Here's How Mark Cuban Turned 90% of This Company's Former Employees into Millionaires Overnight The billionaire and "Shark Tank" star shared some company acquisition stories last week.
By Emily Rella Edited by Melissa Malamut
Opinions expressed by BIZ Experiences contributors are their own.
As layoffs and mergers continue to trend in the technology industry, employees often wonder what happens to them if their company is acquired.
And while a business being sold can signal job cuts, employees working for any of Mark Cuban's subsidiaries might find themselves in a much more positive situation.
In a post on X last week, Cuban gave a surprising answer when asked what happens to employees at his companies when it is sold, where they go, and how they're compensated.
"In every business I've sold, I've paid out bonuses to every employee that was there more than a year," Cuban wrote, noting that with the sale of Broadcast.com, 300 out of the 330 employees working there at the time became millionaires thanks to the $5.7 billion acquisition by Yahoo! In 1999. "[The Dallas Mavericks sale] wasn't a total exit but we paid out more than $35 million to employees. And only HDNet had any layoffs right after the sale."
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
Cuban also mentioned the sale of Microsolutions and said that he paid 20% of the total sale price to the 80 employees working for him, at the time. He sold that company to CompuServe in 1990 (the company shut down in 2009) for $6 million, the first sale that made him a millionaire.
This means that Cuban would have divided up $1.2 million among the former employees, giving each worker an estimated $15,000 upon the sale.
In a February interview with BIZ Experiences, Cuban said deciding to shut down a business and fire employees is always the "most difficult" decision he has to make in his career.
"Both are incredibly painful," he noted.
Related: Mark Cuban Says This Is The 1 Thing He'd Do Differently
Still, Cuban's made a name for himself in the business world through various investments and acquisitions, including at least 85 different companies that he's invested in through the hit ABC show "Shark Tank," which he's set to depart at the end of this season after a solid 13-year run.
According to Bloomberg, Cuban's net worth was an estimated $7.44 billion as of Monday morning.
