Like a true shark, Mark Cuban understands that everyone on the food chain needs to eat. But he doesn’t intend to swim alone. Though he’s amassed an enormous fortune as a billionaire, he also believes in sharing his success with his employees.
“It’s the right thing to do,” Cuban says. After all, no man or shark is an island.
On Tuesday, Cuban noted that whenever he sells a company, he’s careful not to walk away with a huge amount of money: “Every company I’ve sold, I’ve paid a bonus to every employee who’s been with the company for at least one year,” he wrote.
Cuban founded MicroSolutions straight out of college and sold the consulting firm for $6 million in 1990. He said on Twitter that he split 20% of the proceeds among his 80 employees at the time, which would amount to about $15,000 per employee if split evenly, Cuban told CNBC Make It last year.
He then moved on to what would become Broadcast.com, which went public in 1999 and made Cuban a young billionaire after it was acquired by Yahoo. The deal seemed to please his staff, too, as Cuban tweeted that “300 of our 330 employees are now millionaires.”
It only made sense for Cuban to develop his employees alongside him. After all, they were the ones who drove his success. “It’s the right thing to do. Companies aren’t built by one person,” Cuban said. luck As for what motivates him to give his employees a percentage of sales.
The amount of money employees at HDNet (which later became AXS TV) made fell when Cuban sold a majority stake in the company in 2019. “HDNet wasn’t that big,” Cuban tweeted on Tuesday, but noted that he paid employees “20% of what I made.” He added that layoffs were avoided in each sale, except for HDNet.
Cuban stuck to his guns when he sold a majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks last year for about $2 billion before taxes — “the Mavericks weren’t a total exit,” he explained — but it did pay employees more than $35 million.
“I, the Adelson and Dumont families will be issuing each of you a bonus to thank you for all your efforts in making the Mavs a great organization,” he wrote in an email at the time. According to ESPN.com:.
He added that the bonuses would be calculated according to how long employees had worked for the Mavs.
Anyone who’s ever worked in a team, whether it be a basketball team or a consulting group, knows that it’s a collaborative effort that paves the way to success, and Cuban seems to understand that well, so he hands out bonuses accordingly.
