Mark Cuban Goes Undercover on Reddit, YouTube and Twitter | GQ

Hi, I'm Mark Cuban. I'm about to work incognito on the Internet. Actually, it's me. Wikipedia. Mark Cuban hates meetings. He has said the only way to get me for a meeting is if you write me a check. Yes I hate meetings No one likes meetings except people who bring donuts and people who love to talk about their kids because when you sit in a meeting you waste half the meeting so how was it your weekend? How's your day? Why don't they get the right thing? type of donuts, I'm tired of donuts, we should buy cupcakes, all this nonsense that has nothing to do with doing the job.

I have so many different investments, so many businesses that I'm involved in. I want to do everything by email because that allows me to ask me to go back and look for something, so if you said blah, blah, blah, your kids and I said, oh, that's nice, and then we talk business, I can go back and look for it five years, ten years, twenty years. I received emails that number twenty. For five years now, Gmail, you know, requires gigabytes and gigabytes of storage. I can do searches so I don't even have to organize them, but I make an exception if you're writing me a check and it's a big one.

I'll be there Quorra How did Mark Cuban turn around the Mavs from a business perspective? Well, I'm going to be brutally honest. I didn't really care about the Dallas Mavericks business when I bought them. I really cared about winning championships and winning games. So I spent a lot more time on the basketball side and the Mavs lost money almost every year until the last three years, when I got to the NBA, when I bought the Dallas Mavericks, everyone thought we sold basketball, very few people go to games basketball to watch basketball think about the last sporting event you went to you remember a jump shot you remember a dunk you even remember the score maybe you remember who we played against but you remember who you were with it's an experience you remember how it felt when those balls were in the air and It's a tied game, if it

goes

through the hoop, you win and if it doesn't, you lose, all together, twenty thousand people are holding their breath and when it

goes

through the hoop, you're high.

Five and you hug and squeeze people you've never seen before in your life so hard that you leave the arena screaming and yelling and if you lose you do the exact opposite. Apple, one of the biggest companies in the world they could have had. their best quarter their best year no one is having a parade in Cupertino the Dallas Mavericks win a championship Dallas is on fire everyone is having a great time the whole city feels the energy you feel that energy when you walk into the arena that's what I convinced the The NBA We Sell That Literally Changed All Sports was sold posted on IMDB after he sold his first company, tried acting without much success, and even auditioned for a role in the movie Twister in 1996, but lost to Philip Seymour Hoffman, yeah , that's true after I sold my first company, then I started trading technology stocks.

I did it so well. I turned it into a hedge fund and almost immediately sold it. I moved to Los Angeles to live on the beach and just retire and took acting classes. Why did you want to know? The people I did, I had to take all kinds of classes, whereas back in the day the cast of In Living Color had all these different shows, so I started auditioning for commercials, you know, I had to wear the Taco Bell hat. and I just acted stupid, I did some Ford commercials, so I auditioned for a Twister movie and I got a callback, I got another callback, I'm thinking so and then I didn't get a callback, I forgot the part, but the name of the role, but dusty, yes, dusty and so I'm thinking I'm dusty, so I saw the movie Philip Seymour Hoffman is dusty Academy Award actor I would do it, I would do it, I was right for the role, it was wrong interpreted Twitter, what do you give a billionaire in Valentine's Day coupons, it's definitely not chocolates?

You know what a nice greeting a little kindness goes a long way I think that's what I want for Valentine's Day. My most memorable Valentine's Day wouldn't be familiar right now, so we'll skip over it. How Mark Cuban Saved His Wealth From the Dot-Com Crash Sold the Streaming Calm for 5.7 Billion in Yahoo Stock, How Did He Get Out Before Everything Collapsed? Well, I'll tell you before we started transmitting communications as an audio network in the mid 90's. I had sold a couple. companies and I traded a lot in stocks. I made a lot of money trading technology stocks when we went public in 1998.

