Mark Cuban: How I Became a Billionaire
Entrepreneur Mark Cuban never calls timeout. He says, in football you play 60 minutes, in basketball 48 minutes, but in business it's 24/7/365 and the whole world is trying to kick your ass. Keeping in mind that motto he parlayed his passion for Indiana basketball into a company worth 5.7 billion dollars. Over the last twenty years he's always been about what's new, what's next and how he's going to get there first. The unorthodox entrepreneur has disrupted every business he touched.
He's been slammed and investigated, but almost always comes out on top. He's one of the smartest people but you could also make the argument he was one of the luckiest people in the early age of the Internet. Mark Cuban got in at the beginning of the Internet boom and it served him well. His goldmine was called broadcast.com, one of the first Internet sites to stream events live. Everything from Victoria Secret models to countless sporting events.
The fiercely independent entrepreneur has blazed the trail into TV, movies, NBA ownership, and he even stars on a TV show, though he declined to participate in this documentary. Mark was an entrepreneur from the moment the word was invented. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and grew up in a suburb called Mount Lebanon. From the get-go Cuban was a moneymaker, selling trash bags, newspapers, and even postage stamps.
By the time he was sixteen he had already built a reputation and his skills only grew at the Indiana University. He decided to run a bar after he borrowed money from a friend. Within months he opened his bar Motley's and run the business until it came crushing down after a wet t-shirt contest. Cuban graduated and soon landed in Dallas. Within a year, the born entrepreneur launched MicroSolutions, providing software, hardware and training to businesses at the dawn of the PC revolution. He learned the computer business fast and in seven years sold his company to Copyserve for 6 million dollars. In 1995 he came out of early retirement to reinvent the radio.
People only get rich by exploiting other people. Rich people evade tax. Rich people are parasites.
Spoken like a true non-achiever.
What do billionaires do for humanity? They provide goods and services that people obviously want. They employ people that have families that stimulate the economy by buying goods. They pay a higher percentage of their income to taxes that help this country run...alot of people get refunds billionaires don't. They are willing to take risks most people won't because the majority are scared to step out pf their comfort zone and the security of a weekly check. I've seen comments how they have a boring life..compared to their own maybe. We don't see the charity donations & benefits. Some of the nicest people I know are filthy rich because they are people persons and also great leaders. They contribute to society more than we see.They know how to handle money and they know how to handle wealth. How many professional athletes do we hear about going broke..lotto winners too. Don't hate billionaires respect them....they have earned it
All in all...It takes money to make money....being in the moment...and the right place at the right time...and a bit of luck... willing to"Roll the Dice"...make a few Sound Decisions...Connect with some key Resources, and or, Power players in the business world willing to use that "Quid Pro Quo" and thus "Money stays within Money"....I really feel pessimistic that the Rich will become Richer, thus separating the middle class even further....To a point where it will be a vast difference from Rich to Poor.....but the question should really be....How Rich does one Need to be...To be Truly Happy in his or her life?....It NEVER seems to be Enough for many of these Rich types...thus being stereotyped or typical...."Those with the Most Toys Wins"....Very Sad... Because so many have All the $$$...but without the Happiness....Can Never trust Anyone....To Truly know where their heart is at....thus growing Colder and Meaner, along with their Greed...and Competition to Win over All involved...We can just Hope...that they NEVER forget where they came from, and stay very much Grounded, and kind at Heart...and keep an Understanding for Humanity....
What you say about billionaires is almost unanimously true (think Bill Gates, Sam Walton, Steve Jobs). But Mark Cuban actually did none of the things you described. You can't name what he gave the world that "earned" him billions - as you can with Bill, Sam and Steve - because he didn't actually give us anything of value. To understand how the hell he could become a billionaire without giving anything valuable to the world, just go on Quara an search "is Mark Cuban lucky" and you'll learn the truth.
He made all his (seed) money selling a useless company during the first internet bubble... the end.
There are about 400 NBA players in the world. There are about 1700 billionaires in the world and that doesn't count all the ones like the dictators and their cronies and the drug dealers and arm smugglers and all the other people with illegal and stolen and smuggled money. If you did it would probably be closer to 3000. It is about 8-9 times harder to make the nba or nhl than it is to become a billionaire.
I won't even watch the biography. Ever biography on a rich person is worthless because they always leave out the secret of how they went from regular income to billionaire. They never explain the exact steps, like how did you sell your first $5 million or first $1 million.
