Mark Cuban: How I Became a Billionaire

Businessman Mark Cuban never calls time out I always see business as a sport and in football you play 60 minutes of basketball, you play 48 minutes in business it's 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year and the world The whole thing is trying to kick your ass. I'll never forget talking to Mark, do you know where you're going with this streaming thing? and he says: I'm going to the BBC Billionaire Boys Club. Mark Cubin turned his passion for Indiana basketball into a $5.7 billion company the day Broadcast.com was sold to Yahoo. I think a lot of people felt like we had hit the lottery twice in the last 20 years.

I have always worried about what's new, what's coming and how to get there first. The unorthodox businessman has disrupted every business he touched. He said we had to do it. blow this up this is not what I want to rip everything out and start over he has been criticized eliminated Mark Cuban Furious and investigated Mark Cuban ordered to appear before the SEC but almost always comes out victorious he is intelligent being one of the smartest people but one could also argue who was one of the luckiest people in the Internet age. Someone has to be the luckiest person in the world.

Someone has to be right. And I'm glad it's me. They seem to be for sale on a set by set basis, but I don't know how to purchase them. Mark Cuban came in at the beginning of the Internet boom and found it very useful. His gold mine was called broadcast.com, one of the first Internet sites to broadcast live events. from Victoria Secret models to countless sporting events get the slits, we were the first to scale Internet streaming, you know, taking 500 radio stations and streaming them on the Internet, 100 television stations, earnings calls, product launches, games of college football, agreements with the NHL Major.

League Baseball I mean, we had really become an Internet broadcast network. The fiercely independent businessman has blazed a trail into television movies. He owned the NBA and even stars in a television show, although he refused to participate in it. Mark has been an entrepreneur from the time the word was invented before it meant drug Mark Cuban was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and grew up in a suburb called Mount Lebanon from the beginning Cuban was a money maker selling garbage bags, newspapers and even postage stamps. I started a stamp company. him with a quarter and bought a stamp and left with $50 thinking hey, if he could do this, he could do anything when he was 16 he had already earned a reputation.

Brian Cuban is his younger brother. I remember one of our friends gave Mark $5,000. The neighbors went stamp hunting in New York with my father. Now he was always the businessman at the stamp shows, but that just shows at that age what people thought of his ability to make money. That ability only grew at Indiana University. The tireless business specialist Tau Disco. He started a chain letter and decided to run a bar if he could get $155,000. Evan Williams was a General Motors engineer who played in the school rugby club with Mar. He was at my house one day and called Banks to try to get a loan so he could buy this bar, so on the way out I said hello Mark , if you have any trouble getting that loan, call me two days later and he said, hey EV, so at the end of 1979 I ended up lending Mark $155,000 so he could buy a bar. in Bloomington, Cuban obtained Williams' number one stock certificate and within months opened his bar.

Wayne Winston teaches graduate statistics at Indiana University. In my 35+ years of teaching, I have never had a student actually start a business while an undergraduate or MBA student. here on campus and started mle, which

became

by far the best bar in town. The business model he used at mle's is very similar to the same business models he used in his next two or three businesses. I would always have 51%. Even though he didn't contribute any of his own money but no one really complained because he was the one who built the business until it collapsed after a wet t-shirt contest, it's pretty well known that in town a girl under the age of 1 won. age. a wet t-shirt contest and I think that hurt the future of the bar, let's put it that way.

Cuban graduated and soon landed in Dallas the following year. The born entrepreneur launched micro Solutions providing software, hardware and training to companies at the turn of the century. PC Revolution was a family affair Marcos, you came to work for me so I said okay so my first day on the job you know I'm a great lawyer. I show up in a suit and tie and he says: why are you wearing that? Well, you know, come on. to work for you, micro solution, not him, go home and change, put on your shitty clothes and your jeans, you're in the warehouse.

Mark doesn't give you anything, you have to learn, earn it. Mark Cubin learned the computer business quickly and within years I sold his company to Compuserv for $6 million and I retired and you retired and what did you do with that money your most important purchase my most important purchase I bought a lifetime pass on American Airlines and I had a mission in mind I wanted to be able to go to as many countries around the world as I could and get drunk with as many people as I could and that's what I was so good at in 1995.

