Quick summer graduate of duke university. I got a scholarship to go there, but not a basketball scholarship, i assure you. I would like to own an nba team. I would like the chance to do so, but mark cuban is somebody who did that as at an early age. He bought an nba best about team and won a championship with it. Because of that, ive always admired his sports prowess, his knowledge, and his business acumen. My children always tell me that tell me, dad, youve done ok, but mark cuban is a lot better. Made someoung age money and made an enormous amount of money when you sold broadcast. Com to yahoo , made over 1 billion. Then you bought a Basketball Team. Then you have an shark tank series that is very successful. Your well renowned by entrepreneurs all over the world. Are well renowned by entrepreneurs all over the world. President scalia for advice. What is wrong with this life . Has to be something thats not perfect. I have kids. I have a 16yearold daughter and a 14yearold daughter. The minute my daughters turned 15, my wife and i were really stupid, lost half of our brain capacity. Being a parent is a challenge. Its very humbling, as everybody knows. David i have three children as well, and i agree. You grew up in pittsburgh, but not in a wealthy family. Is that right . Dad worked on cars. My mom did odd jobs. I was always into business and my high school would not let me take business classes. As a sophomore or junior, there were only senior Level Economics them,s, so just to spite i started taking classes at night in my junior year and dropped out of high school my senior year and went to the university of pittsburgh. David but then you went to Indiana University. Why did you go to indiana . Mark because pitt did not have a full undergrad is in his program. Looked around at business programs and pick the cheapest one. I chose indiana and went there site unseen. My dad sent me 20 bucks a month, and i had to figure out how to pay for things one way or another. Sometimes i was able to get scholarships. Other times, just saving money from jobs i had. Other times it was a hussle. Youd when you graduated, moved to dallas. Why . Mark i had a bunch of buddies that had gone to indiana and moved to dallas. I was talking to a friend of mine on the phone. He was saying the weather is great, the women are beautiful, the economy is good. I was like late, back up im coming. David you also started out a Technology Consulting firm is that what it was . Mark i was sleeping we called it the hill hotel with my five roommates. Asot a job at night working a bartender and during the day i applied for jobs and finally got a job selling software, which i did for nine months until i got fired, and so i started my own whenny, which at the time it started was just a Pc Consulting company. David you ultimately sold that for a couple Million Dollars or so . Mark i sold that seven years later to 6 million. One Million Dollars went to employees. 2 million went to a partner i brought in and 2 million to me. David 2 million, which is a kings ransom for some your age in those days. The i just thought i was luckiest guy and the richest guy in the world. This is 1989. In my mind, 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 really taught me and emphasized to me is the one asset you can never own or get back is time, so enjoy the time while you are young. Take advantage of it. His job was backbreaking. He lost and eye in an accident eye. Rk he lost and he would take me to work sometimes and make me sweep the floor. He wanted me to see the work he did not want me to do. When we sold micro solutions, i literally retired, just traveled the world and partied like a rock star for the next few years. David after you retired at the age of 30 or so, you also came up with an idea, which was to listen to Indiana University basketball games on i guess kind of a streaming process. Is that right . Mark by the time i sold micro solutions, i was really tech savvy. We were one of the largest systems integrators. I taught myself the program. We did local wide area networks, so i got to understand networking and technology really well. I made a lot of money Trading Technology stocks. Back then, it was so much easier. We would just swap ideas, and i knew more about all the details of what did and did not work and what companies were doing well and ended up making tens of millions of dollars doing that. I then got together with my buddy todd, who i knew from indiana. He actually came to me with the idea. He was like, this internet thing you understand technology. Is there any way we can listen to indiana basketball using the internet . I was like, thats a cool idea. This was 1995. Im like, lets figure it out. Using a packard bell pc that about four four grand that i bought for about four grand, i sat in my basement to try to figure out how we would do this. It went from 10 people the first week to 100 2000, to thousands, and we knew we had something within 30 days. David you took the company public. Is that right . In 1998. Ts right, david and the stock zoomed i hate to use the word assume. Mark the largest first day ipo in the history of the stock market at the time. David did you decide youre going to keep this forever or did someone come along and want to buy it from you . We were thelly, 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, and we bought 10 of what turned out to be live gate studios. We bought video rights to all these libraries. We were making acquisitions. We really were on a path to dominate, and yahoo had invested in us the Previous Year and came to us and said, we want to buy you. We need to get into multimedia and you are the leader. Lets combine forces, and they made us an offer we could not refuse. David i believe they offer you 5. 7 billion dollars. You did not own all 5. 