I am a graduate of duke university. I got a scholarship to go there, but not a basketball scholarship i assure you. But i really would like to own an nba team. I have never had the chance to do so. But mark cuban is someone that did that at an early age. As a young man, he bought an nba Basketball Team and won a national championship. Because of that, i always admired his sports prowess and business acumen. My children always told me dad, youve done ok, but mark cuban is a lot better. Mark, let me ask you this. You made at an early age made some money. You made an enormous amount of money when you sold broadcast. Com to yahoo and made over 1 billion. And then you bought a Basketball Team. Then you have a shark tank series that won an emmy award. You are well regarded by entrepreneurs all over the world. President s of the United States call you for advice. What is wrong with this life . Is there something about this like that is not perfect . Life that is not perfect . Mark i have kids. I have a 16yearold daughter and a 14yearold daughter. That is all any parent needs to hear. It doesnt matter what you have what have or what you dont have. The minute my oldest daughter turned 15, my wife and i got really stupid, lost half our brain capacity and are beholden to our kids. Being a parent is a challenge. It is very humbling. David i have three children as well. I agree. You grew up in pittsburgh, but not in a wealthy family. Is that right . Mark my mom my dad did upholstery on cars, my mom did odd jobs. David you went to university of pittsburgh . Mark i was always in the business. My high school wouldnt let me take business classes. And so, as a sophomore and junior, there were only senior economics classes. Just to spite them, i started taking classes at night in my junior year and dropped out of high school for my senior year and went to university of pittsburgh. David then you went to Indiana University. Why did you go to indiana . Mark pitt did not have a full undergrad business program, i saw a list of the top 10 undergrad programs and picked out the cheapest one. It was indiana and i went there sight unseen. David when you were there, you started a successful bar . Mark kind of successful. My parents did not pay for my school. My dad sent me 20 a month. I had to figure out how to pay for things one way or the other. Sometimes i was able to get scholarships. Other times saving money from jobs. Other times it was the hustle. David when you graduated, you moved to dallas. Why . Mark i had a bunch of buddies there that moved to dallas. I was talking to one of my buddies, Greg Schiffer on the , phone. He is like, mark, the weather is great, the women are beautiful, the economy is good. Wait, back up. [laughter] im coming. David you started a Technology Consulting firm . Mark when i first got there, we called it the hill hotel with my five roommates. I got a job working as a bartender bar back. During the day, i applied for jobs and finally got a job selling software, which i did for nine months until i got fired. I started my own company, which at the time, when we started, was just a Pc Consulting company. David you sold that for a couple Million Dollars or so. Mark i sold it for 6 million. 1 million went to all the employees. 2 million went to a partner and 2 million came to me. David 2 million is a kings ransom in those days for someone your age. Mark by that time i was 30. I thought i was the luckiest guy in the world. This was 1989. I was going to take time off. My driving force was i wanted to retire by the time i was 35. One thing my dad had always taught me and emphasized to me is the one asset you can never get back or own is time. Enjoy the time while you are young. Take advantage of it. His job was backbreaking. He lost and i in an accident at work. In an accidentye at work. He did upholstery and a staple broke and destroyed his right eye. He would take me to work sometimes and make me sweep the floor because he wanted me to see the type of work he did not want me to do. My goal was to retire so i could enjoy my life. We sold micro solutions. I literally retired, a lifetime pass on american airlines, traveled the world like a rock star for the next few years. David after you retired at the age of 30 or so, you ultimately came up with an idea, which was to listen to Indiana University basketball games on a streaming process. Mark by the time i sold micro solutions, i was tech heavy. We were one of the largest systems integrators. I taught myself to program. We did local wide area networks. So i got to understand networking and technology really well. I made a lot of money after work afterwords just Trading Technology stocks. Back then, it was so much easier. I called up Goldman Sachs and we would swap ideas. I knew more about the details of tech, what worked and what didnt work and what companies were doing well, and indigent making tens of millions of well, and ended up making tens of millions of dollars doing that. I then got together with my buddy, todd wagoner from indiana. He came to me with the idea. This new internet thing, is there any way we can listen to indiana basketball using the internet . I was like, that is a cool idea. This was early 1995. Im like, lets try to figure it out. Starting with a packard bell pc that i bought for 4000 at best buy or something, in the second bedroom of my house i just sat and tried to figure out how we would do this. It went from 10 people the first week to 100 to thousands. We knew we had something within 30 days. David you took the company public. Mark in 1998. David the stock zoomed. Hate to use the word zoom. It went up a lot. Mark the largest for day first day ipo bump in the history of the stock market at the time. David did you say i will build this Company Forever and keep growing, or did somebody buy it from you . Mark the goal was to dominate, we called it net casting at the time, this was preyoutube. We were the dominant force in streaming. We had rights to all the major sports leagues. We had hundreds of radio stations. By 1999, we were doing video as well. We bought 10 of what turned out to be lionsgate studios. We bought video rights to all these libraries. We were making acquisitions. We really were on the path to dominate. Yahoo had invested in us the previous year. And came to us and it we want to , buy you. We need to get into multimedia and you are the leader. Lets combine forces and they gave us an offer we couldnt refuse. David they offered ultimately did a deal of 5. 