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  • If you have ever watched shark tank, then you know who this guy is.

  • Everyone loves him and wants to work with him because compared to other sharks, this

  • guy has more money than you can imagine.

  • Moreover, having him on board can be a big advantage.

  • However, if you take a look at how exactly he made his billions, you will realize that

  • he got pretty lucky.

  • I am not really a big believer in luck, but when it comes to Mark Cuban, it's fascinating.

  • That's probably why he said: “ to become a billionaire, you have got to get lucky.

  • But a multi-millionaire?

  • No problem!

  • Cuban had an entrepreneurial spirit since the beginning.

  • He started selling garbage bags at the age of 12 to pay for a pair of basketball sneakers.

  • Taught disco dancing and ended up opening his bar back then when he was in university.

  • Nonetheless, the first real business that he started was MicroSolutions after getting

  • fired twice.

  • Micro solutions was a computer-based company, they resold products, software and were pc

  • consultants.

  • In 7 years, Cuban grew the company to 30 million dollars in revenue and sold it for a total

  • sum of 6 million dollars to ComputerServe which was a bigger computer company.

  • That was basically all that Mark wanted, at least at that time, because he took that money

  • and retired.

  • He bought a lifetime pass on American Airlines and lived the life of a party boy, traveling

  • to every country he ever could.

  • Five years later, he probably got bored and wanted to get back in the game.

  • So, together with his friend, they founded AudioNet in 1995.

  • The idea behind it was to broadcast sports events and radio shows on the internet so

  • that everyone could watch them from anywhere in the world.

  • Soon later they realized, they can broadcast anything from presidential nominating conventions

  • to Victoria Secret fashion shows.

  • That's why in 1998 they renamed it to broadcast.com which gave a better idea of what the company

  • represented.

  • Company's name is the first thing people notice, so it is essential to get it right.

  • However, today when you want to register your domain, its most probably taken because people

  • start websites every single day all around the world.

  • That's why I use hover, with over 400 domain extensions, you will most certainly find what

  • you are looking for, especially since they made the process of registering a domain so

  • simple that you can do it with few easy clicks.

  • Anyways, more on that later.

  • Remember, it was all during the period of the dot-com bubble when most of these tech

  • companies were hyped and overpriced.

  • People simply dumped money into every crap that came out thinking that it's going to

  • become the next multi-billion dollar company.

  • All you needed to do is to launch a website, do some fancy things and you would have investors

  • knocking into your door.

  • That was precisely the moment when broadcast.com went public.

  • The stock price soared 250% on its first day of trading, and the company was worth a billion

  • dollar, bring up Cuban's net worth to 300 Million dollars.

  • It seems like they hit the lottery, but that was just the beginning.

  • Because a year later just before the dot-com bubble burst and the entire market crashed.

  • When dozens if not hundreds of internet companies went bankrupt, Yahoo which was the internet

  • giant at its time as Facebook is today suddenly decided to acquire broadcast.com for 5.7 billion

  • dollars in stocks.

  • It was the largest single e-commerce transaction, increasing Cuban's net worth to 1.7 billion

  • dollars.

  • As Cuban himself said: we hit the lottery twice!

  • Because he realized that, wait for a second, its a bubble, therefore, the market is going

  • to crash soon.

  • So he quickly sold his Yahoo shares and diversified his wealth into many different businesses,

  • and that's precisely when the market went down.

  • And guess what happened to broadcast.com.

  • Exactly, It went bankrupt, and Yahoo shut it down in 2002.

  • It's easy to look back and criticize Yahoo for such a bad acquisition, but the internet

  • was at its initial state, and it was tough to predict which companies will service.

  • Even things such as registering a domain or starting a website were pretty tricky.

  • However, today with HOVER who gladly sponsored this video, you can do it easily in a few

  • minutes.

  • Furthermore, with such a great customer support team, you will never get confused with anything,

  • and the good news is that - you get 10%off using the link hover.com/proactivethinker.

  • Make sure you give them a try, that will really help the channel.

  • Thanks for watching and I will catch you in the next one.

If you have ever watched shark tank, then you know who this guy is.

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