Mark Cuban came out of early retirement to reinvent radio, as it brought him his Cuban university friend Todd Wagner. The concept is a story that the basketball fan has told often, like in this interview on 60 Minutes, he sat me down and said, look, I have this idea where I think we can listen to the Indiana basketball sporting events that you know on any part of the world. using the Internet, so Mark and I basically said, let's find out if this is a business or not, so we set up shop in his upstairs room at his house and you know, we got ourselves a computer, we got the software and we started playing with him, and that is. the birth of audionet which eventually

became

broadcast.com, but another young entrepreneur tells a different story Chris Jab says he was also a founder of the company when I was quite young.

He was a Minnesota Twins fan. I moved to Texas and was a displaced fan. I was always trying to figure out how to get ACC access to those games that I couldn't watch on regular TV when the internet came along, it's like it was a dunk because now it was just a matter of acquiring the streaming R, it took their plan for investors, one one of them was Cuban. I had probably had this presentation that I had given to about 150 people over the previous year and a half or two years, so I'm presenting my presentation, it's about 20 minutes long. launch and in three minutes it says I'm in, I'll do it.

Jave asked for a million dollars and said Cuban wrote a check for 10,000 and months later tried to eliminate it completely. Mark said Chris, I don't really need you. You really don't have much to add. I can do or get people to do what you are doing so I was a little discouraged to say the least and I really give a lot of credit to Todd when he came to me and said we can work out a deal with you for 2500 a.m. month and 10% of the company in the way he described it and the way he showed me the documentation.

I knew it was real and it really made me feel great, even though it was difficult to take 10% of a company that I built 100% from scratch, Cuban became the driving force for Audet. Overall, Mark really wanted to see it as his company, he had taken it from an idea to a reality that he never wanted. to credit me as the founder, but co-founder Todd Wagner credits JB's involvement, he was there for a very short period of time and then moved on to the next thing, he had a small amount of equity and did very well. Audet did better than just Well, never before in the history of the world can you come and listen to almost any team from anywhere in the world.

You know a small PC and an Internet connection. You could also be sitting in Bloomington, Indiana, and then come back. there and all they did was have all these servers with all these different sporting events going on and people trying to keep the servers running, it's like what's going on here, they're planning a nuclear attack and you know, but it was controlled . The chaos there keeping all those servers running and all the game streaming was great. Cuban and Wagner renamed audio to broadcast.com in 1998 and positioned the company to go public. The Internet boom was in full swing and on July 17th. the stock came on the

mark

et at a price of $18 a share, the first trade comes up and it was, you know, $63 or whatever, I mean, it was through the roof.

Nat usina led the company's sports properties and

mark

eting departments. I remember our HR boss took the head out of a cube like in a game of whack-a-mole and said, let's open it whatever the number is and everyone looked up and we thought she missed it by one decimal, she must be wrong and everyone We started looking and you I could just see heads popping up and the excitement in the room, it was literally like a parade was starting. The stock closed at 6,275 at the time and set a record for the highest percentage increase on an opening day.

I am the first to realize that luck. plays a very important role in it. I happened to have a company broadcast.com that went public at the right time when the Internet stock market was going crazy. Cuban wanted to expand his content and was looking for a featured event. He found it in lingerie. There were many Pinnacle events for Broadcast.com and one of them was definitely the Victoria Secret webcast that rapped high tech meets high fashion. The webcast was a phenomenon that millions of people tuned in and became the most viewed event ever on the web.

Positioning it as the first sold-out event on the Internet helped establish us as the place to go if you want to do something multimedia on the Internet. Jeff Swany is a businessman and friend of the Cubans of Dallas. I will never forget talking to Mark. You know where you're going with this broadcast and he says? I'm going to the BBC Billionaire Boys Club, you're not going to make a billion from this, I mean you're going to make $100 million, no, no, no, mate. No, BBC friend, that's what I'm doing in search of those billion Cubans, and Wagner led the charge directly to Yahoo's executive offices.

I remember Mark and I walked into the conference room and basically said, look, we're where you need us to be. So you're going to have to compete with us or you're going to have to buy from us because we're big players in what we think is going to go on the Internet. Yahoo felt the heat of competition according to Paul Safo, a technology leader. Forecaster, it's a time where there's a sense of rising machine algorithms in the form of Google that are really taking over the search space and people are starting to realize that there is, in fact, a lot of volatility and customer loyalty in the places you visit.