7 billion. You didnt own all 5. 7 billion yourself. I guess you had some outside investors and other people. Mark about 33 of it. And it was taxable. The way it was structured, it ended up being taxable on the gains. It turned out well. David you bought the dallas Basketball Team, the mavericks for roughly 280 million. ,what compelled you . Mark i remember being on the team bus in january, talking to the coaches. Why did you spend so much money . This is the worst franchise in all the nba. David here is the question ive always had, why is it or how did you have the foresight to sell the yahoo stock at a time when the markets were going up . People thought yahoo would be going up forever. You sold your yahoo stock and cashed out before yahoo went down by 90 . Mark i hedged it. I mentioned i traded stocks and did really well. I watched complete industries rocket and then collapsed. There were companies when Dell Computer went public, there were 10 other pc companies that crashed and burned. I had seen it multiple wise multiple times, i made money on the way up and down. I was clear to Goldman Sachs at the time that i wanted to do a hedge. I had a sixmonth moratorium where i couldnt do anything. I took literally almost every penny i had, 20 million and bought a put on an internet index. I lost all my money on that hedge. Literally all gone, which was good, because that got me to the point where yahoo was still a high flyer. I sold covered calls and bought puts over the next three years and that hedge saved me and actually made me money. David but you lost the first 20 million . What did your wife say . Mark i wasnt married at the time. [laughter] but it was timed out right. I got through the six months. Even though i lost the money on that hedge, i knew, based off where the yahoo stock was, what the volatility levels were, how i would be able to sell calls on my yahoo stock and use that money to buy a put on the yahoo stock. When the stock collapsed, my puts were worth a fortune. David you bought the dallas Basketball Team, the mavericks, for roughly 280 million, which at the time was thought to be a lot of money. Today it is a fraction of what it is worth. What compelled you to buy a Basketball Team . Mark i have always been a basketball junkie. I was a Dallas Mavericks season ticket holder. During that time i owned season tickets, they were awful. All of the 1990s they were voted the worst professional sports franchise. I will never forget. It was the 19992000 Season Opener and we are undefeated. I am a season ticket holder. I am excited to go to the game. It was not a sellout. There was no energy in the crowd. I had just sold broadcast. Com. Thought, i can do better than this. It dawned on me, wait, i can put my money where my mouth is and inquire about buying it. From late october, when the topic first came up, it took till january 4 to close the deal. Honestly i didnt care about , price. They said heres the price and i said yes, i realized i still had my hedge on for yahoo and still benefited when yahoo stocks went up. So there were days still been then this is before the internet bubble collapsed i remember being on the team bus in january talking to the coaches, like why did you spend , so much money . This is the worst franchise in all the nba. The revenues are lower than everybody else. Im like, let me show you the price of yahoo . It went up 200 today. That paid for the whole team. David when you get to play with players, can you work out with them . Mark up until, obviously, the changes with this season. Before every home game, i go on the core and get shots up. On the court and get shots up. There is nothing crazier to me as a basketball junkie than to have an arena and you are out there shooting. There were a lot of times over the years i would play players e oneonone with the players and shoot threes. David when you are playing with them, they dont ease up to let you win because you are the owner . Mark hell no. Realize the other side of it. If i beat them, they will never hear the end of it. Theres no way. David you have been the owner of the team for 20 years. In your early years as the owner, and maybe recently, youve been fined a lot by the league for criticizing the referees, criticizing the league. What was that about . Did you do that on purpose because he wanted attention, or could you not constrain yourself . Mark no, i wanted to improve the league. When i first got to the nba, i was clear we dont sell basketball, we sell experiences. If you think about the sporting events you have gone to, you dont think about touchdown, the dunks, the jumpers you remember , who you were with. The first time you were with your friends or you had your buddys Bachelor Party or your first date. They didnt realize that is what we sold. It took a lot of aggression on both sides, a lot of going back and forth with thencommissioner david stern. To his credit, while he had to fine me, privately he would agree with me on a lot of those things. To me, i was just being a good partner. Even though a lot of my partners didnt appreciate it. David in the early days, you were a young owner. Now you may be one of the more experienced owners. Do you get people listening to you more . Mark i am one of the longerterm owners. They are used to me. Ill still raise hell and speak up. But now they are used to me. They have changed a lot. A lot of things have changed, whether how we approach officiating, to how we market our games what we do for , broadcast, so much has changed over 20 years for the better. David the nba is