Dallas Mavericks Owner Mark Cuban on The David Rubenstein Show

[Music] [Applause] this is uh my kitchen table and also my filing system over much of the past three decades i've been an investor the highest calling of mankind i've often thought was private equity and then i started interviewing while i watch your interview i know how to do some interviews i've learned in doing my interviews how leaders make it to the top i asked him how much he wanted he said 250 i said fine i didn't negotiate with him i did no due diligence do i have something i'd like to sell and how they stay there how does it feel to get up in the morning and know that 330 million americans want to know the state of your health that day i'm 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've never actually had the chance to do so but mark cuban is somebody that did that at an early age as a young man he bought an nba basketball team and he won a national championship with it and because of that i've always admired his sports prowess his knowledge and his business acumen my children always told me that you've done okay but mark cuban is a lot better mark let me ask you this um you have uh an early age made some money and then you made enormous amount of money when you sold broadcast.com to yahoo made you know over a billion dollars and then you bought a basketball team then you have a shark tank uh series that's very successful one emmy award you're well regarded by entrepreneurs all over the world presidents of the united states call you for advice what is wrong with this life i mean there's something about your life that isn't perfect i have kids [Laughter] i have a 16 year old daughter and a 14 year old daughter that's all any parent needs to hear it doesn't matter what you have or what you don't 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 for their whims it's you know being a parent is the challenge and um it's very humbling as everybody knows well i have three children as well and i agree so you grew up in pittsburgh but not from a wealthy in a wealthy family is that right no my dad did upholstery on cars my mom did our jobs you went to university of pittsburgh i was always into business just how i've been since as long as i can remember and my high school wouldn't let me take business classes and so as a junior as a sophomore junior there were only senior level economics classes and so just despite them i started taking classes at night my junior year and then dropped out of high school for my senior year went to the university of pittsburgh and took classes there but then you went to indiana university uh why did you go to indiana because pitt didn't have a full undergrad business program and i saw a list of the top 10 undergrad programs and picked out the cheapest one and it was indiana and i went there sight unseen now when you were there you started a bar and it was a very successful bar well kind of successful so my i always like my parents to pay for my school my dad sent me 20 bucks a month and i had to figure out how to pay for things one way or the other um sometimes i was able to get scholarships other times you know just saving money from jobs i had other times it was a hustle so when you graduated you moved to dallas why did you move to dallas i had a bunch of buddies down there that were living that had gone to indiana and moved to dallas and i was talking to one my buddy greg shipper on the phone and he's like mark the weather's great the women are beautiful the economy is good i'm like wait back up [Laughter] i'm coming but you ultimately started a kind of a technology consulting firm is that what it was well what happened was when i first got there and i was sleeping in the what we called it the hill hotel with my five roommates um i got a job at night working as a bartender slash barback and then during the day i applied for jobs and finally got a job selling software at this company called your business software which i did for nine months until i got fired and so i started my own company micro solutions which at the time was uh when we started was just a pc consulting company and you ultimately sold that for a couple million dollars or so well i sold it seven years later for six million dollars of which a million went to all the employees two million went to a partner that i brought in and two million came to me and then some taxes all right so you got two million dollars which is uh kings ransom in those days for somebody your age right yeah i was you know 29 what actually by the time i closed i was 30 and so i i just thought i was the luckiest guy and the richest guy in the world this was 1989. in my mind i was just going to take time off my driving force was i wanted to retire by the time i was 35 because you know one thing that my dad had always really you know taught me and really emphasized to me is the one asset you can ever own or get back is time and so you know enjoy the time while you're young take advantage of it you know his job was back breaking he lost an eye in an accident at work you know he did upholstery and a staple broke and and and destroyed his eye his right eye and and so you know and 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 and so when i you know my goal was to retire so i can just enjoy my life and so i we sold micro solutions and i literally retired by the lifetime pass on american airlines just traveled the world and partied like a rock star um and you know for the next few years so after you uh 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 i guess a kind of streaming process is that right by the time i sold micro solutions you know i was really tech heavy i mean i we were one of the largest systems integrators i taught myself the program uh we did local and wide area networks so i got