Mark Cuban is an American businessman and investor known as the owner of the National Basketball Association (NBA)’s Dallas Mavericks. He is also the co-owner of 2929 Entertainment and chairman of AXS TV.
Early years and education
Mark Cuban was born on July 31, 1958, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He grew up in the suburb of Mount Lebanon. His grandfather changed the family name from “Chabenisky” to “Cuban” after his family emigrated from Russia. At the age of 12, Cuban already had the mindset of a businessman when he sold garbage bags so he could buy a pair of expensive basketball shoes. At 16, Cuban ran newspapers from Cleveland to Pittsburgh during a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette strike.
Cuban enrolled as a full-time student at the University of Pittsburg and joined the Pi Lambda Phi International fraternity. While schooling, Cuban had different jobs including a bartender, disco dancing instructor, and a party promoter. He transferred to Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana after one year at the University of Pittsburgh, and then graduated from the Kelley School of Business with a Bachelor of Science degree in Management in 1981. The reason he chose Indiana’s Kelley School of Business is because it had the lowest tuition of all the business schools back then. Cuban had different business ventures while in college, including a bar, disco lessons, and a chain letter.
Career
Cuban first found a work as a bartender when he moved to Dallas in 1982. And then he became a salesperson for one of the earliest PC software retailers in Dallas – the Your Business Software. He was fired less than year later when he met a client and closed a $15,000 sales instead of opening and cleaning up the store. After this deal, Cuban was inspired to venture on his own and started his own company called MicroSolutions, a software reseller and system integrator. In 1990, Cuban sold MicroSolutions for $6 million where he earned $2 million after taxes.
Broadcast.com
In September 1989, Audio Networks was founded by Christopher Jaeb. The goal was for people to be able to listen to out of town sports games. Originally, he thought of a shortwave radio that would receive broadcasts inside a sports venue, transferred into a hand-held device that would receive the broadcast.
Jaeb made roughly around 80 – 100 calls per day to solicit rights to broadcast radio and sports games live on the internet. In 1994, Jaeb met Todd Wagner and Wagner introduced Jaeb to Cuban who invested $10,000 for 2% share in the company. Cuban and Wagner agreed that Jaeb would keep 10% share of the company with a monthly salary of $2,500 but Cuban would lead the company. In September 1995, Audio Networks became Audionet.com. Cuban picked up signals from a radio station in his bedroom and streamed them on the internet. Audio Networks grew from broadcasting sports events to broadcasting many other events.
In 1998, AudioNet was once again renamed as Broadcast.com and in July of the same year, it became a public company via an IPO. The stock price shoot up to 250% and after the IPO, the company was worth $1 billion and Mark Cuban was worth $300 million.
In April 1999, just less than a year after the IPO, Broadcast.com was acquired by Yahoo! for $5.7 billion in Yahoo! Stock. Cuban sold his Yahoo! Stock netting over $1 billion, while founder Chris Jaeb received about $50 million from the sale.
Broadcast.com became part of Yahoo! Broadcast services but Yahoo shut down most of its broadcast services in 2002 and Broadcast.con has been discontinued.
Other Investments
After Broadcast.com, Cuban expanded his wealth and investments to avoid a market crash. He continued to work with Wagner and co-founded 2929 Entertainment, which is an integrated media and entertainment company. Cuban was also a co-founder of AXS TV, the first high-definition satellite TV network.
Cuban invested in many other companies, and in January 2000, he purchased a majority stake in NBA’s Dallas Mavericks for $285 million. Cuban’s real time net worth as of January 14, 2019 is $3.9 billion.