7 yourself. I guess you had investors and other people. Mark it was about 33 percent. The way it was structured, it ended up being taxable. It turned out well. David you bought the Dallas Basketball team, the mavericks, for roughly 280 million. What compelled you to buy a Basketball Team . Mark 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 of the nba. David heres a question ive always had why is it you had the foresight or how did you have the foresight to sell the yahoo stock at a time when markets were going up, people not yahoo was going to be going up forever . You sold your stock and cashed out before yahoo went down by 90 . Mark i actually hedged it. I watched complete Industries Just skyrocket and then collapse. When Dell Computer went public, there were 10 other pc companies that crashed and burned. I made money going up and made money shorting them on the way down. I was very clear to Goldman Sachs at the time that i wanted to do a hedge. The first thing i did, because i had a sixmonth moratorium where i could not do anything, so i took literally almost every penny i had 20something Million Dollars and but puts on an internet index, and i lost all my money on that hedge. Literally just all gone, which was good because that got me to the point where yahoo was still be high flyer, and i sold cover calls and box puts over the next three years, and that hedge saved me and actually made me money. David you lost the first 20 million . Ark yup david what did your wife say . Mark i was not married at the time. It was timed out right. Even though i lost money on that i already knew based on what the yahoo stock was, how i was going to be able to sell calls on my yahoo stock and use on theney to buy puts yahoo stock and 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 and a lot of money. Today, it is a fraction of what its worth. What compelled you to buy a Basketball Team . Mark i have always been a basketball junkie as long as i can remember. I was a season ticket holder, and during that time when i owned season tickets, they were up. They were voted the worst professional sports franchise of the 1990s, and i will never forget, it was the 19992 thousand season opener, and we are undefeated, right . Im excited to go to the game. It wasnt a sellout. I had just sold broadcasting. Com, and i thought i could do better than this, and it dawned on me i can put my money where my mouth is finally, in latejust say it, but october when the concept first came up, it took until january 4 to close the deal. Honestly, i did not even care about price. They told me, heres the price, and i said yes. I realized i still had my hedge on for yahoo and i still benefited when yahoo stocks went up. There were days when i remember being on the team bus in january talking to the coaches, and it was like, why did you spend so much money . This is the worst franchise in all the nba. The revenues are lower than everyone else. Im like, let me just show you the price of yahoo it went up 200 today, and that paid for the whole thing to come whole thing. David do you work out with the players, or do they not like you to do that . Up until this season, i would go on the home games. Theres nothing crazier to me as a basketball junkie exciting than to have an arena and you are out there shooting, and there were a lot of times over the years where i would play one on one with the players or shoot for money with the players or shoot 3s. David when you play with them, they dont ease up a little bit to let you win . Arc no, hell no. No, hell no. On the other side of it, they never hearin, i will the end of it. David you have been fined a lot the league, maybe more than any owner, for criticizing referees. What was that about . Did you want attention or you could not constrain yourself . Mark because i wanted to improve the league. When i got to the league, they did not know what the product was. I thought we sold basketball, and i was clear that we dont sell basketball, we sell experiences. You think about the sporting events you have gone to, you dont remember the dunks, the jumpers. You remember who you were with. The first time a parent took you, the first time you went with your end for the time you had your buddys Bachelor Party or a first date there. The nbi did not realize thats what we sold. It took a lot of aggression, i guess, from both sides, a lot of going back and forth with then commissioner david stern, but to while he had to find 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 did not really appreciate it. David in the early days, you were a very young owner. Now you have been an owner for 20 years. Do you get people now listening to you more than they did 20 years ago . Mark like you said, im one of the longerterm owners. I will still raise hell and speak up, but now they are kind of used to be. A lot of things have changed, if its how we approach officiating to how we market our game to for broadcast. Theres just so much that 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, or you think it can be done better . Mark it is shocking how well it has gone. I mean, theres so much risk to bringing such a large group of people, thousands of people to have in one area and zero cases . That is stunning. Stunning. Literally, we were concerned about what might happen. Primarily, youre talking about a population of twentysomethings , and as you can see outside the bubble, twentysomethings in any city are not the most conscientious when it comes to wearing masks, social distancing, and other protocols. To players and staff and disney and the nba, to their credit, everybody has been really, really careful. David dirt and of its key Dirk Nowitzki was one of your star players for a long time. You got another couple of stars, one of them you got from the new york knicks, in