20VC: Mark Cuban on His Relationship To Wealth and Risk, Why Coming Out of The Pandemic Will Be The Best Time In The History of Mankind To Start A Business & Why Silicon Valley Investors Are Like Old Hollywood
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 4 May 2020
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Mark Cuban is a serial entrepreneur, investor, and owner of the Dallas Mavericks. His career began with his founding of MicroSolutions, a company he went on to sell to CompuServe in 1990. Then in 1995 Mark co-founded Broadcast.com - streaming audio over the internet. In just four short years, Broadcast.com (then Audionet) was sold to Yahoo for $5.6 billion dollars. Following the acquisition in 2000, Mark acquired the Dallas Mavericks where since his taking over they have competed 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. If that was not enough, Mark is also one of ABC's "Sharks" on the hit show Shark Tank.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Mark made his way into the world of technology and startups having been fired from his first job in sales?
2.) How does Mark evaluate his relationship to wealth and money? How has that changed over time? What advice does Mark have to those that tie happiness and money together?
3.) What does Mark think about Silicon Valley investors today? Why does he believe they and the valley are like Hollywood? Why does Mark believe that if the greatest tech companies of today had been started elsewhere, they would be more successful?
4.) How does Mark evaluate his own investing philosophy today? How does Mark think about price and price sensitivity? Why is Mark so keen to have his investment funded from the cashflow of the business? Does this not narrow opportunity and limit upside? How does Mark evaluate risk today?
5.) Why does Mark believe post-COVID is the single greatest time to be an entrepreneur? What advice would he give to an entrepreneur starting their new business in this time? How would Mark go about the re-opening of society post lockdown?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Mark’s Fave Book: Rebooting AI: Building Artificial Intelligence We Can Trust, Healthy Buildings: How Indoor Spaces Drive Performance and Productivity
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Mark and on Twitter here!
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome back. You are listening to the 20 minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and you can see all |
| 0:03.8 | things behind the scenes on Instagram at H. Stebbings, 1996 with two B's. But to the show today, and this |
| 0:09.2 | is what I've wanted to do since I started 20VC, but maybe wasn't sure that I'd get the chance, so I'm |
| 0:13.9 | truly honored to be joined today by the incredible Mark Cuban. Mark is a serial entrepreneur, investor and owner of the Dallas Mavericks. His career began with his |
| 0:21.6 | founding of Micro Solutions, a company he went on to sell to CompuServe in 1990. Then in 1995, Mark co-founded |
| 0:28.1 | broadcast.com, streaming audio over the internet. In just four short years, broadcast.com, then |
| 0:33.9 | AudioNet, was sold to Yahoo for $5.6 billion. |
| 0:41.3 | Following the acquisition in 2000, Mark acquired the Dallas Maverace, where since his taking over, they've competed in the NBA finals for the first time in franchise history |
| 0:45.4 | in 2006, and becoming NBA world champions in 2011. |
| 0:49.7 | They are currently listed as one of Forbes's most valuable franchises in sports. |
| 0:53.8 | And if that wasn't enough, |
| 0:54.9 | Mark is also one of ABC's sharks on the hit show Shark Tank. I'd also want to say a huge thank you to |
| 1:00.0 | Kim at Cluster for providing some fantastic questions suggestions today. But before we move into the show |
| 1:04.6 | stay, I wanted to take a moment to mention HelloSign, a great example of a company that found success |
| 1:09.0 | in building a product focused on user experience. |
| 1:11.6 | HelloSign is an effortless e-signature solution used by millions to securely send and request legally valid digital signatures and agreements. |
| 1:18.6 | They raised a total of $16 million in funding and recently got acquired by Dropbox for an impressive $230 million. |
| 1:25.6 | Check out HelloSign.com forward slash 20VC to join the thousands of companies and founders |
| 1:31.4 | who value fast, secure and simple e-signatures. |
| 1:35.0 | And also, everyone knows that building great mobile products is really hard and it takes |
| 1:38.9 | time. |
| 1:39.5 | With Headspin, product, dev and QA teams know the exact behavior and performance of any mobile app running on |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Twenty Minute VC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Twenty Minute VC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.