entrepreneur Mark Cuban One of the few billionaires who doesn’t pretend it’s all about courage and genius. He said repeatedly: Luck plays a key role in amassing great wealth.
Talk about computer scientists Lex FriedmanIn the podcast, Cuban said that after years of entrepreneurship, he doesn’t believe any business plan can guarantee billionaire status. He said that if he had to start over, reaching $1 million would be doable, but becoming a billionaire is another matter and the timing and trends would have to be consistent.
“If I had to start from scratch, could I start a company that would make me a millionaire?” Cuban said. “Yeah, because I know how to sell, I know the technology, and I’ve learned enough over the years to do that. But a billion, something good is going to happen.”
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Friedman believed that while luck is important, decisions and hard work can shape the path to great wealth. He said the founder of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) Jeff Bezos Smart moves have been made over the years to build this e-commerce giant. However, Cuban said what ultimately pushed Bezos over a certain threshold was something else.
“He can really raise money, right?” Cuban said. “It’s a lot of money. People really dismissed him because they weren’t profitable. And we’re in an environment where we can raise that money.”
Friedman also mentioned other billionaires whose products have made them wildly successful, including Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ: META) CEO Mark ZuckerbergCEO of Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA ) Elon Musk and co-founder of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT ) bill gates.
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Cuban specifically talked about Zuckerberg, saying Facebook’s rise largely depends on timing. When the iPhone launched in 2007, apps didn’t take off immediately, but proliferated in 2011 and 2012, he said. He also noted that after the tech bubble burst in 2004, computer prices dropped, making laptops affordable for more students.
“If he had tried to do something like that, you know, five years ago or five years from now, Friendster or MySpace might have been the ultimate product,” Cuban said. “I had a MySpace account, and this was before Facebook.”
Proximity to investors and the ability to raise capital was another lucky factor that Cuban highlighted during Zuckerberg’s rise.
“If Zach wasn’t at Harvard, but he was at Ohio University at Miami, or at Richland Community College, the same idea, the same people, the same execution, but nothing,” he said on the podcast.
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However, that doesn’t mean Cuban ignores the importance of effort, product quality, or personal agency. He said that when opportunity comes, the strength and quality of your product determines your success.
“You have to be able to see it, you have to be able to visualize it and create some kind of plan, or at least have a path, and then you have to execute it,” Cuban told Friedman. “Do all these things at the same time and have enough money.”
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Mark Cuban explains how luck helped Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg become billionaires — “Good things are bound to happen” originally appeared on Benzinga.com
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