Mark Cuban is an incredibly successful businessman and he sold his first company, MicroSolutions, for $6 million all the way back in 1990. Of that amount, he netted $2 million, and his first big purchase with it was a lifetime pass of American Airlines.
"I traveled so much I knew the American Airlines phone number," Cuban said on the Full Send Podcast. "... I called and I said, 'Do you guys sell lifetime passes?' And they're like, 'Yeah, let us connect you to the air pass department.' And I'm like, 'Thank you very much.' They connected me, they sent me the paperwork and I spent $125K of my $2 million and I got a lifetime pass on American Airlines for me and anybody else to go anywhere we want, First Class for the rest of our lives."
When asked if he still had it, Cuban revealed he had given it away.
"I gave it to a friend," Cuban stated. "My friend has it now because I have a plane."
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That was quite a flex from Cuban at the end there, about just giving away that pass because he has his own plane. He, in fact, owns multiple luxurious private jets now. The first one he purchased was the Gulfstream G550, which cost him $40 million in 1999.
Then after buying the Dallas Mavericks in 2000, Cuban spent $36 million on a Boeing 757-200 to transport his team. The 65-year-old also owned a Boeing 767-200, but it appears that one has now been scrapped.
Mark Cuban Is In The Process Of Another Big Sale
When Cuban sold MicroSolutions for $6 million, I wonder if he imagined he'd ever make a sale one day that would make that amount seem like some spare change. Well, he is in the process of doing that now, with Cuban selling his majority stake in the Mavericks for a valuation in the range of $3.5 billion to the Adelson family.
He purchased the team for $285 million in 2000 and that is quite the return on investment. While he is selling his majority stake, Cuban will keep some shares in the team and is retaining full control of basketball operations. That's quite the deal that he managed to get there.
While Cuban has received his fair share of criticism for the way he has run the Mavericks, the franchise's fortunes really changed once he took over. Under his leadership, they became a perennial contender in the 2000s, after being mired in mediocrity in the 1990s. The Mavericks also made their only two NBA Finals appearances under Cuban, winning it all in 2011.
Mark Cuban's Net Worth
As per Forbes, Cuban now has a net worth of $6.2 billion. For a man who came from a working-class family, that is quite an achievement. Unlike so many billionaires, Cuban was not born into wealth and can take full credit for getting to where he is today.
Shrewd sales like MicroSolutions and then later Broadcast.com, which was acquired by Yahoo for $5.7 billion in 1999, have helped him amass the incredible wealth he has today. Cuban found himself at No. 211 on the Forbes 400 for 2023 and at No. 591 on their Billionaire ranking for 2023.
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