Travels from Dallas, Texas, USA
Mark Cuban's speaking fee falls within range: Over $75,000
The owner of 150 companies, Mark Cuban is best known for his straightforward entrepreneurial advice on Shark Tank and his incredible turn-around of the Dallas Mavericks, the NBA basketball team which he has owned since 2000. The self-made billionaire offers frank input on building businesses and growing wealth based on decades of experience.
A business graduate, Cuban knew nearly nothing about computers when he took a job at a Dallas software store. The personal computer revolution was about to sweep the country, and he wanted in. He pulled all-nighters reading software manuals, learning everything that he could about the up-and-coming industry.
After being fired for closing an offsite deal rather than opening the shop, he developed and launched his own company MicroSolutions, which specialized in connecting the computers at a particular business to a common server, a radical notion in the 1980s. At age 32, he sold the company for 6 million USD. Nine years later, his next venture, an online streaming audio service, Broadcast.com, was acquired by Yahoo in 1999 for $5.9 billion in Yahoo stock.
Today, some of Cuban’s well-known companies include Magnolia Pictures, Landmark Theaters, AXS TV, and the Florida-based Alyssa’s Cookies, one of his most profitable Shark Tank investments. Since he joined Shark Tank in its second season, the ABC reality show’s ratings have steadily climbed and the program has snatched three Primetime Emmys for “Outstanding Structured Reality Program.”
“It doesn’t matter how many times you fail. You only have to be right once and then everyone can tell you that you are an overnight success.”
Since the age of 12, Mark has been a natural businessman. Selling garbage bags door to door, the seed was planted early on for what would eventually become long-term success. After graduating from Indiana University – where he briefly owned the most popular bar in town – Mark moved to Dallas. After a dispute with an employer who wanted him to clean instead of closing an important sale, Mark created MicroSolutions, a computer consulting service. He went on to later sell MicroSolutions in 1990 to CompuServe.
In 1995, Mark and long-time friend Todd Wagner came up with an internet based solution to not being able to listen to Hoosiers Basketball games out in Texas. That solution was Broadcast.com – streaming audio over the internet. In just four short years, Broadcast.com (then Audionet) would be sold to Yahoo for $5.6 billion dollars.
Since his acquisition of the Dallas Mavericks in 2000, he has overseen the Mavs competing in the NBA Finals for the first time in franchise history in 2006 – and becoming NBA World Champions in 2011. They are currently listed as one of Forbes’ most valuable franchises in sports.
In addition to the Mavs, Mark is chairman and CEO of AXS tv, one of ABC’s “Sharks” on the hit show Shark Tank, and an investor in an ever-growing portfolio of businesses. He lives in Dallas with wife Tiffany, daughters Alexis and Alyssa, and son Jake.
Entrepreneur and business icon, Mark Cuban, imparts his personal guidelines for investing and makes the case that more companies should go public. While there were 9,000 public companies at the time of the Dot.Com crash, as of 2017, there are only 4,000. Exchanges are actually facing an investor surplus, Cuban claims, meaning there is tons of money out there that companies – particularly young tech companies - are missing out on.
“I think they’re scared of being public company CEOs,” Cuban offers his viewpoint on why more successful start-ups aren’t turning to Wall Street. He notes that rather than fighting to meet a number each quarter, most CEOS of promising start-ups tend to sell their companies to a giant like Amazon, Facebook, or Google – forming a few dominating tech conglomerates rather than a competitive market that demands and spurs innovation.
Citing companies like Twitch, Instagram, and Oculus, he argues, “If all these companies were public, we’d be talking about this great renaissance and talking much more about these companies, seeing how they’re doing, and they’d be more in the public conscious.”
Self-made billionaire, Mark Cuban wasn’t an overnight success. The richest shark on Shark Tank openly discusses the habits that got him to the top. Cuban is forthcoming about his worst mistakes and best practices when it comes to growing a business, managing wealth, and leveraging disruption. The entrepreneur and investment sage is also frequently sought for his insights on technology and cybersecurity. A multiple-time speaker at SXSW, some of his other recent talks and keynotes include Oxford Union, ASIS (world’s largest membership organization for security professionals), and Venture Atlanta.
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How to Win at the Sport of Business: If I Can Do It, You Can Do It
Mark Cuban shares his wealth of experience and business savvy in his first published book, HOW TO WIN AT THE SPORT OF BUSINESS.
Using the greatest material from his popular Blog Maverick, Cuban has collected and updated his postings on business and life to provide a catalog of insider knowledge on what it takes to become a thriving entrepreneur. He tells his own rags-to-riches story of how he went from selling powdered milk and sleeping on friends’ couches to owning his own company and becoming a multi-billion dollar success story. His unconventional yet highly effective ideas on how to build a successful business offer entrepreneurs at any stage of their careers a huge edge over their competitors.
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