Editor’s note: This article was first published in August 2014. Mark Cuban’s net worth of $2.6 billion, his 696th place on the Forbes rich list and the Forbes valuation of the Mavericks at $685 million are as of 2014 and have all changed since.
I like the story behind Mark Cuban, because he belongs to the club of people who, at 25, were not yet on the path that would make them millionaires. People like him prove the theory that the road to success is not a straight line, but once you get onto the “right track”, success becomes unstoppable. And Mr Cuban has quite a story behind him: he has not only become a very rich man, he has also had a great time along the way (a really great time).
Leah Goldman of Business Insider has summed up Mr Cuban’s story perfectly. He is a billionaire whom people who don’t follow business and technology news got to know when he bought the Dallas Mavericks basketball team.
Mark Cuban lived the day his net worth reached $1 billion to the full. He says he was sitting at his computer, naked, watching the shares climb, and as soon as the update showed he had $1 billion he went jumping and shouting with joy all over the house, and then he got dressed. In that order. But how did Mark Cuban get started?
After college, he worked as a bartender.
After graduating from Indiana University, there were not many job opportunities around, so he moved to Dallas and, to get by, started working as a bartender. In other words, at 25 Cuban was behind a bar, a job he left to become a salesman in a computer store. In this respect, Cuban also confirms my theory that working as a waiter and as a salesperson helps you later in life.
See also: Marcus Lemonis: a millionaire in business on nothing but a handshake
Cuban was fired from the store before he had completed a year as a salesman. He kept looking for another job, but since a new position was hard to find, he decided to take control of his life and his working future and set up his first business, MicroSolutions, a company that soon took off and that he grew.
Even though he had no previous business experience, a few years later, in 1990, Cuban managed to sell the company to the famous CompuServe, the leading internet provider of the time. (Read: This is what the internet looked like in 1995).
Cuban says that from that sale he was left with only $2 million after tax, although he had managed to save $1 million from the profits the business made before he sold it.
Mark Cuban thought only about partying.
With $3 million, Cuban decided he now wanted to live like a rock star, travelling and partying every day. He admits he went to Los Angeles and signed up for acting classes just to meet “hot girls”. He travelled to Moscow and came to Barcelona (Spain) to party.
And then he found a hobby that made money.
Between trips and parties, Cuban got into the fascinating world of the financial markets, and trading seems to have suited him well, because before long he was hired by a small hedge fund.
Cuban turned his $3 million into $20 million by speculating in stocks.
That was when he founded the company he would be known for.
Cuban called an old college friend and together they created Audionet.com, a website that streamed sports events online. That business later became Broadcast.com.
In 1999, Broadcast brought in $13.5 million in revenue in the second quarter. The dot-coms were about to blow up, but Yahoo didn’t know that, so it bought Cuban’s company for $5.9 billion just before the dot-com bubble burst.
Without a doubt, a very profitable deal for Cuban and a terrible one for Yahoo.
The year 2000.
Right as the market crashed, Cuban celebrated his gains by buying a majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks for $285 million.
That turned out to be a very profitable investment too, since according to Forbes the Mavericks are now worth $685 million.
In 2002, Cuban got married, and he went on to have three children.
In 2004, Cuban got his own television show, The Benefactor, a programme focused on entrepreneurs. It was something like Donald Trump’s The Apprentice, although Cuban’s prize was more eye-catching: the winner received $1 million.
From then on, Cuban bought himself a $40 million private jet and built himself a “little” mansion.
Today Cuban is a very happy man with a net worth of $2.6 billion (after all the excesses), ranking 696th on the Forbes list of the world’s richest people.
Further reading
- The remarkable life and career of Bill Gates
- The remarkable life and career of Bill Ackman
- Andrew Carnegie’s 10 rules of success for getting rich
Featured image: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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