to understand networking and technology really well i made a lot of money actually afterwards just trading technology stocks because back then it was so much easier you know i'd call up rick sherlin who had goldman sachs or you know lee ainsley before he was even at maverick capital and we would just swap ideas and i knew more about all the details of tech and what worked and what didn't 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 wagner who i knew from indiana he actually came to me with the idea he was like this new internet thing you understand technology is there any way that we can listen to indiana basketball um using the internet and i was like that's a cool idea this was 1995 early 1995 and i'm like let's try to figure it out and literally starting with a a packard bell pc that i bought for like four grand three or four grand at um best buy or something or copy usa in the second bedroom of my house i just sat there and tried to figure out how we would do this and it went from you know 10 people the first week to a hundred to a thousand to thousands and we knew we had something within 30 days but you took the company public is that right yeah july 18th in 1998 and the stock zoomed uh i hate to use the word zoom but uh it went up a lot yeah the largest one-day largest first day ipo bump in the history of the stock market at the time right so did you say i'm going to build this company forever and just keep growing or does somebody come along and say i'll buy it from you well the goal was to dominate because you know we called it net casting at the time and this was pre youtube and literally we were the dominant force in streaming you know we had rights to all the major sports leagues we had you know hundreds of radio stations um by 1999 we were doing video as well and we bought 10 of what turned out to be lionsgate studios we bought you know video rights to all these libraries and so you know we were making acquisitions we really were on a path to dominate um and we had um yahoo had invested in us the previous year and came to us and said you know we want to buy you we need to get into multimedia and you're the leader let's combine forces and they made us an offer we couldn't refuse so they offered i think roughly five or you ultimately the deal 5.7 billion dollars in 5.7 so uh you didn't own off 5.7 billion yourself i guess you had some outside investors and other people but you had a lot with about 33 of it and was taxable the way it was structured it ended up being taxable on the on the gains but um it yeah it turned out to it turned out well you bought the dallas uh basketball team the mavericks for roughly 280 million dollars what propelled you to buy a basketball team i remember being on the team bus um in january talking to the coaches and like why did you spend so much money this is the worst franchise in all the mba here's a question i've always had why is it that you had the foresight 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 uh forever you sold your yahoo stock and cashed out before yahoo went down by 90 well i actually hedged it right so remember i mentioned that i traded stocks between the time i saw my first company did really really really well and i watched complete industries just skyrocket and then collapse you know there were there were companies when dell computer went public there there were 10 other pc companies that crashed and burn i'd seen it multiple times and i made money going up and i made money shorting them on the way down and so i was very clear to goldman sachs at the time that i wanted to to do a hedge and so the first thing i did because i had a six month moratorium where i couldn't do anything and so i took literally almost every penny i had 20 some million dollars um and bought um puts on an index an internet index and i lost all my money on that on that hedge literally just all gone which was good because that got me to the point where yahoo was still a high flyer and i sold covered calls and bought puts over the next three years and that hedge saved me and actually made me money but you you lost the first 20 million yep what did your wife say oh no i wasn't married at the time and it was it was you know but the whole that it was timed out right so i got through the six months even though i lost the money on that hedge we i already knew approximately you know based off of where the yahoo stock was how i'd be able to what the volatility levels were how i was going to be able to sell calls on my yahoo stock and use that money to buy um buy puts on um the yahoo stock and when the stock collapsed my puts were worth a fortune you bought the dallas uh basketball team the mavericks for roughly 280 million dollars uh which at the time was thought to be a lot of money today it's a fraction of what it's worth why what propelled you to buy a basketball team so i've always been a basketball junkie as long as i can remember and so i was the dallas maverick season ticket holder and during that time that i owned season tickets they were awful i mean all the 90s they were voted the worst professional sports franchise of the 90s and i'll never forget it was the 99 2000 season opener opener and we're undefeated right i mean i'm a season ticket holder i'm excited to go to the game it wasn't a sellout there was no energy in the crowd and you know i just sold broadcast.com and i thought i can do better than this and then it dawned on me wait i can put my money where my mouth is finally and you know not just say it but inquire about buying it and from late october when it first the concept first came up um it took till january 4th to close the deal and honestly i didn't even care about price they told me here's the price i said yes because realized that i still had my hedge on for yahoo and i still