Mark Cuban of Broadcast.com, HDNet, Dallas Mavericks

I'm a big fan of Mark Cuban.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Cuban

His Blog:
http://blogmaverick.com/

Fantastic article on his road to success:
http://blogmaverick.com/2011/04/07/shar ... otivation/

I would continuously search for new ideas. I read every book and magazine I could. Heck, 3 bucks for a magazine, 20 bucks for a book. One good idea that lead to a customer or solution and it paid for itself many times over. Some of the ideas i read were good, some not.

In doing all the reading I learned a valuable lesson. Everything I read was public. Anyone could buy the same books and magazines. The same information was available to anyone who wanted it. Turns out most people didn’t want it.

I remember going into customers or talking to people in the industry and tossing out tidbits about software or hardware. Features that worked, bugs in the software. All things I had read. I expected the ongoing response of “Oh yeah, I read that too in such-and-such.” That’s not what happened. They hadn’t read it then, and they haven’t started reading yet.

Cuban hoping to work his magic here someday - Pittsburgh Tribune-Reviewhttp://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsbu ... z1Sc3xTUMJ

Before he even reached his teenage years, Cuban was cooking up ways to make money. He hawked powdered milk and garbage bags. He sliced cold cuts in a deli. During a newspaper strike in Pittsburgh, he brought in papers from Cleveland to sell.

Cuban once set up a chain letter, which paid for one semester's tuition at Indiana University. He gave disco lessons to sorority girls for $25 an hour.

In 1981, while wrapping up his bachelor's degree in business, Cuban opened a pub in Bloomington, Ind., called Motley's. It quickly became a popular hangout for both students and professors.

"It was definitely the best bar in town," said Wayne Winston, who taught Cuban a statistics course at Indiana. "I don't think I've had a student since who's started a business while they were in school."

Beyond The Glory - The Mark Cuban Story
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSAHYDBpGow
- his earliest business attempts were selling sugarless candies and garbage bags
- the video says he didn't sell garbage bags alone; he got his friends to do it with him. Did he EVER try to do it on his own? Did he start on his own and then get his friends to join him? Or did he start by getting his friends to join him?
- One friend: "He would drive us around, let us off in neighborhoods, and we'd sell his candies for him. I don't even think I got paid." Another friend: "Part of it was the adventure, and part of it was he made you believe that this thing could work, and even if it didn't work, it would be a lot of fun trying.
- Q for Cuban: How were you able to get your friends to do this with you? I have a lot of trouble convincing my friends to try things with me.
- When he was 16 there was a newspaper strike in his city and he got his friends to join him as he drove up to Cleveland ("a few hours away") and take all the papers from the vending machines (paying $0.25 for a big stack) so that they could sell them for $0.50 each.
- it then mentions his stamp collecting, but doesn't seem to say anything new.
- it says he negotiated with his high school to attend a COLLEGE for his senior year of HIGH school. He did it all on his own initiative. It shows a picture of the girl he took to prom.
- he says he needed to hustle to pay for college: applying for all kinds of loans and financial aid, and living on $20 a week.
- it says he bought the bar when he turned 21 and sold stock to his fellow students(!!) His dad says the stock was $50. It probably did a lot to help get it off the ground. Cuban says he was "RAKING it in". The bar was shut down b/c the police discovered underage drinking.
- It says Cuban took the initiative to start a newsletter at his first corporate job (Mellon Bank in Pittsburg). Everyone loved it except some higher-up boss who Cuban apparently made fun of.
- They seem to give a slightly different story of the start of Microsolutions. Martin Goodall says something like, "Cuban said, 'If you can help me out with a couple hundred dollars a month, we can start another business. That's all I need.'"
- Cuban says he went 7 years without taking a vacation or a day off.
- They have a LOT of great old footage of him
- It says he sold Microsolutions "for over $5 million"; so he made $2.5 million?
- Cuban says the lifetime pass on American Airlines cost $125k for 80k miles a year
- it mentions something I had NEVER heard before: after he sold Microsolutions he went to Hollywood and tried to become an actor, and just focused on meeting women
- it gives more details on how Broadcast.com started: he was approached by a fellow college alum (was it an old friend?) about the idea, Cuban liked it, so they just went with it. They started small: they just recorded the broadcasts of a Dallas sports radio show and put them on the web. The business partner says he came into their house one day and kicked over the $20 radio and Cuban started yelling "We're off the air! We're off the air!" So they clearly started small.
- They couldn't pay their employees much, so they motivated them with equity and the promise that the company might make them all millionaires.
- Another detail I wasn't aware of was that they started with the name AudioNet, and later changed it to Broadcast.com
- It mentions that their friends and family had been given the chance to invest $16k that would have made them worth $20million. So I guess the investment was solicited at the beginning of the company's life. 300 of the 334 employees were made millionaires (wow). Their first employee made $20-something million.
- Another detail it mentions that I hadn't heard before was that Cuban first tried to buy the Pittsburg Penguins, but they didn't want him to be a hands-on owner. Lesson: Be persistent! Just because the person you're dealing with isn't being cooperative doesn't mean you're wrong!
- it lists a BUNCH of the decisions Cuban made as owner to turn the place around: he upgraded the conditions for the players (nicer locker rooms, a custom jet to make traveling nicer), he became extremely accessible to fans (his brother said he was answering every email). It seems like Cuban was looking for cheap/efficient ways to motivate his players and to motivate fans. He was fined a lot by the NBA but the publicity he got was probably worth multiples of that in profit from additional ticket sales.