Our first-day IPO price increase was the largest increase for an IPO in

mark

et history of values ​​at that time and later. Yahoo bought us for $5.7 billion and stuff, some people thought the stock

mark

et was going to go up forever. I had over a billion dollars to my name. They said, "Oh, you should hold on to your shares and not do anything with them because they are I'll keep going up forever I was worth over a billion dollars How much money do you need? There's no reason to be greedy. I didn't need more. I just needed to keep what that I had.

I looked at my broker and I did something called a caller and I had to wait six months and it was a stressful six months, but I sold what is called calls on Yahoo, which allowed someone else to write to buy it at a higher price. high and used that money to buy something called put options, which meant if the stock fell below a certain point, I could sell it at the value of the put option when the Internet stock market bubble burst that saved me. , it was unfortunate, a lot of people lost a lot of money and it impacted the economy.

I was able to protect myself, but it was really thanks to the fact that I was not greedy. Looking back, there have been articles written about that operation that has been called a top 10. stock market operations of all time. If you are buying and trading stocks, always remember. This is when you think you have created the best stocks of all time. You are very smart and everyone knows that these stocks will go up forever. Ask yourself why someone sold them to you. I'm not saying sell your shares. I'm not saying the markets will go. to get off I don't know and neither do you, so be careful now that I'm getting the whole preachy honest Instagram question.

I'll start by saying that I truly believe you are the best owner in team sports. Thanks David, what was the process? You went through that when you overruled your management team and passed on Giannis, if you don't know Yanis, instead the Greek Freak will probably win the Milwaukee Bucks MVP and in 2013 our GM Donnie Nelson said we had to get this kid if you're a basketball fan you know the greek who the greek monster is you know how awesome he is back then there were two VHS tapes of him playing in this horrible little league that probably wasn't as good as the league in the one I played.

In the gym we only had these tapes, but our guys had gone to watch him and said this is the guy, he's going to be really good and I thought, who else was watching this kid? If he's going to be a superstar, you'd think someone would do it. draft him, the double bad news was that not only did we not get the Greek monster and we lost him, but we also didn't get the free agents we wanted so we got shut out thanks for asking that question, why is Mark Cuban doing his thing? Now, first of all, I don't always wash my own clothes when I travel.

I wash my own clothes. I just do it, but my wife kills me because she doesn't use detergent for laundry, like for workout equipment. I just throw it away. the washing machine there's no good reason other than laziness and then I just throw it in the dryer, but you know, it's a good example for my kids if dad does his own laundry. I don't have a good reason beyond the companies that do it. have appeared on Shark Tank, does Mark Cuban regret not investing in it? None. None. When we come to film, they will just bring deal after deal and when they come in, we don't know anything about them, they will just start selling us and we have. to decide what we're going to do right there and then a deal on shark tank on TV can last 10 14 minutes it can last 30 45 90 minutes two hours imagine them one after the other for weeks in a row once they're gone they're lost forgotten, no I pay attention to any deals I didn't get, as Kevin would say they are dead to me.

In Cuban, we all know that you sold garbage bags door to door. I'm doing it right now. I have no idea, but what were the next six jobs? I sold garbage bags door to door when I was 12 because my dad told me the only way I could get new basketball shoes was if I had a job and one of his friends said I have all these garbage bags to sell, why you do not sell it? So I sold it door to door. I had fun. My next six jobs. My God. He was a boxer. I got a job working in a delicatessen.

He was cutting. chopped ham if you're from Pittsburgh you know what chopped ham is what to look out for and this finger went right into the blade that was spinning and cut off the tip of my finger it went flying on a bully everywhere that job ended like that after that I had a lot of odd jobs laying carpets just random jobs I'm CUBAN renting a book on the history of mathematics would you play wiffle ball in the first mansion you bought after the broadcast the calm sailed exactly one of my former partners came over to me and told me that there was this huge house that some guys spent twenty-five million dollars to build and that I could get it for half the cost that he cut down to size to build twelve million dollars.