a trade President Trump committed you on, as i recall. Let me ask you this when are you going to recruit more jewish basketball players in the nba . Mark i dont care if they are from mars. Just what ever, ever works. I just want to win. David behind you it looks like is a replica of a Basketball Championship trophy. Mark thats not a replica. Thats the real deal. David are you hopeful of getting another one someday . Mark this one is over 10 years old. Larry obrien back there needs some friends. Of itl is to come out better and stronger. David when the smithsonian does reopen eventually, will people be required to wear masks . Everybody is going to be required to wear masks unless you have a medical issue. I think our job, first and foremost, is to keep staff safe and the visitors safe. David what about the lessons you have learned . What lessons have you personally learned and how youre going to change your life as a result of all this . One of the Big Questions is that i left my fingerprints i dont have to have my figure print on everything. I have good people. I used to think that i had to be there. I dont always have to be there. The other thing i learned is the fragility of human life and the fragility of fear in this country. The dual pandemics of the virus and racism have inspired me even more to sort of struggle to help a country understand itself better and to find a country that is freer and fairer. Much of anhave very everyman image where you are like an average joe. You are a basketball fan, but the truth is have a lot of technology background, and a lot of sophisticated financial background, so you have not kind of portrayed that the way you know, bill gates is seen as a technology guy and jeff bezos is, but you have a lot of technology knowledge, but you dont advertise as much, but clearly, you know the technology. Mark it became clear to me that when it came to technology, there were two types of people. There are the people who created the technology and then there was everybody else, and i was tied with everybody else in terms of knowledge of any technology that came out, and if i put in the time and the effort to learn about that technology, no matter what it was, i was going to move ahead of the 99 , maybe never catch the people who created the test, but i would be ahead of everybody else, and that has always been my mantra, and i try to stick to that today. David as you are talking to us today, you have many different businesses, but you have a big investment business, and you have said publicly that you are a gigantic investor in amazon and netflix and other companies. Do you have advisors that help advise you or make your own decisions. Mark pretty much make my own decisions. I used to trade a lot. I used to be very active as a traitor, and back in the 1990s and early 2000s, there was a lot less money chasing more stock, and now theres a lot more money chasing fewer stocks. Its harder to trade and be successful, so i just stick to a company i believe in. I have owned netflix since it was 50. Ive got some scattered things beyond that that i have owned over the years, but i no longer trade. That said, inflation of gives us assets tailwind. David you have said cobit has changed the world in terms of opportunities. It has obviously hurt people but it has also helped people who are entrepreneurial. You have said this is a good time to figure out new businesses. Is that a fair statement . Mark it is so unfortunate, but its true. So many Small Businesses are closing. So many Retail Stores are closing. Know, goingou bankrupt. Companies that are unable to transition to selling digitally or really taking full advantage of ecommerce are struggling. Big Companies Really are not sure about how to protect legacy businesses. That type of uncertainty creates a lot of opportunity, and combine that with people becoming far more comfortable with purchasing online and living a digital lifestyle. I think theres a lot of unique opportunities that are available to people who are creative, who have a vision of the future. I think in 10, 15, 20 years, we will look back and there will be 10, 20, 30 worldclass companies created by people we think are crazy right now. David you had a relationship with from sapphire at one point, i think when he was first thinking of running. 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. Hes not a traditional politician, and he says whats on his mind, and that got picked up everywhere, and i became his new best friend. He was calling me all the time. Just, you know, thats who he is. I said one day that i did not think he was qualified and it was all downhill from there. David he never invited you to the white house . Mark he actually 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. In fact, you had a poster look at it. Why did you decide not to run for president this time . Mark primarily because my family said no. Given the nastiness of politics right now and just the hate and the social media and destructiveness, your family has got to really be up for it. That was the primary reason. The secondary reason was in the polling that i did do, i could not get more than 25 of the vote. I could dominate with independents, but i could not pull enough publicans were democrats from biden or trump. Republicans or democrats. David would you consider running in the future . Mark i hope not. Things are so partisan now. Independent who is not dogmatic about anything except serving the American People that the timing may not have been good, but it is not my ultimate dream job. David somebody watching this says they want to be like mark cuban. What would you say are the one or two or three traits that are necessary to be a successful leader . Mark find something you love to do and be great at it. Most people, the one thing in li