YouTube interview (in 4 parts)

...we knew we had something special. I remember one of our early meetings, talking to our employees; there might have been ten of us, and the company was maybe six months old, and I said, "Look, within five years this company's either going to be worth millions or it's going to be worth nothing."
[...]
For somebody aspiring to take things to the next level, or even surpass their wildest dreams, there's always going to have to be an element of luck, but I think more important is putting yourself in a business that can be ubiquitous, that really doesn't have limits, because otherwise--there's always going to be a grind to it, but if it can't be something that you can visualize every business using, or every consumer using, it's gonna be tough to scale to be big enough or to have the perceived value to get to that billionaire club.

- His first experience in business was selling garbage bags door-to-door when he was 12; he noticed he enjoyed the experience
- When he was 16 he started a stamp-selling company. He once went to a trade show and was able to trade $0.25 up to $50. He would stay up until 3-4am on school nights to read stamp journals/news. He would memorize all the information to give him an edge [in negotiations?]
- "Even when I was in college I'd be in the library reading business books and just looking for business biographies and just reading all I could about business."
- "When I had MicroSolutions I started with no money...I'd pull all-nighters in front of borrowed computers teaching myself software and how to program."

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsbu ... 76159.html

http://blogs.reuters.com/small-business ... id-scheme/

Mark Cuban's forward to the book "The Number":
http://blogmaverick.com/2008/09/08/talk ... and-money/

interview where he explains exactly how he invested from '08 to '11.
http://online.wsj.com/video/cuban-on-in ... or-idiots/

2011? - James Altucher - How I Helped Mark Cuban Make a Billion Dollars and 5 Things I Learned from Him
In the comments section:

I actually worked at AudioNet back in the day, and I can say, without a doubt, that Cuban was super smart. Mark knew the space we were in, knew the direction we needed to go and executed like a mad man. I agree with you on all points: Mark is: 1.) Super smart and talented 2.) Fearless (because of his previous money) and 3.) Relentless with his execution. Great article, James!

2011 - Quora - Mark Cuban: If you were 22 again and had just graduated from IU in the year 2010, what would you choose to do and why?

depends if you know exactly what you want to do or not. If you do, find a job in that field. If you cant find a job in that field , or dont know what you want to do, try as many things as you can.

you dont have to have any answers. you just have to experience things and hope to stumble upon something you really love .

Once you find something you love, the only goal is to be great at it

2011.01.14 - Does anyone ever succeed with their first startup?

