ECO 254 – Blackmer Small Business Reports – Biography of Entrepreneur Given Prompt: - If you enjoy reading biographical books, you may obtain credit for ALL 5 SMALL BUSINESS REPORTS by reading one biography on a notable entrepreneur and completing a book report. - Please note that this book MUST be over 100 pages of normal paperback (Amazon Books will be the arbiter of any disputes). - 2 pages Double-Spaced 12 font 1" margins are expected. - This will be due November 12th or the same day as the 4th Small Business Report. It should include the following: -Name, hometown, eduction, professional background (degree, first-job, etc. whatever got them their start), notable positions in their career, and how their career ended. -What are 3 key themes that the entrepreneur/author presents that are the key to success? -What was the greatest challenge the entrepreneur overcame/succumbed to? -Is there an individual the entrepreneur credits with being the leading force being their success (mentor, parents, competitior)? -Do they have a greatest accomplishment? Do they have a greatest regret? -How has reading this book impacted you? Please go into great details. Mark Cuban: The Maverick Billionaire written by Sean Huff Mark Cuban: The Maverick Billionaire written by Sean Huff Mark Cuban is a household name and has been for a number of years now. He owns an NBA team, he’s one of the regular stars of popular ABC Show Shark Tank, and he is opinionated on everything from Major League Baseball to Donald Trump and is willing to share those opinions in a public place. He has a number of biographies written about him, and it is not difficult to Google his name and get thousands of resources for more information about him. Thankfully the biography I selected was clear, concise, and gave me a detailed synopsis of Mark Cuban’s ascent through the business world and his personal life. Born in Pittsburg to a middle class family, Cuban grew up living a very typical life as a young man in America. He was never the most popular, most athletic, or the smartest, but he seemed to have an uncanny vision for himself and his future. Cuban began his college career at the University of Pittsburg before transferring to Indiana where graduated from the business school in 1981. His employment growing up consisted of various odd jobs like running newspapers and selling municipal garbage bags to his neighbors. In college he worked as a dance class instructor and as a bartender. Before graduating he even managed to raise enough money to purchase a bar with friends. After graduating, he found work in Pittsburg and Indiana before leaving those jobs. The reasons behind his leaving usually involved him being slightly too ambitious in an entry-level position at a company. In 1982, he relocated to Dallas and lived in a dilapidated three bedroom apartment with five roommates. He began working as a salesman for a tech company and experienced success, but was fired after an incident of insubordination. He started his own tech company, MicroSolutions, that sold software and offered extensive customer service on their products. With Cuban at the head of this company, it experienced steady growth and success until he sold the business to CompuServe in 1990. He took time off and traveled with his small fortune from his first company, but made his way back into business eventually. Cuban partnered with college friend Todd Wagner and founded AudioNet in 1995. The primary goal of this company was to bring streaming audio (and eventually video) to the internet. This company later transitioned into Broadcast.com and specialized in streaming video. Broadcast.com went public in 1998. The internet bubble pushed their stock price ever higher for the next two years, despite the company never reaching profitability. Finally, it sold to Yahoo in 2000 for five billion dollars in stock. Typically, this would be the end of the story, as Mark Cuban sold his second company and was a billionaire. However, he was not rich in dollars, he was rich in shares of Yahoo that came with the stipulation that he could not sell in the next six months. Now, Cuban’s business savvy mind came in handy here again, as he was not comfortable with his wealth being entirely dependent on Yahoo’s stock price over the next six months. Therefore, he managed to secure an agreement to both sell a call option and buy a put option. This was essentially Cuban hedging against any downward trend in Yahoo’s stock. The downside was obviously him also being forced to sell (at the pre-negotiated call option price) if the price rose above that, but Cuban guessed correctly, and adequately protected himself and his $5 billion in shares from the coming economic downtown that would later be known as the dot com crash. This was without a doubt the most fascinating piece of Cuban’s biography in my eyes. His accurate assessment of the dot com bubble and the associated risks with holding such a large amount in stock of one single company is brilliant in hindsight. One could chalk this up to luck, but Cuban went on to make many more smart, savvy investments in other types of businesses than internet based ones. He moved into television with HDNet (later renamed AXS TV), movies with 2929 Productions and Magnolia Pictures, and movie theaters with Landmark Theatres. Clearly this is not simply luck, but a combination of Cuban’s natural talent, drive to always better himself, and tireless work ethic pushing him to not be complacent even immediately after selling his company for billions of dollars. Cuban does not explicitly give three key themes that attributed to his success, nor does he mention any specific individual that inspired him to where he is today. Instead, the common thread of a philosophy behind Mark Cuban’s success could be summed by the ironic title of the biography. The Maverick Billionaire is an obvious play on words to anyone who is a fan of basketball and realizes that he owns the Dallas Mavericks, but it also clearly has a deeper meaning to me upon finishing his biography. Mark Cuban is different than the 399 others who join him on the Forbes 400 list of American business people. The first chapter quotes “A maverick is defined as ‘a lone dissenter, as an intellectual, an artist, or a politician, who takes an independent stand apart from his or her associates.’ It can also refer to ‘a person pursuing rebellious, even potentially disruptive, policies or ideas.” Cuban fits this description almost ideally. He’s been on Dancing With the Stars with a net worth of 2.4 billion dollars, for no other reason than because he can. He puts his name on only one (the Fallen Patriot Fund) of his countless charities, because he can. He’s attempted to buy MLB franchises in Chicago, Los Angeles, Pittsburg, and New York, even though he has personally claimed that MLB owners would never vote to allow him to buy a franchise, for no reason other than he is capable. These very different circumstances highlight what the theme behind Cuban’s life is. Do things because you can. He has long believed that people, himself included, are capable of great things. It is the same justification for why he decided to allow fans to submit their own ideas when he decided the Mavericks needed a new logo, because he believed regular people would come up with something far better than a company would, because they are capable. Mark Cuban sums up his own philosophy better than I ever could, so I’ll conclude with his own words rather than mine: “I mean, some people can run to freedom, I can sell to freedom. And that’s what I learned when I was a kid. Time and freedom. Those are the ultimate assets, absolutely. My self-fulfillment doesn’t come from the money. It comes from just knowing that intellectually there are no bounds – that’s the number one thing. Nobody’s telling me what to do. Just me doing things because I can.” - Mark Cuban (page 117)
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