Mark Cuban Began His Millions Selling Garbage Bags For $6 — 'The World's First Garbage Bag Door-To-Door Subscription Company'

Mark Cuban is an American business owner best known for his role as a host on ABC's reality TV series "Shark Tank." According to Forbes, Cuban has a net worth of $5.4 billion. His first job helped him achieve this success and you would be surprised to know what it is. 

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Before becoming a successful business owner, he started out as a garbage bag salesman. Yahoo Finance shared Cuban's story of how he transitioned from selling garbage bags to owning successful production companies like Truly Indie and even being a minority owner of the Dallas Mavericks until 2024. Cuban revealed in GQ Magazine that his journey to success began when he asked his father for a new pair of sneakers during his father's poker game. At the time, Cuban grew up in a middle-class household in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He told GQ Magazine that it was his father's friend who allowed Cuban to sell boxes of garbage bags and that if he sold them all, he could keep the money earned to buy his own sneakers. 

"That was my first business. The world's first, probably only, garbage bag door-to-door subscription company," Cuban said.        

Cuban bought the bags from his father's friend for $3 and sold them for $6. What really made Cuban successful with the garbage bags was that he would tell customers that if they needed garbage bags, they should call him, and he would bring them right to their house.

When he was 16 years old, Cuban knew that business was his passion, so he started taking night classes at the University of Pittsburgh. Many people will be surprised to learn that Cuban actually dropped out of high school at 17 years old to attend college full-time. In fact, dropping out of school seems to be a common step in becoming a millionaire and a billionaire. Zhou Qunfei, who is the owner and CEO of Lens Technology, is now worth $6.1 billion, according to Forbes. Qunfei dropped out of high school to work in a watch lens factory, where she saved enough money to start her own business. Other notable people who dropped out of high school and college and have made names for themselves include Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. 

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Cuban's first company he started was MicroSolutions, which quickly grew into a $6 million business, which he sold and shared the profits. He revealed to GQ Magazine that going into business was never about the need to make millions. For him, owning his businesses was about controlling his own destiny. "What [money] bought me was freedom. I'd made a ton of money in the stock market. I was worth 20-plus million dollars. Life was good."

With the emergence of the Internet in 1995, Cuban's net worth started to climb into the billions. Cuban Revealed that in 1995, his friend Todd Wagner had talked him into setting up a website called AudioNet and then Broadcast.com. When the company went public in 1998, Cuban revealed that he expected the stock to open at $33, but it almost doubled to $62.75, which pushed his net worth up to more than $300 million. Then, Yahoo bought the company for stock, and the price tripled, officially making Cuban a billionaire.   

As a billionaire, Cuban has always maintained the belief that being greedy with money will get you nowhere. He once warned his niece that in investing, the only way you make money in the stock market is if you don't get greedy. During a pregame conversation with reporters back when Cuban was the principal owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Cuban warned, "I’m just telling you, when you’ve got a good thing, and you get greedy, it always, always, always turns on you. That’s rule No.1 of business."         

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