Tweet

A Cutting-Edge Career: Cuban Makes It Big

Article Overview: After being fired from Your Business Software, Cuban convinced some of its other employees to leave the company and join him in his latest venture, MicroSolutions. It was to be a system integrator and reseller for various IT companies, including IBM and Apple. In just eight years, the company had sold over 500 networks that ranged in size from two to over 1,000 users. By investing in cutting-edge technology and providing outstanding customer service, MicroSolutions had become a major player in the promising new IT industry – so major, that in 1990, Cuban sold the company to CompuServe, Inc. for $6 million.

A Cutting-Edge Career: Cuban Makes It Big

After being fired from Your Business Software, Cuban convinced some of its other employees to leave the company and join him in his latest venture, MicroSolutions. It was to be a system integrator and reseller for various IT companies, including IBM and Apple. In just eight years, the company had sold over 500 networks that ranged in size from two to over 1,000 users. By investing in cutting-edge technology and providing outstanding customer service, MicroSolutions had become a major player in the promising new IT industry – so major, that in 1990, Cuban sold the company to CompuServe, Inc. for $6 million.

Cuban was 32 years old and a millionaire. He decided to take an early retirement, but it wouldn’t be long before his entrepreneurial instincts kicked in and brought him back into the game. In 1995, together with college buddy Todd Wagner, Cuban created a company called Audionet. Sorely missing the games of their college basketball team, Cuban and Wagner created Audionet, which used new streaming technology to broadcast sports games over the Internet. In 1998, Audionet became Broadcast.com and the company went public. At the time, it had the largest single-day gain in the history of the stock market. With over 330 employees and annual revenues in the neighbourhood of $100 million, Cuban sold the company to Yahoo! for $5.7 billion in stock.

“The original startup capital was just, you know, $4,000 for a computer and an ISDN line and a lot of time, a lot of sweat equity,” Cuban recalls. “From a $3,995 Packard Bell computer in the second bedroom of my house to $5.7 billion in stock in five years.” Now a billionaire, Cuban could have slipped comfortably back into early retirement. Instead, he chose to pursue his love of basketball.

In 2000, Cuban purchased the Dallas Mavericks for $285 million and immediately set out to revive the team. With his courtside presence at every game and his outspoken and passionate nature, Cuban quickly became a fan favourite. But, both his on and off court antics have cost him over $1 million in fines from the NBA, more than anyone else in NBA history. Despite his behavior, the Mavericks have undoubtedly improved under his ownership and have reached the playoffs each season since Cuban came on board.

Aside from sports, Cuban’s time is also spent working on 2929 Entertainment, a company he created once again with Wagner, which focuses on the production and distribution of films. They purchased Landmark Theatres, a chain of 58 theatres across the nation as well HDNet, the first high-definition satellite television network. Cuban has also starred in his own reality TV show, The Benefactor, he hosts his own weekly radio talk show on Sirius Satellite Radio and is the owner of IceRocket, a blog search engine. He also maintains a popular personal blog, called Blog Maverick, on which Cuban vents about everything from sports to politics to business.

Cuban is the ultimate maverick entrepreneur who has managed to turn his passions into profitable business ventures and to do it on his own terms.

Related Articles
  Lesson #2: Don’t Take The Shortcut
  Lesson #4: Just Get It Right Once
  Lesson #1: Do Your Homework
  Lesson #3: Do It Because You Love It
  Lesson #5: Use IT to Interact

Article Tags: billionaire, college basketball team, compuserve, cutting edge technology, dallas mavericks, early retirement, games over the internet, instincts, isdn line, outstanding customer service, packard bell computer, passionate nature, providing outstanding customer service, single day, startup capital, stock market, streaming technology, sweat equity, system integrator, todd wagner



Related Forum Posts
Quote of the Day - "Rarely is talent enough. You have to f - ?"Rarely is talent enough. You have to find ways to make yourself stand out." - Mark Cuban, tiny.ly/Nln6
Re: Require Info on CAD Fed/Prov Grants for Restaurant Start-up - I know the Ontario government is starting a "Second Career" campaign, full of internship opportunities for new chefs and catering staff. It may be worth your while to research the possibilities with that. It may work itself out to be cheap labor in the form of a grant. Good luck regardless!
Book: Comeback Moms - Comeback Moms: How to Leave Work, Raise Children, and Restart your Career even If you Haven't Had a Job in Years Monica Samuels and J. C. Conklin 2006 Jacket: Millions of educated, professional women are quitting their jobs to stay home and raise their children. That would never be you, right? You worked hard for your degree and even harder to get to this point in your career. Quitting now, even for a few years, would kill your career, right? That's what Monica Samuels thought when she found out she was pregnant... Over 60 percent of professional women who leave work to raise children want to get back into the workforce someday. If you even think you might want to go back to work, be it in one year or twenty, you need to lay the groundwork now for a successful reentry or your options will be limited. 1. Quitting: When is the best time to cut the cord 2. Feathering the nest: How to financially prepare before you quit 3. Departure strategies: leaving the office 4. Money and Power: Constructing a new life on the home front 5. Backlash: handling family, friends and angry strangers 6. One foot in, one foot out: How can they miss you if you don't really go away? 7. Part time: It ain't perfect, but it's doable 8. Going back: the when and how of returning to work full time 9. Career counseling: When you need a change 10. Entrepreneurs: True Stories Resources Index
Re: Stopping Drive-by Spam - I've also noticed that in this and other forums. I wonder why they do it that way. Makes it easier to catch them. I suppose it's probably just laziness. I've even seen the same person spam the same thread multiple times one after another with the exact same post. I guess that just how stupid some of these spammers are!!!
How does one suggest improvements to inventions - and get paid for them? I'm sure people write in and complain and suggest new features for various things they buy... and if those changes are implemented that's all well and good, but the person who made the suggestion for the improvment isn't going to get paid for it. How does one suggest these improvements - and get paid for them? ----long story One of the best things the PC did (at least, Dell) was to color code all their little plugs, so you know that the green plug goes into the green hole, the pink into the pink, etc. Makes setting up those things a heckuva lot easier! I was thinking that the same thing should be done for today's TVs! I've had a new TV for a few weeks, set up next to my computer because I like to work and watch TV at the same time. But I've got it set up in such a way that I can't see all the little buttons on the top of the screen, which are the buttons for Stop, Play, Eject (for the internal DVD) , the Volume up and down, and the Channel up and down. Of course, that wasn't a problem when my remote control worked, but for some reason it stopped working a couple of weeks ago. (Yes, I replaced the battery - no good). Since I have the TV so close to my computer it's no problem, I can reach out and touch the buttons... But because they're all the same color, I had to actually get up and look at them to make sure I was pressing the right button. I've solved that problem by attaching a bit of yellow paper to the Play button, and a bit of orange paper to the Volume Up button. Makes things a lot easier...


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

How To Improve Your CTA (Call To Action)

Soda Vending Machine = Energy Hog

Leading from Authenticity is a Beautiful Thing

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.