He felt confident he was building important relationships. Then, his boss unkindly told him to knock it off.
“I start to cry … because he’s just yelling at me nonstop,” Cuban said. “I didn’t look at it as just a [9-to-5] job … My only mission was to help my company make more money. My peers and bosses didn’t quite see [my strategy] that way.”
The experience “sealed” something he probably already knew, Cuban told CNBC Make It via email: If he wanted to run a company, he’d likely have to build his own.
It was the first of two wake-up calls that taught Cuban he’d never blend into “the structure and limits” of corporate America, he said on the podcast.
The second one was at a PC software retailer in Dallas called Your Business Software, where he found employment after leaving Mellon Bank and working a series of odd jobs. He was fired after nine months for leaving the store unattended while he closed a $15,000 deal with a client without telling his boss, he recalled in a 2017 podcast interview.
“I was a lousy employee because I was a know-it-all,” Cuban told Wired last year. “I was an entrepreneur at heart, and I always thought I had a better idea [for how to do things].”
Many entrepreneurs are “misfits, difficult employees who start their own firms” because they don’t want to be managed or “work in a pre-structured environment,” suggested a 2007 analysis in American Psychologist, a peer-reviewed academic journal. That disposition may also help them survive the turbulence of launching a new company, the researchers found.
But not every prospective entrepreneur is as successful as Cuban, who launched a software company called Microsolutions in 1983 and kept it afloat through some turbulent early years. He ultimately sold it for $6 million in 1990.
Cuban’s second business, Broadcast.com, was acquired by Yahoo for $5.7 billion in 1999. He is currently running another entrepreneurial venture, discount prescription drug service Cost Plus Drugs, and has a reported net worth of $6.2 billion.
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Jessica Roberts is a seasoned business writer who deciphers the intricacies of the corporate world. With a focus on finance and entrepreneurship, she provides readers with valuable insights into market trends, startup innovations, and economic developments.