On the web, I remember visiting Yahoo and you could feel the anxiety in the company about how to increase our technological side looking for an answer. In April 1999, Yahoo acquired Broadcast.com for a staggering $5.7 billion in stock. The deal ensured Cuban's membership in that Billionaires Club. I think a lot of people felt like we hit the lottery twice, you had this tremendous IPO and then to top it all off, one of the big Silicon Valley companies, Yahoo, comes in and acquires this little old company. that was created deep in Lum Dallas Texas uh, frankly, it couldn't have been written better, but not as well written for Yahoo, it's very easy to quarterback this thing and, as people say, it's one of the coolest moves. stupid in the history of the Internet, but there was so much stupidity in that period that it was like a single note in a vast symphony of stupidity.

Yahoo struggled with its new acquisition. It's pretty easy to see what would happen if you were inside. You had a $5 billion acquisition. to an NBA series that had never really integrated anything before Yahoo really took a beating, they took their eye off the search that opened the door to Google, who kicked them out within months of the purchase. Cuban protected his stock by buying put and call options against his interest and began cashing out by purchasing a 24,000-foot mansion and a $41 million plane, but his next purchase would be the

billionaire

's most prized possession in January 2000. The Fan of sports Mark hbin bought majority ownership of the Dallas Mavericks from Ross Perau Jr.

It was the culminating purchase. for the

billionaire

with the insatiable desire to win, except the franchise had one of the worst win-loss records of any NBA team, you have to start giving these guys who have been in broken programs, let's call them, the process of thinking that they can win that they are expected to win Cuban was going to change everything his way Tura Useri, the elegant CEO of the Dallas Mavericks, recalled their first meeting I didn't eat all day because that night we would have dinner at his house and I want to be a great guest and he was in a suit and Tha and you know, try my Sunday Best as my mom called it.

He openedthe door in jeans, without shoes or shirt and we sat on the floor and watched basketball. for four or five hours and I ate, I think, I think they were Cocoa Puffs and uh, Doritos is what we had in bottled water, so again it was just a new reality, that new reality took effect the moment the Cubans saw the traditional wood paneled locker. room in the new Maverick Arena he said we have to fly this this is not what I want I want a loft I want open ceilings I want the guys F like it's a clubhouse the place where they would hang out we have to get a table pool here and we have to get the DVDs, rip everything out and start over in the clubhouse, the radical new owner booked first class hotels for away games and would buy a team jet with legroom for seven people.

Footers, all that. was new, none of this had been done before in the league nor had an owner worn a Mavs fan jersey for life or put his email address on the Jumbotron or broken custom by ditching the box for seats on the side of the court and yell at the referee. not controlling the wait time controlling the wait time Markus said a lot of things have gotten him into trouble Scottsashik reports on sports business for Bloomberg News. My favorite is when he said that a referee was not qualified to manage a Dairy Queen, but when he said that Dairy Queen got upset, they wanted Mark to know that his managers are highly qualified and highly trained. friends and then the guy challenged Mark to come down and serve ice cream and see how difficult he really was.

There were probably six helicopters flying over this poor Dairy Queen. There were probably 3,000 people outside and he was there serving ice cream. He's a very, very smart marketing guy and if he can turn a negative into a positive he will, but Cuban's on-court criticism was negative for David Stern, the veteran NBA commissioner. I think Mark was very impatient when he first became an owner because he strives for perfection. and he expressed his views on the matter, it was not a constructive undertaking to publicly criticize our officials and our rules prohibit it. Those rules resulted in Cuban's first fine of $5,000 followed by fines of 15,000 25,000 250,000 100,000 10,000 and 100,000 again in total. his first full season as owner my job is to defend my guys and if I think something is wrong I'm going to do something about it.

Reporter John Schwarz followed Cuban's career for 13 years and that connects with people you don't know. I see that among many billionaires they think that they have to act in a certain way. I don't think he cares. I think he honestly doesn't give a damn what people think of him. The practical participation of the Cubans brought immediate success. Attendance shot up more than 35%. The team's estimated value jumped $50 million and the Mavericks made the playoffs in 2001 for the first time in more than 10 years before he owned the Dallas Mavericks. They were the laughing stock of the NBA. They won 15 games a year once he took over the team from him. the winning percentage has to be one of the best has to be in the top five unbel despite their growing success that year the Mavericks fell short of the championship and Cuban's success in the film and television business was also proving difficult to reach at the dawn of HDTV in 2001 launched the first high definition television network called hdnet and explained to Charlie Rose that we are available on cable, we are available on satellite, but viewers can go away knowing that not only will they get great entertainment , but was also going to get great entertainment with the best possible picture quality, the network sputtered as soon as it reached 350,000 homes in its first year.

