Mark Cuban: From 8-Hour VCR Tapes to $5.7 Billion | Aspire Archives

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Mark Cuban just walked me through the Broadcast.com origin story - and it's even wilder than you think. It started at California Pizza Kitchen. His buddy Todd Wagner wanted to listen to Indiana basketball games in Dallas. Back then? Someone in Bloomington had to put a radio next to a speakerphone. They'd dial in from Dallas. That's how they listened. Mark's a geek. He knows networking. He thinks: there's got to be a better way. So he starts Audio Net in 1995. Nobody's streaming. Nobody. He connects an 8-hour VCR tape to a local radio station board, records it, takes it back to his house, codes it, puts it on the website. Then he goes on Prodigy and CompuServe forums and says "if you want Dallas sports and news, follow these five steps." First day: 10 people. Next day: 100. Next month: 1,000. Six months later: they're doing it live. Here's the moment that got me: Mark has a meeting with everyone and says, "If this works the way I think it'll work, this company is worth $5 billion." Everyone thought he was a moron. "Dude, we'll just turn on the TV." "Dude, I'll just turn on the radio." But Mark saw it. The only media device on your desktop. More bandwidth. Access to everything. Cubs games. Soccer from overseas. 200 CDs from Best Buy encoded into a jukebox. 400+ radio stations. Christmas music on loop all year long. Everything Spotify does now. Everything YouTube does now. They did it in 1995-1999. They sold to Yahoo in 2000 for $5.7 billion. Mark was right. When they went public in July 1998, it was the biggest first-day leap in stock market history. The stock went from $18 to $72, finished at $62.75. Mark was suddenly worth $300 million. They went straight to a bar, turned on CNN, and took a shot every time Broadcast.com got mentioned. Then got back to work the next day. The energy is: broke and happy beats rich and miserable. Time beats money. And when you see the opportunity - you go all in. #podcast #markcuban #Broadcastcom #Entrepreneurship #startupstory #yahoo #ipo #moneymindset #timemanagement