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Staff post about: Mark Cuban Become an Author

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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.

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