I told him: I will buy it without them seeing it. The place is huge. 24,000 square feet isn't even standing to this day, I don't know how many bedrooms or bathrooms I would go through in a year or two and I wouldn't go upstairs and you know there were rooms I still hadn't been in in years. in the ballroom there was a fireplace a window there is a pillar and there is a bar home plate first base second base third base I had a wiffle ball bat and a wiffle ball because everyone who lives alone my friends would come so it was big enough to be able to curve the ball and hit, run and hit home runs and until I got married I actually had no furniture and we played wiffle ball in my ballroom I still had the house and I still had the wiffle ball bat and literally just the other day the dog ate the ball If your tax rate was reduced to zero, would you take that money not paid in taxes and give it to the workers at your companies?

In my opinion, the idea that the corporation would do so is unfounded. I'll tell him, do you know exactly what I would do if you remember what I said about broadcast communications when we sold the company with three hundred and thirty employees, three hundred shares of our own, and became millionaires in the companies I started? Everyone would own stocks if taxes went to zero. and I don't think it's a good idea, but if taxes went to zero, I would invest in the company to make it so big and profitable, so profitable that since the employees are owners, as long as they pay me, they will also get paid when you Get paid by the hour, sure the more you earn the better things will be, but if you own stock in a company, the better that company does, the better you do, and the only way to get out of that way is to receive the hourly pay is getting paid. a salary is whether the company grows as much as possible or generates a lot of cash to get paid where the company is sold and to me that's how you start to fight income inequality during college.

He had several businesses, including a bar. disco lessons and a chain letter, yes I did. I went to Indiana University and had to pay my own way. Well, I had to figure out all the ways to do it. The chain letter was my junior year. You buy the chain letter from him. someone and then the letter is a list of ten names, you give $50 to the person you bought the letter from and you send $50 to the person at the top of the list, cross out their name, put your name at the end and then Find at least ten. people to sell it to so that one by one their name gets to the top of the list while I was doing that and I put my name on the top of the list and I also sold it so that none of the people I sold it to I lost money because I would have felt horrible.

I remember waking up every morning so excited because there were like envelopes with 50 dollars here, 50 dollars there. It was amazing, it was great, it was illegal, but that was my chain letter, my son. year and that's how I paid for my third year of college now in terms of club lessons I needed a job I like to dance I always like to dance I was fine with that I was dancing with some friends in a club someone saw me and they're like we need you to give disco lessons at our cool sorority house,How much are you going to pay me?

It's like $25 an hour oh yeah I had to go to one sorority house who then referred me to another sorority house who did They referred me to another sorority house. It was the happiest moment of my life. I can't show everyone the place where I would dance. We would have parties there. He was acting as a party promoter, but that bar was closing. I took another one. student only fifteen hundred I think it was. I went with my friend and he had some money Evan. We said okay, we want to take over the bar and I don't really have much cash to give you, but I want to turn it into a nightclub. in a more rock oriented bar, to hang out and party, and they were great, so we wrote a little contract and I mean, I was so stupid that I even went to a lawyer, I was able to take over the bar and we actually bought it , we took all the stuff out of the club and put it on the best sound system and stereo we could find if we didn't have a lot of people in those first few days when we closed the business immediately I was using my student loan money and I still had to pay the university and it would have been a big problem we opened and there were lines to find out how I opened when I was under 21 they didn't ask him I didn't tell him I agree with Mark Cuban on that Liberal arts graduates will be more valuable in the future Twelve years ago there was no iPhone 25 years ago the Internet just existed 30 years ago we only saw PCs and we had come this far just with that artificial intelligence and the advances that it introduced are just We're going to eclipse iPhones, you know, local area networks, the Internet, just the will blow your mind, we're going to start using AI for a lot of different applications in the works, if you're going to build an AI, a neural network that's about Shakespeare, if it's about customers. service in telecommunications that deals with any particular topic, you need someone with expertise not only in your topics, but also people who can put together an objective network so that they can find and eliminate bias wherever they find it, humanities and technology. the world of artificial intelligence has to come together otherwise we will see all sorts of problems, data will drive everything we do, we will truly live in a completely different world and although the technology might not have been the same 50 100,500 years ago normally We tend to go through the same types of problems and having people with a different perspective than a technologist will be incredibly valuable.

That's all for today. I have answered your questions. Actually, it was me.