benefited when yahoo stock went up so there were days still then when this is before the internet bubble collapse i remember being on the team bus um in january talking to the coaches and like why did you spend so much money this is the worst franchise in all the mba the you know the revenues are lower than everybody else i'm like let me you know let me just show you the price of yahoo it went up 100 or 200 today and that paid for the whole team so when you uh when you buy a basketball team you get to play with the players can you work out with them or they don't really i like you to do that up until obviously the changes with this season before every home game i would go i go on the court and get shots up there's nothing you know crazier and to me as a basketball junkie exciting than to have you know an arena and you're out there shooting and you know there were a lot of times over the years where i'd play one-on-one with the players or i'd shoot for money with the players and shoot threes and well they don't let they don't ease up but when you're when you're playing with them they don't ease up a little bit to let you win because you're the owner no hell no these are you know because realize the other side of it if i beat them they'll never hear the end of it and they you know there's just no way no way now in your early years as an owner you're owning a team now for 20 years in the early years of the owner and maybe even recently you've been um fined a lot by the league maybe more than any other owner for criticizing the referees criticizing the league what was all that about did you do that on purpose because you wanted attention or did you just couldn't constrain yourself no it was because i wanted to improve the league i mean when i first got to the nba they didn't know what product what their product was they always thought that we sold basketball and i was very clear to them that we don't sell basketball we sell experiences you know if you think about the the sporting events that you've gone to you know you don't remember the score the touchdowns the dunks the jumpers you you remember who you were with you know the first time a parent took you the first time you went with you know your friends or you know the time you you know you had your back your buddy's bachelor party or your first date there the mba didn't realize that's what we sold and so you know it took a lot of you know aggression i guess from both sides you know a lot of a lot of um going back and forth with then commissioner david stern you know but to his credit um while he had to find me you know privately he would agree with me on a lot of those things you know and so to me i was just being a good partner even though a lot of my partners didn't really appreciate it well in the early days you were a very young owner now you've been owner for 20 years you may be one of the more experienced owners do you get people now listening to you more than they did 20 years ago yeah they're used to me like you said i'm one of the longer term owners and so you know i'll still raise hell and and speak up but now they're kind of used to me and they've changed a lot a lot of things have changed you know whether how we approach officiating to how we market our games to what we do for broadcasts um there's just so much that has changed over the 20 years for the better now the nba is playing uh in uh bubble in orlando how is that working out and are you um surprised that it's worked out reasonably well or you think it can be done better or what's your review it's it's shocking how well it's gone i mean there's so much risk you know just bringing such a large group of people thousands of people together in one area um and you know and to have zero cases that's stunning stunning i mean literally we you know we were concerned about what might happen you know because primarily you're talking about a population of 20-somethings and as you can see outside the bubble just you know people 20-somethings in any city they're not the most conscientious when it comes to wearing masks and so following social distancing and other protocols and so you know to to our players and staff and disney and the mba to their credit everybody has been really really careful and it's paid off dirk nowinski was one of your star players for one a long time a european you have a couple other europeans now who are stars as well um one of them that you traded you got from the new york knicks i think uh and a trade that president trump uh commended you on yes i recall so um let me ask you this though when are you gonna recruit more jewish basketball players in the nba yeah i i i don't care if they're from mars right you know if if they were kippah during the game i'm fine with that too i don't care you know just whatever ever ever works i just want to win so behind you it looks like as one of the a replica of a basketball championship trophy not a replica that's that's the real deal are you hopeful and uh of getting another one someday this one is almost 10 years old so larry o'brien back there needs some need some friends you know you have a very much of an every man image uh where you're like an average joe you're a basketball fan and so forth but the truth is you have a lot of technology background a lot of uh sophisticated financial backgrounds so you haven't kind of portrayed that the way you know bill gates is seen as a technology guy and maybe jeff bezos is but you have a lot of technology knowledge which you don't kind of advertise as much but clearly you you know the technology working at the time right when i worked at your business software before i got fired it became very clear to me that when it came to technology there were two people two types of people there are the people who created the technology and then there