Why watch a documentary where they are going to spend the whole time showing off how rich they are if they won't even show you HOW
Well, nice try but a bit deceptive my friend. If there were 100 pro leagues out there, there would be enough talented players to fill the teams....yes. There are a ton of guys who work hard to get to that talent level. But there isn't because of supply and demand.
Basic economic principle. There could be 10,000 billionaires but, it takes hard word and guts...physically and mentally and the average American isn't up for it. Don't blame the billionaire....they give you something to watch on TV and get your fat a** on the couch with a couple of cold ones each night.
There are more people trying to make money, than people who play basketball. Bad analogy.
if there's one thing i've learned, it's that 99.9% of rags to riches stories are complete fabrications.
I'm more interested in what the doc doesn't talk about, i'd rather see what he doesn't want us to know, like where all the initial money came from (daddy much?) rather than the self fellatio this document seems to be an exercise in.
jealous? yeah probably. when going through some of the worst austerity in living memory it seems somewhat insulting to see people who already have everything continue to hoover up all the money so it can sit in a bank account gathering dust with all the other currency they are hording and keeping out of circulation whilst people all around him go bankrupt through sickness and thin with hunger.
am i the only one that wants to punch the face in the thumbnail?
I never understood these biographies on rich guys. Deep down, they are actually very boring people living in a bubble of banalities. Not that I think he has no talent, I think he is very driven and ambitious, and surely you do not become rich by being an idiot. All I am saying is that this is the extent of his genius and there are plenty of people like him around, and many more who want to be like him, some will make it and many won't. In that sense, this is nothing more than a celebrity biography. If you like reading tawdry, but entertaining nonetheless, magazines like People, I suppose this documentary is for you.
I think a truly inspiring and interesting biography should be asking: Will Cuban still be known in a couple of decades? Humanists like Jane Goodall and Mother Teresa, philosophers like Socrate, dissidents like Ghandi and William Mandel, tycoons like Rockefeller, politicians like Thomas Jefferson, film makers like Hitchcock, scientists like Albert Einstein and Gregor Mendel, military strategists like Sun Tzu, musicians like U2, and tyrants like (name your favorite dictator) are remembered not for their fame, smarts, wealth or power but for what they have done that changed our society for the better, or worse (depending on your perspective), by showing us how our society think about ourselves, and how we think about nature. Sadly, this is not that kind of biography. I think one is better off watching a biography of Bill Gates: He did one thing that changed history in 1976 and what he has done since will have far more impact on our society than most of his contemporary technocrats down the road I think -- for better or worse.
Well put. In the end the only question is will be what his contribution was to humanity. Making loads of money doesn't add to human capital.
...and i suppose you could criticize the U2 musicians for not being more like Ghandi. Or Ghandi for not being Jesus.
The fact is, you can always up the ante on someone to make yourself feel better. The guy was clever enough to make work optional, thereby gaining freedom, and with that a viable shot at happiness. Thats inspiring! "Will he be remembered in the history books?" Who cares. Ask how happy he was. How good of a dad / hubby he was. If those tests are passed, who is anyone to criticize?
I did not mean to criticize him at all. As I have written, I think he is a fine smart person. He has done well for himself and he deserves to be a public figure, with a documentary about him, just like Paris Hilton given how our mass media operates: a gigantic infotainment machine. Plus, everyone's definition of happiness is different. I am happy, he is happy and I am sure you are happy too. My beef is with the documentary, it is boring because it says nothing, or maybe there is nothing to say. I simply suspected it is the latter. But, like I said, if you enjoy reading People Magazine, or watch the Life of the Rich and Fabulous, and what not, then go for it.
If you aren't someone working towards or fascinated in exiting the conventional pay for labor structure of the world then why watch the show at all? It's entertaining for people who want to walk the same path but of course it's a waste of time to others with a different values set.
Remembered ? But by who ?
Let's say a human being in 20 000 years for what he's done, okay great.
now, let's talk about 1 million years ahead, will life still be the same, who knows what it will be at that time ? I don't know where this idea comes from that we should be remembered, that our actions should count , Religions maybe ?
that's the problem you see, people accept some beliefs, some postulate without questioning them. you believe that Socrates, mother teresa or thomas jefferson are world references because the society told you so, so that you can be socialized and embrace its values and principles, it's a mass conditioning, that's what we call social determinism.
Do you know how many people lived between 1000 years B.C and 2000,
about 96 billions of people, you want to make a name for yourself, good luck.
If money wasn't the goal of his hunger for success....