He’s best known as one of the Sharks on “Shark Tank,” and MARK CUBAN talks about what it takes to get him to invest in a company. He also reveals how his business failures have become his biggest motivator and how often he watches himself on the show (hint: not if he can help it). Watch the full interview for the ABC News-Yahoo News series “Newsmakers” below. credit/link to ABC News-Yahoo News and ABC’s Rebecca Jarvis.
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Mark Cuban on the No. 1 Reason Entrepreneurs Fail
By Rebecca Jarvis and Mary-Rose Abraham
Despite all his successes as an entrepreneur and investor – owning the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, Magnolia Pictures, cable television’s AXS TV and Landmark Theaters – billionaire Mark Cuban said the lessons from his business failures are his biggest motivator.
“It’s so painful, I don’t ever want to experience it again,” he said. “I take the lesson of what I did wrong but more than that I take the fact that I hated it so much as motivation to do the work. That fear of failure motivates me more than anything.”
That doesn’t mean Cuban dwells on the failure or its associated emotions saying, “You can take your energy and apply it to being mad or you can go to work. The best revenge is success and doing it right.”
Worth an estimated $2.6 billion, Cuban’s latest venture is Cyber Dust, a smartphone app which has been dubbed as the Snapchat of texting. Encrypted texts sent through the app are destroyed 24 seconds after the recipient opens it, reducing both parties’ digital footprint.
He looks to invest in other successful entrepreneurs on ABC’s reality show “Shark Tank.” For him, that means people who not only have a great idea but actually create the product and do the work. Cuban said that for budding entrepreneurs, the show’s “dirty little secret is that it’s P.R. Viagra, and if you’re not ready for that pop, you’ve lost the biggest opportunity.”
Which is why Cuban believes that the top reason people fail is not only a “lack of brains” but “a lack of effort.”
Watch the video above to see Cuban talk about competing with the other “Sharks” and the surprising thing about his TV appearances, including his stint on “Dancing With the Stars.”
ABC News’ Brian Fudge contributed to this episode.
