Earlier than you knew him as an investor on Shark Tank, the proprietor of the NBA Dallas Mavericks, or simply one of many richest folks on the planet, Mark Cuban was hustling in humble—and typically sketchy—methods.
To pay his manner by means of junior 12 months of faculty at Indiana College within the early Nineteen Eighties, Cuban arrange a “chain letter” in his dorm, he instructed the San Francisco Customary’s Life in Seven Songs podcast. He began by approaching one particular person and requested them to provide him $100, beginning the Ponzi scheme or “scam” as he referred to as it.
Cuban instructed that particular person “I’m going to take $50 of that. And here’s a list of 10 names. We’re going to send 50 bucks to whatever dorm room that this person at the top of the list is. Then we’re going to take their name off the list and put your name at the bottom. So we’ll make it a $50 chain letter. And as everybody else does that, your name moves up the list until you’re at the top. And as we grow the chain letter, hopefully you’ll get more money than you put out.”
Sounds form of like social capital, proper?
“No, no. It was basically a scam,” Cuban, 67, mentioned as he chuckled. “I made sure my friends all got their money back. And so I got up to the top of the list. And it was amazing, because I’d go to [my mailbox] and there’d be envelopes with 50 bucks from here, 50 bucks from there, and that’s how I paid for my junior year of college.”
That sort of money meant quite a bit on the time for Cuban, who got here from humble beginnings, rising up in a working-class household in a suburb of Pittsburgh. He mentioned his dad, who labored in automotive upholstery, would often throw him a $20 invoice, however he was at all times trying to find methods to generate income. That began throughout childhood when he requested his dad for a brand new pair of basketball sneakers: His dad mentioned when he had a job, he may purchase no matter he needed.
That occasion launched Cuban into a protracted profession of entrepreneurship, beginning with promoting—of all issues—trash luggage. His father’s pal had tons of containers of trash luggage to unload, and instructed Cuban he may promote them. With that, Cuban went door-to-door round his neighborhood promoting the house important.
“I would go door-to-door to be like, ‘Hi, my name is Mark. Do you use trash bags?” Cuban mirrored. “I killed it.”
Cuban’s journey to billionaire standing
After faculty, Cuban made his transfer to Dallas—not understanding sooner or later he’d be the face of the town’s NBA crew. There, he labored as a software program salesman and lived in what he referred to as a “s–thole” with 5 different guys.
“It was nasty as can be,” Cuban mentioned. “I slept on the floor, and if somebody was out of town, I got a bed. I didn’t have my own closet, didn’t have my own drawers. Nothing.”
Throughout his time there, Cuban discovered every part he may about computer systems and software program—even when that meant sitting down and studying manuals. Whereas working as a salesman, he had the chance to make a $1,500 fee, which might have helped him transfer out of the “hell hotel,” as he and his 5 roommates fondly referred to as their condominium. However when he went to choose up the verify, his boss fired him proper on the spot. That second impressed Cuban to begin his first firm referred to as MicroSolutions writing software program for PCs. He offered that firm for $6 million in 1990.
For some time after that, Cuban purchased a “lifetime pass on American Airlines, partied like a rock star, and just traveled,” he mentioned.
“I was young, single and crazy, and there were no limits,” Cuban mentioned. “I just wanted to have a beer with as many people as I possibly could, experience as many things as I possibly could.”
Cuban’s entrepreneurial profession soared. Within the mid-Nineties, Cuban and two of his pals, Cameron Christopher Jaeb and Todd Wagner, based web radio firm Audionet.com, which was later renamed to Broadcast.com. They offered that firm to Yahoo in 1999 for $5.7 billion, throughout the peak of the dotcom bubble, cementing Cuban’s standing as a billionaire.
Within the following many years, Cuban targeted closely on enterprise investments, starring on Shark Tank for startup firms, and finally bought a majority stake within the Dallas Mavericks in 2000. Cuban parted methods with Shark Tank this 12 months—and in late 2023, he offered his majority stake within the Mavericks for $3.5 billion. Cuban is at the moment price an estimated $9.1 billion, in accordance with Bloomberg.
The first purpose Cuban determined to step away from the Mavericks? To guard his three youngsters.
“Running a professional sports team is always good when you’re winning. It’s great,” Cuban mentioned. “But when you’re having a bad season, and [my] kids are on social media, I just didn’t want them to put up with everything.”
Now, Cuban is on to new—and really totally different—ventures. He launched Mark Cuban Value Plus Medication in 2022 with a mission to get rid of the intermediary within the pharmaceutical business. Cuban prognosis this as being the main wrongdoer behind excessive drug costs.
“Disrupting an industry that everybody hates, that’s fun,” Cuban instructed Wired.
A model of this story appeared on Fortune.com on October 10, 2024.
Fortune Brainstorm AI returns to San Francisco Dec. 8–9 to convene the neatest folks we all know—technologists, entrepreneurs, Fortune World 500 executives, traders, policymakers, and the sensible minds in between—to discover and interrogate essentially the most urgent questions on AI at one other pivotal second. Register right here.