No. it wasnt even my 2nd. I started my first company at the age of 12. Bought and sold stamps to pay for college. Opened a bar on campus before i was 21. My first big startup was MicroSolutions that I sold to H&R Block

2011.01.19 - How did Mark Cuban learn to sell?

i sold magazines door to door when i was in high school. Everything I learned about selling, I learned going door to door.

"you mean to tell me that when you tell your husband that you just spent $2 a week on the education and enjoyment of your family and children he wont be positively thrilled ?"..

I learned to put myself in the shoes of the person im selling to and to think on my feet and quickly respond to objections. No different selling Scholastic Magazine or million dollar software or advertising deals

2011.09.17 How did Mark Cuban survive the dot-com crash?
http://www.quora.com/How-did-Mark-Cuban ... rk-Cuban-1

it was a collar i designed through Goldman Sachs after the lockup period. However during the lockup period, the tax rules allowed me to short an index in which Yahoo was under 5pct, so I found a couple and spent hard dollars shorting those internet oriented but Yahoo less indexes.

I lost 100pct of my money on that short, but it covered me till my lockup expired and allowed me to hedge my yahoo stock completely

2013.03.28 Fortune Magazine article
- most of it is a highly-abridged version of cuban's blog post on his rise.
- there were some details I don't remember reading in the original blog post:

[re: his first office job, at Mellon Bank in Pittsburgh]
I took the initiative. I used to send notes to the CEO of the bank. I once cut out a magazine story about how corporations could save money by withholding Social Security and sent it to him. He sent me a thank-you letter back. I started something called the “Rookie Club.” I’d invite senior executives to a happy hour to talk to a group of younger employees in their 20s like me.

[re: his first place in Texas]
Our rent was $750 split six ways. In order to get some extra time to pay our rent, the guys would write checks to one guy who would collect them all and make a deposit and he would then pay the bills. It would give us three or four days of float. One time our roommate Dobie collected all the checks and skipped town. That was the last we ever saw of him.

[re: his first sales job for a computer company]
I was happy. I was selling, making money. More importantly, I was learning about the PC and software industry and building a client base.

Instead, when I came back to the office, he fired me on the spot. I had disobeyed him. He was one of those CEOs who is all pomp and circumstance, one of those guys who seems to scream: “Don’t you know who I am? What I do?” He tried hard to look and act the part of the CEO. He wore the right suits. But he had a huge flaw: He never did the work. He never demonstrated the initiative to go out to sell. I had realized by that time that “sales cures all.” That’s a phrase I still use to this day. He was my mentor, but not in the way you’d expect. Even now I think back to things he did, and I do the opposite. And he made me superstitious about titles. I’m never listed as the CEO of my companies. There is no CEO. I am the president.

I remember one day I had to drive to Austin for some PC part, to a place called PCs Limited. The place was run by this kid who was younger than I was. We sat down and talked for a few hours. I was really impressed by him. I remember telling him, “Dude, I think we’re both going places.” That “dude” was Michael Dell.

2013.01.10 - Cuban on the stock market:
- he highly recommends the book "The Number"
- he says he read "A Random Walk Down Wall St." in college
- he says he did "Junior Achievement" (a business club) when he was younger (in high school I guess)

2013.06.14 - Bloomberg - 6 minute interview
- don't start a business with a loan. You can start a business with next-to-no capital, but you're going to have to work very, very hard.

2013.11.11 - Bloomberg - Mark Cuban: How I Became a Billionaire

2015.03.04 Why This Tech Bubble is Worse Than the Tech Bubble of 2000
Part 1: http://blogmaverick.com/2015/03/04/why- ... e-of-2000/
Part 2: http://blogmaverick.com/2015/03/05/why- ... 00-part-2/
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9147958

Questions for Mark Cuban:
- How long were you in Junior Achievement? Did you find it helpful? Were you reading about business in high school? If so, what books did you read? (I'm not talking about trade-specific stuff like the stamp journals)