Mark Cuban
Mark Cuban
Mark Cuban is an American businessman and investor. He is the owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, Landmark Theatres, and Magnolia Pictures, and is the chairman of the HDTV cable network AXS TV. He is also a "shark" investor on the television series, Shark Tank. In 2011, Cuban wrote an e-book, How to Win at the Sport of Business, in which he chronicles his life experiences in business and sports...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth31 July 1958
CityPittsburgh, PA
CountryUnited States of America
I love the competitive aspect of it [business]. It's like playing chess. Why do people play chess? Knowing the realm of moves? Even when you get to be a chess master, there are other chess masters you want to beat or outperform. And to me business is just a sport that I love to compete in; a continuous intellectual challenge that really motivates me.
The reason I do Shark Tank isn't to try take make more money of the deals, even though every deal I want to make money off of and even more so I want the entrepreneurs to be very successful and make money, but Shark Tank sends a message to everybody that the American Dream is alive and well.
Business is the marketplace of ideas.
When you first start working for me, directly for me, I micromanage until I trust you.
We can talk about republican or democratic approaches to the economy, but until you fix the student loan bubble - and that's where the real bubble is - and the tuition bubble, we don't have a chance. All this other stuff is shuffling deck-chairs on the Titanic.
I'm a big believer that you always reiterate, you always learn, you always realize your business is evolving.
I can turn an idea into a business before you know it's going to be important. My first step will blow by you.
You always have to know what business you are in. Everybody thought we were in the basketball business. It's an NBA-team; we are not in the basketball business. We are in the business of creating experiences and memories.
We don't sell wins or losses. The one thing you can't control in sports is which games you are going to win or which games you are going to lose. But what I could control was the experience the fans have.
I had been in the technology business for so long, I had seen the PC-bubble come and burst, I had seen the local area and wide area networking-bubble come and burst, it was no shock that the internet-bubble was going to burst.
Those back-to-back experiences confirmed what I already knew: That I was a shitty-ass employee and I'd better start my own business.
I retired at twenty-nine, bought a life-time pass on American Airlines and my only goal in life was to party like a mad man and get drunk with as many people as possible. And I was happy right there. But when we started the streaming business, I knew it could be something big.
You learn in life that a lot of things are the result of effort, but some things, in terms of scale, are random.
We all know or have read about someone who has been burned on social media. We have taught our kids not to post pictures publicly that could impact their future, but we have not yet taught ourselves that texts, messages and social media posts could be used just as maliciously or with as much downside as pictures.