NBA team owner and businessman MARK CUBAN dispenses financial wisdom.

By J. Louise Larson
PHOTOGRAPHY: TIM HEITMAN/GETTY IMAGES

Mark Cuban’s something of an iconoclast iconoclast.

The colorful and controversial owner of the Dallas Mavericks, he is a self-made billionaire whose entrepreneurial X-ray vision brought him out ahead of the dot-com bust. When Forbes ranked him as the 428th richest person in the world in 2006, his net worth was valued at $1.8 billion.

Cuban has a portfolio of dizzying diversity and a knack for being in the right place at the right time. His skill is reminiscent of the Kenny Rogers song, “The Gambler”—he knows when to hold ‘em, fold ‘em, walk away and when to run. It’s a gift he honed early, in his first real entrepreneurial adventure. When he was 12 and living in his native Pittsburgh, the goal of scoring some great shoes led to a gig selling garbage bags.

“My dad’s poker buddies set it up,” he recalls. “I don’t remember my clients, although someone did tell me last month that she remembers her family buying garbage bags from me when she was a kid.”

Hawking refuse receptacles taught Cuban something more important than how to make a buck. “The job did give me confidence. I remember thinking that if I can do this now, I can do anything in the business world,” he says.

Cuban graduated high school early and earned a business degree from Indiana University at Bloomington in 1981. After moving to Dallas, he worked in a variety of jobs—everything from bartending to sales—and eventually landed in a field that was about to explode: computer software and Internet technologies. He co-founded MicroSolutions in 1983 and sold the company to CompuServe in 1990 for $6 million. In 1995, he co-founded Broadcast.com, the leading provider of multimedia and streaming video for the Internet, and sold it to Yahoo! just prior to the dot-com bust for more than $5 billion in stock in 1999. That was the year the Guinness Book of World Records cited Cuban for making the largest e-Commerce purchase ever by buying a Gulfstream V business jet over the Internet for a cool $40 million.

He bought a controlling interest in the Dallas Mavericks from Ross Perot, Jr., for $285 million in January of 2000 and immediately implemented his marketing genius and reputation as, well, a business maverick.

Never one to shy away from technology, Cuban makes his e-mail public, and his blog, blogmaverick.com, is pure Cuban, a place for him to talk about the technologies, as well as interact with Mavericks fans. “I don’t spend a ton of time on the blog,” he says. “But it lets me get things off my chest.”

Cuban launched HDNet, an all high-definition television network on DirecTV, in September 2001. “People told me I was crazy,” he says. “People said that the TVs were expensive and always would be. I knew that things can change very quickly.”

Cuban’s vision of the future is one where HDTVs play a front-and-center role in domestic life.

“HDTVs will get bigger and cheaper,” Cuban predicts. “In three years, a 70-inch flat-screen will be $1,499. In six years, 100-inch flat-screens will be the norm in large homes. Soon, we will replace our TVs as often as we replaced our PCs.”

Described as a David among Goliaths, Cuban’s not afraid of bucking the establishment. Investing in Landmark Theatres, Magnolia Pictures, 2929 Entertainment and other entertainment ventures with business partner Todd Wagner, Cuban pursued his idea to release movies in several formats.

Always an innovator, he looked for ways to use a single ad campaign to market related products at the same time as the movie. Today, movie fans can walk out of the theater and purchase a movie poster and a T-shirt. He provides incentives for patrons—like soundtrack downloads—and has tested avant-garde revenue avenues, such as selling movies loaded onto portable USB drives.

Often disdainful of the status quo, Cuban can come across as a provocateur, but he says that’s not what he’s going for.

“I just try to put myself in my customers’ shoes,” Cuban says. “As a consumer myself, I know that releasing movies on DVD, HDNet, as well as in theaters, is common sense. The fact that theaters have banded together to exclude our movies did not give me enough reason not to give consumers what they want.”

His entertainment interests have led to roles in producing multiple entertainment vehicles such as the critically received Good Night, and Good Luck, Akeelah and the Bee and The Jacket, as well as Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.

He has also added family to his accomplishments, marrying advertising executive Tiffany Stewart in 2000, and celebrating the birth of his daughter in 2002. Mark Cuban’s known for his generosity—like when it’s used to build fan loyalty on Mavericks Chalupa Day (if the Mavs score 100 points, free chalupas all around).

But Cuban’s philanthropy often flies under the radar. “Other than the Fallen Patriot Fund, a requirement of any philanthropic work I do is that my name not be made public,” he says.

The Fallen Patriot Fund of the Mark Cuban Foundation places grants into the hands of families of U.S. military personnel who were killed or seriously injured in Iraq. By December of last year, $1.9 million had been disbursed among 111 families. When asked about the project, Cuban says he is grateful for the bravery of the men and women who risk their lives for freedom.

“I count my blessings every day,” he says. “I refuse to take anything for granted, and the Fallen Patriot Fund gives me the opportunity to give something back.”