Mark Cuban has built a fortune that most people only dream about, but the billionaire entrepreneur is quick to say that luck played a bigger role than people think.
“Anybody who’s a billionaire who thinks they could just do it all over again is lying their ass off,” Cuban said in a recent interview with comedian and former host of “The Daily Show” Trevor Noah.
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Success, Yes. Billionaire? That’s Mostly Luck
Cuban, who made his billions during the dot-com boom with the sale of Broadcast.com to Yahoo in 1999 for $5.7 billion, says his timing was critical. “If the internet stock market hadn’t just taken off when we were starting Audionet, you wouldn’t even know who I was,” he said.
He believes he could become a millionaire again due to his skills, hustle and curiosity, but reaching billionaire status required the stars to align. “The whole billionaire side of it, the hundreds of millions of dollars, that’s just insane. And that was luck.”
Even if he restarted today with all his current knowledge, he says the odds are slim without that same fortune. “Could I be a millionaire multiple times over? Yeah, because I could hustle, I could sell, I was smart,” he told Noah.
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Curiosity Was His Edge
From a young age, Cuban was obsessed with learning. He says he read business books as a kid, including a story about Barry Minkow‘s fraudulent carpet-cleaning company. What stuck with him wasn't the fraud, but the fact that someone so young could fool adults. It showed him how much potential was out there.
“I was just the most curious person you could ever imagine,” Cuban said. “If you read enough, you’re going to learn something to your advantage.”
He looked at every job, even the ones he got fired from, as paid learning experiences. “You pay to go to college, but after you get a job, you get paid to learn,” he said.
Corporate Life Was Never For Him
Cuban clashed early with the corporate structure. He recalled one of his first jobs at Mello , where he tried to send a money-saving idea to the CEO. His boss wasn’t thrilled. “What the hell are you doing?” the boss asked, furious. Cuban, 22 at the time, says he started crying—then blamed his contact lenses.
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He said he never saw his jobs as just 9-to-5 roles. “To me, it was an opportunity, and my only mission was to help my company make more money,” he said.
The Power Of Broke
Getting fired wasn't a setback for Cuban; it was fuel. He launched MicroSolutions in the 1980s with just a $500 loan from a customer. “I was broke as a joke,” he told GQ in 2023. When he finally had $100,000 in the bank, it felt like a huge win. “I remember… telling my dad, who just broke down in tears.”
The billionaire milestone came later, when he was able to cash out Yahoo stock after the Broadcast.com sale. “It wasn't when I was a billionaire on paper, because that was just on paper. It really was when I was able to monetize it.”
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