- Hi, this is Mark Cuban.
I'm about to go undercover
on the internet.
This is Actually Me.
Wikipedia.
Mark Cuban hates meetings.
He has said, "The only way you're going
"to get me for a meeting
"is if you're writing me a check."
Yes, I hate meetings.
Nobody likes meetings except
the people who bring the donuts
and the people who love
to talk about their kids,
because when you sit in a meeting,
You waste half the meeting,
"So how was your weekend?
"How's your day?
"Why didn't they get the
right kind of donuts?
"I'm tired of donuts.
"We should get cupcakes."
All this nonsense that has nothing
to do with getting the job done.
I have so many different investments,
so many businesses I'm involved with.
I wanna do everything via email because
that allows me to go back
and look something up.
So, if you told me, "Blah,
blah, blah, your kids."
And I said, "Oh, that's sweet."
And then we talked about
business, I can go back
and search it, five years,
ten years, twenty years.
I got emails that are 25 years old now.
Since Gmail takes gigabytes
and gigabytes of storage,
I can just do search
so I don't even have to organize them.
But, I make an exception.
If you're gonna write me a check,
and it's a big one,
I'll be there.
Quora.
"How did Mark Cuban turn the Mavs around,
"from a business perspective?"
Well, I'm gonna be brutally honest.
I really didn't care about the business
of the Dallas Mavericks
when I bought them.
I really cared about winning championships
and winning games.
And so, I spent a whole lot more time
on the basketball side of things
and the Mavs lost money almost every year
until the past three years?
When I got to the NBA,
when I bought the Dallas Mavericks,
everybody thought we sold basketball.
Very few people go to basketball
games to watch basketball.
Think about the last
sporting event you went to.
Do you remember a jump shot?
Do you remember a dunk?
Do you even remember the score?
Maybe you remember who we played,
but you remember who you were with.
It's an experience.
You remember how you felt.
When that ball's in the
air and it's a tie game.
If it goes through the hoop, you win,
and if it doesn't, you lose.
Everybody collectively, 20,000 people,
are holding their breath.
And when it goes through the hoop,
you're high-fiving, and hugging
and squeezing so tight people
you've never seen before
in your life.
You're walking out of the
arena screaming and yelling.
And if you lose, you
do the exact opposite.
Apple, one of the biggest
companies in the world,
they can have their best quarter,
their best year ever.
No one's throwing a parade in Cupertino.
The Dallas Mavericks win the championship,
Dallas is on fire.
Everybody's havin' an amazing time.
The whole city feels the energy.
You feel that energy when
you walk into the arena.
That's what I convinced
the NBA that we sell.
And that literally changed
how sports were sold.
Posted.
IMDB.
"After he sold his first
company he tried acting
without much success and
even auditioned for a roll
in the film Twister in 1996
but lost out to Philip Seymour Hoffman."
Yes that's true.
After I sold my first company,
then I started trading technology stocks.
I did so well I turned
that into a hedge fund
and almost immediately sold that.
Moved out to L.A. to live on
the beach and just be retired.
And I took acting classes.
Why?
Because I wanted to meet people.
That I did.
I got to take classes with all kinds of,
well this is back in the day,
the cast of In Living Color,
all these different shows.
And so, I started auditioning.
I auditioned for commercials.
I had to put the Taco Bell
hat on and just act stupid.
Did some Ford commercials.
So, I auditioned for a movie, Twister.
And, got a callback.
Got another callback.
I'm thinkin', "Yeah!"
And then, didn't get a callback.
I forget the roll but the
name of the roll but--
- [Producer] Dusty.
- Dusty! Yeah! Dusty!
And so, I'm thinking, I'm Dusty.
Well then, I watched the movie.
Philip Seymour Hoffman is Dusty.
Academy Award Actor.
I was right for the roll.
He was miscast.
Twitter.
"What do you give a billionaire
on Valentine's Day?"
Coupons?
Definitely not chocolates.
You know what, a nice
hello goes a long way.
A little kindness,
I think that's what I
want for Valentine's Day.
My most memorable Valentine's Day
would not be family
friendly right about now so,
we'll pass on that one.
"How did Mark Cuban save his
wealth from the dot-com crash?
"He sold Broadcast.com for
5.7 billion in Yahoo! Stock.
"How did he get out
before it all went down?"
Well I'm gonna tell ya.
[chuckles]
Before we started
Broadcast.com as AudioNet
in the mid-90s,
I had sold a couple companies
and traded stocks a lot.
I made a lot of money
trading technology stocks.
When we took Broadcast.com public in 1998,
our first day IPO price,
the increase was the
largest increase for an IPO
in the history of the
stock market at the time.
And then Yahoo! bought us
for $5.7 billion in stocks.
Some people thought the stock market
was gonna go up forever.
I had more than a billion
dollars to my name.
They said, "Oh, you should
just keep your stock
"and don't do anything with it,
"because it's gonna keep
on going up forever."
