This Billionaire Turned 91% of Employees into Millionaires When He Sold a Company for $5.7 Billion

When others sell a company for billions, they buy a yacht. When Mark Cuban sold a company, 300 employees bought homes.

In 1999, he sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo for a staggering $5.7 billion in stock. But the top story beyond the jaw-dropping sale valuation was what came next: 91% of his employees, 300 out of 330, were made millionaires.

Why? Because Cuban, in the style of a true Maverick, decided that if he was cashing out, then so was his team.

It was not a publicity stunt or a spur-of-the-moment act of charity. It was a tradition begun years ago, long before Broadcast.com existed.

A Culture of Sharing the Wealth

The tradition started in 1990, when Cuban sold his first company, a software firm called MicroSolutions, to CompuServe for an estimated $6 million. 

Fresh from learning how a secretary had stolen $82,000 from the firm (an experience he has retold in characteristic bluntness: “It was f—ed up”), Cuban took a reported 20% of the sale, or roughly $1.2 million, and distributed it among 80 employees. 

That amounts to roughly $15,000 a person, evenly distributed, or in layman’s terms

$15,000 would get you a brand-new car and a year’s fuel.

He confirmed this on X in June of 2024,

“In every business I’ve sold, I’ve paid out bonuses to every employee that was there more than a year.”

And he’s stayed faithful to that principle. When in 2019 he sold his stakes in HDNet (now AXS TV) and the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks in 2023, the same thing happened. The staff got some of the money. 

“Only HDNet had any layoffs after the sale,” he stated. In other words, this meant that Cuban ensures his departures aren’t just smooth for investors, they’re financially beneficial for employees.

In every business I've sold I've paid out bonuses to every employee that was there more than a year. https://t.co/02NdL9a41q, 300 out of 330 employees became millionaires. Microsolutions, I paid out 20 pct to our 80 employees. HDNet wasn't as big , but paid out about 20pct… https://t.co/hTvCZnVvUF

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) June 5, 2024

The Broadcast.com Jackpot

Yet no investment in Cuban’s portfolio compares to Broadcast.com, at least not in terms of its effect on employees’ bank accounts.

Streaming anything over the web in the mid-90s was science fiction. Cuban, never afraid of a bet on the future, spotted an opportunity where others saw nothing but a technology headache. 

He took day-to-day control of AudioNet, an internet audio firm he founded with Todd Wagner, and transformed it into Broadcast.com.

“There was nobody doing it. Nobody,” Cuban told CBS‘s “Sunday Morning” recently. “People thought I was an idiot.”

Yahoo didn’t see it that way. The technology giant bought out Broadcast.com in 1999 during the dot-com bubble for $5.7 billion in stock. Cuban accepted his shares in stock and cashed out immediately. And then he proceeded to give some of that money to nearly all of his employees.

“Money is a scoreboard where you can rank how you’re doing against other people.” Cuban has stated on countless occasions.

It was a morale boost here, too. That sudden sell decision also proved eerily prescient: the dot-com bubble burst a few months later, and Yahoo’s stock price collapsed. Cuban told GQ in 2022,

“It taught me a hell of a lesson: When you just chase dollars, it never works out well.”

Mark Cuban’s road to becoming a billionaire wasn’t all Shark Tank deals and sold-out stadiums. Cuban was born into a blue-collar Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania family and showed signs of determination early on. 

As a kid, he sold garbage bags door-to-door, and he gave disco lessons in college. Yeah, you read that well.

An Indiana University graduate, Cuban moved to Dallas and founded MicroSolutions. That’s the company where his secretary stole $82,000, threatening to put him out of business. Instead of going out of business, Cuban doubled his efforts.

By the time he sold MicroSolutions, he was a self-made millionaire. When he sold Broadcast.com, he was a billionaire.

Buying an NBA Team, For the Sake of It

The next giant leap for Cuban came in 2000 when he bought the Dallas Mavericks for $285 million. Not a negotiation. Not a long negotiation.

“It was all about fun,” Cuban told The Draymond Green Show podcast. “That was like a dream … I didn’t even negotiate, I was just like, ‘Yes, whatever.”

The Mavericks were not exactly a hot property at the time. Cuban did not mind, though, he was living a dream. 

He sat in courtside seats, treated employees like a fan with a billion-dollar budget, and over the course of several years transformed the franchise into a championship-winning, culturally pertinent force.

In 2023, Cuban sold the controlling stake in the Mavericks to Adelson and Dumont families, who own Las Vegas Sands Corporation, for a sale that saw the company valued at a reported $3.5 billion. He retained 27% and control of basketball operations. Because, naturally.

More Than Just a Mogul

Mark Cuban is a serial entrepreneur who has turned himself into a self-dubbed “business hacker” with a knack for timing in both markets, a flair for show, and a heart for employees.

While for most billionaires, employee bonuses are an optional aspect, for Cuban, they’re a key component of the business exit equation. That might be sentimental, but Cuban would probably call it good business.

The thing that drove him forward was the thought that he had to hustle when it was darkest. That mindset did not just help him survive initial failures; it helped him thrive in ventures from software companies to sports teams, from media companies to high-tech investing.

And it gave him a reputation as being one of the few billionaires people are willing to work for.

As of 2025, Forbes estimated Cuban’s net worth to be around $5.7 billion. He’s suggested he’s scaling back his public presence, leaving Shark Tank after over a decade, for instance, but don’t confuse that with retirement.

He still operates Mark Cuban Companies, a private equity investment business that supports feisty startups and ambitious entrepreneurs. And he still opines on all manner of things, from healthcare reform to AI ethics to cryptocurrency. 

No matter what venture he turns his attention to next, this one thing is certain: ride with Cuban long enough, and chances are high that you’ll be a millionaire too.

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