How Mark Cuban went from fired salesman to a $5.7 billion sale

Transcript

This guy's boss fired him for making a sale. 16 years later he sold his company to Yahoo for $5.7 billion. Meet Mark Cubans. In 1982, Mark is sharing a Dallas apartment with five guys looking for a way to get rich. He talks his way into a software sales job, but he knows nothing about software, so he reads a different manual every night. Then he gets a shot at a $15,000 sale, but his boss tells him to stay and open the store. He goes anyway, comes back with the check and is fired on the spot. So he starts his own software company, tells his first customer he's broke and asked for $500 up front. If the software fails, they'll walk their dog. Business is growing until two years in when his secretary steals $83,000 of the $85,000 in the bank. It's devastated, but he rebuilt. And five years later, he sells the company for $6 million. Then a college friend in Dallas misses their old team's games. They aren't on Texas radio, so their only option is calling someone holding a radio to the phone. And it gives Mark an idea. He starts streaming radio online from VCR tapes in his bedroom. People call it crazy, but soon they're streaming live games in video. Investors are desperate to get in. Then in 1998, broadcast.com goes public and the stock triples on day one. Months later, Yahoo buys the company for $5.7 billion. And today, Cuban is worth $6.8 billion.

Transcribed automatically from the video, so small errors are possible.