I was worth more than a billion dollars.
How much money do you need?
There's no reason to be greedy.
I didn't need more.
I just needed to keep what I had.
I went to my broker and I did
something called a caller.
And I had to wait 6 months and that
was a nerve-wracking 6 months,
but I sold what's called calls on Yahoo!,
which gave somebody else the right to buy
it at a higher price,
And I used that money to
buy something called puts,
which meant if the stock
dropped below a certain point,
I was able to sell that stock
at the value of the put.
When the internet stock
market bubble burst,
that saved me.
You know, it was unfortunate.
A lot of people lost
a lot of money.
It impacted the economy.
I was able to protect myself,
but it was due to the
fact that I wasn't greedy.
Looking back,
there's been articles
written about that trade,
and it's been called one of
the top 10 stock trades of all time.
If you're buying and trading stocks,
always remember this:
When you think you made
the best stock buy ever,
you're so smart and everybody knows
this stock is going up forever,
ask yourself why somebody sold it to you.
I'm not saying sell your stocks,
I'm not saying the
market's going to go down.
I don't know, and neither do you,
so be careful.
Now I'm getting all preachy.
Instagram.
"Honest question,
"and I'll preface it
by saying I truly think
"you're the best owner in team sports."
Thanks, David.
"What was the process you went through
"when you overruled your management team
"and passed on Giannis?"
If you don't know,
Giannis Antetokounmpo,
the Greek Freak,
probably is gonna win the
MVP for the Milwaukee Bucks,
and in 2013,
our General Manager, Donnie Nelson,
said, "We have to get this kid."
If you're a basketball fan,
you know who the Greek Freak is,
and you know how amazing he is.
Back then, there were two
VHS tapes of him playing
in this horrible little league that
probably wasn't as good
as the league I played
in at the gym.
We just had these tapes,
but our guys had gone to see him,
and they said, "This is the guy.
"He's going to be really good."
And I'm like, "Who else
was watching this kid?"
If he's going to be a superstar,
you would think somebody would draft him.
The double-bad news was,
not only do we not get the Greek Freak,
and missed out on him,
but we also didn't get the
Free Agents we wanted either.
So, we got shut out.
Thanks for asking that question.
"Why does Mark Cuban do his own laundry?"
Now first of all,
I don't always do my own laundry.
When I travel, I do my own laundry.
I just do.
But my wife kills me because
I don't use laundry detergent,
like for workout gear, I'll just throw it
into the washing machine.
There's no good reason,
other than laziness,
and then I'll just
throw it into the dryer,
but you know,
it sets a good example for my kids
that Dad's doing his own laundry.
I don't have a good reason beyond that.
"Which companies that have
appeared on "Shark Tank"
"does Mark Cuban regret not investing in?"
None.
None.
When we come to shoot,
they'll just bring in deal
after deal after deal,
and when they walk in,
we know nothing about them.
They'll just start pitching us,
and we have to decide what we're going
to do right there and then.
A "Shark Tank" deal on television might
be 10, 14 minutes.
They can go 30, 45, 90 minutes, 2 hours.
Imagine those one after
another for weeks at a time.
Once they leave,
they are gone, lost, forgotten.
I don't pay attention to any deals
that I didn't get.
As Kevin would say,
"They're dead to me."
"We all know you sold
garbage bags door-to-door,
"I'm doing that right now,"
Why, I have no idea.
"But what were the following 6 jobs?"
I sold garbage bags door-to-door
when I was 12 years-old
because my dad told me
the only way I could
get new basketball shoes
was if I had a job.
And one of his buddies said,
"I have all these garbage bags to sell.
"Why don't you sell them?"
So I sold them door-to-door,
got my kicks.
My next 6 jobs,
oh my god,
I was a box boy.
I got a job working at a delicatessen.
I was chopping chipped chopped ham,
if you're from Pittsburgh,
you know what chipped chopped ham is.
I wasn't paying attention,
and this finger went right into
the blade that was spinning around,
and chopped off the end of my finger,
went flying and I'm bleeding everywhere.
That job ended like that.
After that,
I had a bunch of odd jobs.
Laying carpet,
just random, random jobs.
"mcuban, Read in a book on Mavs history
"you would play whiffleball
in the first mansion
"you bought after the Broadcast.dom sale.
"Accurate?"
Absolutely.
One of my former partners
came to me and said,
"There's this enormous house
"that some guy spent $25 million to build,
"and I can get it for half the cost
"that it cost him to build, $12 million."
I said, "I'll buy it sight unseen."
The place is enormous.
24,000 square feet,
I still, to this day,
don't know how many bedrooms or bathrooms.
A year or two would go by
and I wouldn't go upstairs,
and there're rooms I still
haven't been in in years.
In the ballroom,
there was a fireplace,
a window,
there was a pillar,
and a bar.
