the FFT Squad:
Melanie Harris (Ms. CEO, Lady Savage)
Jennifer Weaver (J-Smooth)
Elisabeth Earley (Lady Boom)
Benjamin Earley (Benny Boom)
Tyrone Smith (Fly Ty)
Elise Spain (Famous Amos)
Levar Morris (The Wizard)
Jennifer Carney (J-Chill)
Gregory Jordan (Papa Smurf)
Kesha Lake (Rose Code)

For those of you who may not know, Career Karma was started by Artur, Ruben & Timur as a result of us breaking into tech and launching the Breaking Into Startups Podcast together. 

Today, Career Karma is a community that matches people to the best coding bootcamps and gives them support for the rest of their careers. 

The FFT Squad is a living testament that developing your technical skills can totally change your life. No matter who you are, what color you are, what race you are, or what religion you are – you DEFINITELY can do this!

#116 - FFTSquad – A Career Karma Squad of Highly Motivated People Breaking Into Tech Together

Coming to the states with two suitcases and a pocketful of dreams, Chock Ooi is currently the CEO of Kenzie Academy. 

Chok is a startup veteran working at places like Loopt and AgilityIO, and is a 500 Startups mentor. He has a background in Finance and Technology at Goldman, Bank of America, and BNP Paribas during the financial crisis.

Today, Chok talks about how he has realized his dreams to help people break into tech and his thoughts on income share agreements (ISAs).

Career Karma now has over 30,000 members. Please come check it out and learn more about income share agreements where we've put together a comprehensive report highlighting emerging players, innovators, and potential influencers.

#117: Chok Ooi - CEO of Kenzie Academy

Darrell Silver is the CEO and Co-Founder of Thinkful. 

Their mission? To build the world’s next workforce. 

Since its inception in 2012, Thinkful has graduated thousands of students. Founded based on two elements – transparency and return on education – Thinkful has recently been acquired by Chegg. 

Together, they continue to help transform how people acquire tech skills in the most efficient way possible.

On this episode Darrell covers how Thinkful help career transitioners acquire tech skills through income sharing agreements and living stipends. Tune in to learn more.

#118: Darrell Silver - CEO of Thinkful

#119: Career Karma Origin Story (by the CEO of Free Code Camp)

Jerrick Warren has an inspiring story of breaking into the Blockchain Tech Startup Gemini coming from a background in medicine. 

He went from joining the Career Karma community, to getting accepted into Lambda School to getting a Software Engineering job in a year!

Today, he shares with us the many struggles he had to overcome and how Career Karma helped him pave his way to success.

Career Karma is a community that helps you figure out a road map that is customized to you, your preferences, and your needs. Lambda School is a coding bootcamp that offers a unique pay structure to its students. Find out more about them.

#120: Jerrick Warren - How Career Karma's first member became a Software Engineer at Gemini

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Kesha Lake is a member of the Career Karma community from Atlanta. 

She joined Career Karma in the beginning of 2019. Less than a year later, she got a job as a remote software engineer at Stitch Fix. 

Today, she talks about her life as a mother, her transition from nursing to tech, her bootcamp journey, and her job search experience.

#121: Kesha Lake - How a Mom from Atlanta became a Remote Software Engineer at Stitch Fix

Vaibhav Sahgal is the Head of Growth at Reddit, Inc. which has 500 million unique users around the world. Prior to this, he worked at Zynga for 8 years as a product manager. He led teams building games like Words with Friends, Cityville, and Mafia Wars.

Vaibhav immigrated from India to the U.S. to get a degree in Computer Science at Purdue University. Today, he talks about his journey into tech, the qualities of effective engineers, and how to build and grow products to millions of users.

#122: Vaibhav Sahgal - Head of Growth at Reddit - How to be a Growth Product Leader

Dan Friedman is the Co-Founder of Thinkful, a coding bootcamp that provides online courses Software Engineering, Design and Data Science courses. Dropping out of Yale, Dan is proof that you don't need a college degree or certain qualifications to find your way to success.
 
Thinkful is the first coding bootcamp that came out and created offerings for people impacted by the COVID-19. Listen in to find out more about their initiatives. Another thing Dan emphasized today is the principle of reversibility.

#123: Dan Friedman - COVID-19 Response from the Co-Founder of Thinkful

Jake Schwartz is the co-founder and chief executive officer of General Assembly, a global company advancing the future of work. Jake leads GA's growth, creating sustainable talent pipelines for businesses, and building transparent career pathways to the most transformational work. 

In the face of the COVID-19 crisis, about 33 million Americans have lost their jobs in the last seven weeks. GA has around 120 campuses globally which they had to shut down in two days and go completely online.

Today, Jake talks about how they’re disrupting the marketplace landscape and getting creative so they could be more accessible to students. It’s all about merging business excellence and education excellence!

#124: Jake Schwartz - CEO of General Assembly on COVID-19 Response

Not only a true believer in the power of networking, Erik Torenberg definitely walks the talk. Erik is big on community building and networking. He is known for organizing huge events as well as intimate meetups called On Deck, where they allow people to get to know each other on a personal level instead of a professional level.

Back in Michigan, Erik started his career by creating rapt.fm, which led him to go to 500 Startups, that also led him to become the first employee of Product Hunt. Later on, he started the Product Hunt Podcast. He then ventured into investing, having seeded notable companies including Omni, Metaverse, Bot.me, and Tribe.pm, to name a few.

In 2017, he launched a $100-million fund called Village Global, built around the concept of networking embedded in their company’s DNA. He has curated a group of people including some of the world's greatest in technology - Amazon's Jeff Bezos, LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman, Marissa Mayer, Mark Zuckerberg - to believe in him. How did he do that? Let’s find out!

Recently, he also launched another podcast called Venture Stories Podcast by Village Global. Another one of Erik’s passion project is The Rise Awards, an awards series and community celebrating top talents across all positions.

#125: Erik Torenberg - What Is Venture Capital? & How It Helps Job Seekers

The Breaking Into Startups Podcast is a platform where we feature stories of people who broke into tech from non-traditional backgrounds. Curious about how startups work, how to get a job without a degree or what technical and non-technical careers are out there? We have news for you - tech fields are booming and you don’t need the best technical degree in information technology to break in and get a six figure job in technology. 

Our podcast gives you an inside look at the most disruptive startups by sharing success stories of people from all walks of life, including college drop outs, professional and student athletes, army veterans, teen parents, corporate folks, investment bankers, consultants, venture capitalists who acquired new skills and found jobs in technology. 

Our guests attended coding bootcamps and immersive programs like Hack Reactor, App Academy, General Assembly, Dev Bootcamp, Flatiron School, Iron Yard, Tradecraft and more. After graduating they found well paying jobs in big time startups focusing on education, medicine, financial services, healthcare, AI, machine learning, automation, sharing economy and more. If you listen to 500 Startups, Learn to Code With Me, Twenty Minute VC, This Week In Startups, Startup Radio, Startup Podcast, The Tim Ferris show, Startup School Radio, Course Report or other tech stuff news, then this podcast is for you my friend.

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