Some ideas are born on Ivy League campuses. Another one is California Pizza Kitchen.
That’s where Mark Cuban and his college friend Todd Wagner were having lunch and talking about Indiana University basketball in 1995. They live in Dallas and had to listen to the game over the phone with someone in Bloomington, Indiana.
“There has to be a way you can listen to Indiana University basketball over the Internet,” Cuban recalled the two talking during a master class course released Thursday.
This idea blossomed into Broadcast.com, one of the first streaming platforms of its kind. Cuban and Wagner sold the company to Yahoo in 1999 for $5.7 billion in stock. It remains Cuban’s most lucrative entrepreneurial endeavor, surpassing the sale of his first company, the software business MicroSolutions, in 1990 for $6 million.
Broadcast.com’s success may be related, at least in part, to Cuba’s direct and inexpensive marketing strategy. Currently, streaming videos requires an internet connection and a monthly subscription. In the late 1990s, Mr. Cuban spent hours in his AOL-like virtual chat rooms convincing people to buy the right modem and download the right software.
“If it was exciting for me to listen to those games, it should be exciting for every Hoosiers fan in the world, and of course it’s true for every sports fan in the world,” Cuban said. Told.
A month later, Cuban said he had convinced 1,000 people to stream on Broadcast.com. The company went public three years later.
He said Cuban still avoids spending money on advertising and marketing. Instead, he promotes his company by contacting journalists, giving interviews on podcasts and advertising through his social media accounts.
His pharmaceutical company, Cost Plus Drugs, has spent $0 on advertising since its founding in 2022, and says, “My approach to marketing and advertising is how much less can I spend to increase sales?” “You have to think about whether you can get away with it,” he said.
Another reason Broadcast.com worked so well was luck, Cuban said. Skill and strategy can help you build enough wealth to live a comfortable life, but becoming a millionaire requires luck, he has previously said.
“I had to make friends with the right people and I had to start a company in the technology industry at a time when the stock market for Internet stocks was skyrocketing,” Cuban said during the Master Class course. Ta. “All these things needed to happen for me to become a millionaire.”
Disclosure: CNBC owns exclusive off-network cable rights to “Shark Tank,” on which Mark Cuban appears as a panelist.
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