Home plate,
first base,
second base,
third base.
I had a whiffle ball
bat and a whiffle ball,
because every guy who
lives on their own does.
My buddies would come over
and it was big enough,
you could curve the ball and
hit and run and hit home runs.
Until I got married,
effectively, I had no furniture.
And we played whiffle ball in my ballroom.
I still have the house and I still have
the whiffle ball bat,
and literally,
just the other day,
the dog ate the whiffle ball.
[laughs]
"If your tax rate was dropped to say zero,
"would you take that
money not paid in taxes
"and give it to the
workers in your companies?
"In my opinion,
"the idea that corporation
would is unfounded."
I'll tell you exactly what I would do.
If you remember what I said
about Broadcast.com,
when we sold the company,
out of 330 employees,
300 own shares of stock
and became millionaires.
In my companies that I start,
everybody has stock.
If taxes went to zero,
and I don't think that's a good idea,
but if taxes did go to zero,
I would invest in the company to make it
as big and profitable.
So stinking profitable,
that because the employees are owners,
whenever I got paid,
they would get paid too.
When you get paid by the hour,
sure, the more you make,
the better things are.
But if you own stock in a company,
then the better that company does,
the better you do.
The only way to get out of that mode
of getting paid by the hour
or getting paid a salary,
is if the company grows
as big as it possibly can.
It either generates a lot of
cash so that you get paid,
or the company gets sold,
and to me,
that's how you start to
fight income equality.
"During college he had
various business ventures,
"including a bar,
"disco lessons,
"and a chain letter."
Yes I did!
I went to Indiana University
and I had to pay for my own school.
I had to figure out every
which way in order to do it.
The chain letter was my junior year.
You buy the chain letter from somebody
and in the letter is a list of 10 names.
You give $50 dollars to
the person you bought
the letter from,
and you send $50 to the person at
the top of the list,
scratch their name off,
put your name at the bottom.
And then find at least
10 people to sell it
to so that,
one by one,
your name works its way to the top
to the top of the list.
Well I did that.
And got my name to the top of the list,
and I also sold it so that none of
the people I sold it to lost any money,
because I would've felt horrible.
I remember getting up
every morning so excited,
because there'd be like envelopes
with $50 here, $50 there.
It was amazing.
It was great.
It was illegal,
but that was my chain
letter my junior year
and that's how I paid for
my junior year in college.
Now in terms of disco lessons,
I needed a job.
I like to dance.
I always liked to dance
and I was okay at it.
I was out dancing with
some friends at a club,
somebody saw me and they're like,
"We need you to give disco
lessons at our sorority house.
Cool, how much're you gonna pay me?
They're like, "$25 an hour."
I'm like, "Yes!"
I got to go to the sorority house,
who then referred me to
another sorority house,
who then referred me to
another sorority house.
It was the happiest time of my life.
I can't show them off.
The place I would dance,
we would throw parties there,
I would act as a party promoter,
but that bar was going out of business.
I took another student loan,
$1,500 I think it was.
I went to my friend,
and he had some money.
We said, "Okay,
"we want to take over the bar.
"And I don't really have
much cash to give you,
"but I want to turn it from a disco,
"into more of a rock-oriented
dance and hangout party bar."
And they were like, "Cool."
And so we wrote up a little contract,
and I mean,
I was so stupid,
I didn't even use a lawyer.
I was able to take over the
bar and effectively buy it.
We took all the disco stuff out,
put in the best sound system
and stereo system that we could find.
If we didn't have a lot of people come
those first couple days,
we were out of business immediately.
I was using my student loan money,
and I still had to pay for college
And it would have been a big problem.
We opened up,
and there were lines to get in.
How did I open it, being under 21,
they didn't ask and I didn't tell.
"Do you agree with Mark Cuban
"that liberal arts graduates
will become more valuable
"in the future?"
12 years ago,
there was no iPhone.
25 years ago,
the internet was just happening.
30 years ago,
we were just seeing PCs,
and we've come so far just with that.
Artificial intelligence and
the advances it'll introduce
is just going to dwarf iPhones,
local area networks,
the internet.
It's just going to blow them away.
We're going to start using AI for a lot
of different applications and jobs.
If you're going to build an AI,
a neural network,
that is about Shakespeare,
if it's about customer service
and telecommunications,
that's about any particular topic,
you need someone with expertise
not only in their topics,
but people who are able to put
together objective networks,
so that they're able to find
and eliminate biases
wherever they find them.
Humanities and technology in the world
of artificial intelligence,
have to come together.
Otherwise, we're going to
see all kinds of problems.
Data is going to drive everything
that we do.
We're really going to live in
a completely different world
and even though technology might not
have been the same 50, 100, 500 years ago,
typically we tend to go through
the same types of problems
and having people with a
perspective that's different
than a technologist would
be incredibly valuable.
That's it for today,
I've answered your questions,
this was Actually Me.