Cuban hit Paws, long enough to marry his long-time girlfriend, Tiffany Stewart, hosted a reception party at his home court, the American Airline Center, in 2003 when he retired. Todd Wagner and we dove into the movie business, we bought Landmark Theaters, which was a nationwide independent movie theater chain, we invested in and then bought Magnolia Pictures, a movie theater distribution company that we built into a home entertainment unit, On top of that, and suddenly we had built a vertically integrated Media Company, meaning we had production, distribution and exhibition under one roof in a way that, frankly, we hadn't seen before, it gave Cuban the pieces to revolutionize the movie business by releasing a movie in theaters on DVD and TV simultaneously.

Andy Fixmer is an entertainment reporter for Bloomberg News back then no one did this no one even thought that one would dare put a movie on television before it was released in theaters it just wasn't made Cuban films had mixed success some films like good night and good luck had found critical acclaim and a niche audience While others struggled and again there was disappointment on the basketball court, star Dirk Nitzki led the team to the finals in 2006, the Mavs were up two games to none when the momentum suddenly changed and the team lost three. The straight Cuban was furious, furious when he got angry, it might as well have been Satan, the players literally ran the other way in the locker room.

The Miami Heat are basketball world champions after their collapse in the championship. Nitzki publicly asked that Cuban control his The temper of the owner who hated losing was pure devastation. I think he didn't leave the house for three weeks and stayed locked up, so what did it cost him? It cost him his dream. His dream was really to convert the Mavericks. champions Mark Cubin, the former disco music teacher, danced again in 2007 in front of millions. Mark likes as much air time as he can get, as long as it's fun and entertaining for him, he's going to do it.

He appeared in almost anything, even hosting his own. The reality show that the benefactor canceled after one season, viewers were also in short supply on its own network with its strange mix of bikini-themed programming, mixed martial arts, and the Dan Rather and Dan Rather reports on HDNET is kind of my own personal indulgence, you know? I am a news junkie and always have been. Dan Rather was doing a show for them that was actually very good, but the rest was like a sea of ​​sleazy garbage. The Cubans had more trouble coming, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit against him.

We are now moving on to the crackdown on insider trading and it has ensnared billionaire Mark Cuban. The SEC alleged that Cuban dumped 600,000 shares. Mama.com's 2008 SEC lawsuit says he sold company stock ahead of the company's own plans to sell more shares at a discount to investors and avoided $34 million in losses. dollars on your blog. Cuban claimed the claims were false, the lawsuit was dismissed in District Court, but the SEC appealed and the case was reinstated in 2010 as Cuban fought in the courtroom. He also prepared for battle on the basketball court. He negotiated with key players.

He hired a new coach and in 2011 the Mavericks fought their way back to the finals, surprising everyone with his loud mouth behind the team's bench. He was silent, it was different, I mean, people still came up and talked to him, but he said not today, don't talk to the players with Mark in the background, it was this other guy, Dirk Nitzki, and the team that Mark had formed the one who in the end was able to win what he always dreamed of, we had the ceremony inside the building and suddenly this chant broke out thank you Mark, thank you Mark, thank you Mark, how many times have you heard of a building singing thank you to the owner ? that's pretty unique with a championship banner finally in place HDnet rebranded Cuban calling it Access TV plus Ryan sees Cuban partnered with two of the most powerful names in music and entertainment.

He lives in Dallas with his wife and three children on his personal blog. sounds bad on everything from executive compensation to personal health, whether brilliant or just plain lucky Mark Cuban will always be looking for his next big thing, defying convention, changing the way people think he's definitely a guy to always you have to be attentive. He is bold, he is not afraid of controversy, but he is also one of the most brilliant strategic thinkers I have ever met. He is the glass of water half full or half empty. Mark will be the one to ask who serves him.

You can look at things and say this. It's the way they've always been done, I like to look and say, well, if everyone is doing this, the future isn't there, you have to look the other way and you know, if that bothers people, that's it. your problem.