was everybody else and i was tied for with everybody else in terms of knowledge of any new technology that came out and if i put in the time and you know put in 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 the person or the people who created the tech but i'd be ahead of everybody else and that's always been my mantra and and i try to stick to that today so as you uh are talking to us today you you have many different businesses but you have a big investment business and you've said publicly that you're a gigantic investor in amazon and netflix and other companies and do you just have advisors that help advise you on these or you just make your own decisions pretty much make my own decisions yeah i mean i used to trade as i mentioned um i used to trade a lot i used to be very very active as a trader and you know back you know back in the 90s and early 2000s there was a lot less money chasing more stocks and now there's a lot more money chasing fewer stocks so um it's harder to trade and be successful so i just stick to the companies i believe in you know i've owned netflix since it was 50 and and amazon i was buying between 500 and 700 and actually bought some more in the high thousands just under 2 000 um but and i've got some scattered things you know beyond that that i've owned over the years that i've held on to but i i don't i no longer trade you know that fed put is strong that you know that fed um inflation of financial assets kind of gives us a tailwind now covet you have said has changed the world in terms of opportunities uh it's obviously hurt people but it's obviously helped people who are entrepreneurial so you've said this is a good time to actually figure out new businesses new areas of business is that fair statement yeah you know it's so unfortunate but it's true i mean you know we've heard warren buffett say you know buy when there's blood in the streets and it's almost analogous here so many small businesses are closing so many you know retail stores are closing malls are are you know going bankrupt um companies that are unable to transition to to selling digitally or really taking full advantage of e-commerce or struggling big companies don't understand don't really aren't sure about how to protect our 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 there's a lot of unique opportunities that are available to people who who who are creative who have a vision for the future i think you know 10 15 20 years we'll look back and they'll be 10 20 30 world-class companies that were created by people who we probably think are thinking are crazy right about now so you uh had a relationship with president trump at one point i think when he was first thinking of running this was after he announced and thinking he had no chance to win whatsoever um i made a public statement saying i think donald trump's the best thing to ever happen to politics he's not a traditional politician and he says what's on his mind and that got picked up everywhere and i became his new best friend and so he would call me all the time all the time um and just you know that's who he is until i said one day that i didn't think he was qualified and then it was all downhill from there so he never invited you to the white house no he actually he did recently but um you know everything donald trump touches you know turns into a mess so i didn't accept the offer now you've said you might consider running for president in fact you had a pollster look at it why did you decide not to run for president this time primarily because my family said no i mean you can't you know given the nastiness of politics um right now and just the hate and the the social media destructiveness you know your family has got to really be up for it um and so that was the primary reason and the secondary reason was in in the polling that i did do i couldn't get more than 25 of the votes i could dominate with independence but i couldn't you know pull enough republicans or democrats from biden or trump would you consider running in the future for president i hope not you know the only reason i considered it now is just because things are so partisan and people are putting party over country and i thought as an independent and somebody who you know was not dogmatic about anything for that matter except trying to serve the american people that the timing might have been good um but it's not my ultimate dream job so if somebody's watching this and says all right i want to be like mark cuban i want to be a leader in many different areas be successful what would you say are the one or two or three traits that are necessary to be a successful leader find something that you love to do and be great at it you know most people the one thing in life you can control is your effort and most people don't put in the effort they think it comes to them and it doesn't as you know you know there's there's lots of competition on no matter what you choose and you have just got to put in the efforts so behind you it looks like as one of the a replica of a basketball championship trophy not a replica that's that's the real deal all right that's the that's the the real deal all right so you look like you need another one to match it up you're are you hopeful and uh of getting another one someday oh absolutely you know hopefully this year um but yeah that's the goal with the mavs and you know there's there's one winner and 29 people tied for last place in the nba and this one is almost 10 years old so larry o'brien back there needs some need some friends

Channel: David Rubenstein

Views: 122,022

Keywords: Bloomberg, nba, dallas mavs, mavericks, dallas mavericks, mark cuban, shark tank, shark investor

Id: KzYzBpW9aq0

Length: 23min 56sec (1436 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 27 2020