playing in a bubble in orlando. How is that working out . Are you surprised it has worked out reasonably well . Four you think it could have been done better . Or you think it could have been done better . Mark it is shocking how well it has gone. There is so much risk bringing thousands of people together in one area, and to have zero cases . That is stunning. Literally, we were concerned about what might happen. Because primarily you are talking about a population of 20somethings. Outside the bubble, 20somethings in any city are not the most conscientious when it comes to Wearing Masks and following social distancing and other protocols. To our players and staff and the nba, to their credit everyone , has been really careful. It has paid off. David Dirk Nowitzki was one of your star players for a while. I european. You have a couple other europeans now, who are stars as well. One you got from the new york knicks, a trade President Trump commended you on, i recall. Let me ask you this, though. When are you going to recruit more jewish basketball players in the nba . Mark i dont care if they are from mars. Whatever works, i just want to win. David from behind you is what looks like a replica of a Basketball Championship trophy. Mark that is the real deal. David are you hopeful of getting another one someday . Mark this one is 10 years old. Larry obrien needs some friends. David what lessons have you personally learned . One of the big lessons i have learned is that i have left my fingerprints on everything. I used to think that i have to be there. I dont have to be there. The other thing i learned more than anything else is the fragility of human life. And the fragility of fairness in this country. So the dual pandemics of the virus and racism have inspired me even more to struggle to help a country understand itself better and find a country that is freer and fairer. David you have an everyman image where you are an average joe. The truth is you have a lot of technology background, a lot of sophisticated financial background. Bill gates is seen as a technology guy, maybe jeff bezos is. You have a lot of technology knowledge, but you dont advertise as much. Mark before i got fired, it became clear to me that when it came to technology, there were two types of people. The people who created the technology and everybody else. I was tied with everybody else in terms of knowledge of any new technology that came out. If i put in the effort to learn about the technology, no matter what it was i was going to move , ahead of the 99 . Maybe never catch the people who created the tech but i would be ahead of everyone else. That has always been my mantra. I try to stick to that today. David as you are talking to us today, you have many different businesses. You have a big investment business. You have said publicly that you are a gigantic investor in amazon and netflix. Do you have advisors, or do you make your own decisions . Mark pretty much make my own decisions. I used to be very active as a trader. Back in the 1990s and early 2000s there was less money chasing more stocks. Now there is more money chasing fewer stocks. I stick to companies i believe in. Ive owned netflix since it was 50. Amazon i was buying between 500 and 700. Actually, i bought some more in the high thousands, just under 2000 10,000, but ive got some scattered things that i have held on to. I no longer trade. That fed put, fed inflation of assets kind of gives us a tailwind. David covid has changed the world in terms of opportunities. It is obviously hurt people, but helps those who are entrepreneurial. You have said this is a good time to figure out new areas of business. Is that a fair statement . Mark it is so unfortunate, but it is true. We have heard Warren Buffett say buy when there is blood in the street. It is a most analogous here. Almost analogy is here. Small businesses are closing. So many retails and businesses are closing. Malls are going bankrupt. Companies that are unable to transition to selling digitally or really taking full advantage not taking full advantage of ecommerce are struggling. Big businesses are not sure how to protect their legacy businesses. That type of uncertainty creates a lot of opportunity. Combine that with people becoming more comfortable purchasing online and living a digital lifestyle, i think there are a lot of unique avail unique opportunities that are available to people who have a vision for the future. 10, 15, 20 years, we will look back and there will be 20 , 30 worldclass companies will be that were created by people we think are crazy now. David you had a relationship with President Trump at one point. Mark this was after he announced. Thinking he had no chance to win whatsoever, i made a Public Statement saying i think donald trump is the best thing to happen to politics. He is not a professional politician and he says what is on his mind. I became his new best friend. He would call me all the time. That is who he is. Notid one day that i did think he was qualified and then it was all downhill from there. David he didnt invite you to the white house . Mark he did recently. But everything donald trump touches turns into a mess. So i did not accept the offer. David you said you might consider running for president. You had a pollster look at it, why did you decide not to run this time . Mark primarily because my family said no. You doing okay . Yeah. This moving thing never gets any easier. Well, xfinity makes moving super easy. I can transfer my internet and tv service in about a minute. Wow, that is easy. Almost as easy as having those guys help you move. We are those guys. Thats you . The truck adds 10 pounds. In the arms. Okay. Transfer your Service Online in a few easy steps. Now thats simple, easy, awesome. Transfer your service in minutes, making moving with xfinity a breeze. Visit xfinity. Com moving today. More voluminous hair instantly. All it takes is just one session at hairclub. Introducing xtrands. 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