TV show is a lesson for billionaire benefactor

[KoriEllis]

Since it's Cuban, I guess it's basketball-related.


TV show is a lesson for billionaire benefactor


By Kate O'Hare
Zap2it
September 7, 2004


What lessons could be gained from the life experience of entrepreneur, self-made technology billionaire and NBA team owner Mark Cuban?

How about: work hard, play hard, get out before the bust and leave a good0-looking bank account?

There is all that, but Cuban believes there's much more. He aims to impart some of his hard-earned wisdom to a group of 16 willing contestants sharing a Dallas mansion and vying for a $1 million prize in the ABC reality series "The Benefactor," premiering Monday.

"In our lives," Cuban says, "we make choices. Some are successful; some challenge ourselves. All of us have dreams. There's always that choice we make: Am I going to go back to work, or am I going to go for my dream? Am I going to take the risk, put aside convention and put aside safety and follow my dream?

"Most people don't do that. In putting these 16 people in the house, that's what I tried to test for. That's what the challenges were about, being an entrepreneur, being what I think is successful. What I'm looking for is someone who's willing to go outside their comfort zone.

"Look, if they didn't have dreams, they wouldn't want to be on the show."

Cuban, who sold garbage bags door-to-door at 12, cofounded a computer-consulting firm in 1983, which he later sold for millions. Then he and pal Todd Wagner (also an executive producer on the show, with creator David Young and Clay Newbill) began supplying audio and video over the Internet. Their Broadcast.com company's initial public offering in 1998 broke stock-market records. A year later, Yahoo! bought the company for $5.7 billion.

Now Cuban's tackling reality television (and donating his fee for the show to charity), and proudly proclaiming that "The Benefactor" is "the first and only reality show shot in highdef."

It's a totally different visual experience, and reality shows will benefit the most from it." So the challenge facing the 16 contestants -- including an elementary-school teacher, a women's pro football player and a floral designer -- is how to impress Mark Cuban. But Cuban wasn't about to give them any help in figuring that one out.

"The way it works is," Newbill says, "when the contestants show up, the dilemma for them is, 'I'm here to try to impress Mark Cuban, who is, himself, a very impressive individual. How do I impress somebody who has reached the spot in life where he is?' "

Of course, the reality-show world being what it is now, contestants seldom arrive all unknowing and wide-eyed, and "The Benefactor" is no different.

Also, Cuban is a very public and communicative guy, not a reclusive tycoon living on top of a mountain somewhere.

"They knew me inside and out," Cuban says, "but once we got past the first 5 minutes, and we made our first cut, they realized what was at stake. It's a million dollars, and they had a 1 in 15 chance, and they didn't know what I wanted.

" 'If you kiss up,' I told them, 'you're going to be gone.' This person, I'm giving them a million dollars. I want to say, six months, a year, 10 years from now, 'I picked the right person.' "

And sometimes, "The Benefactor" became the benefactor of some lessons of his own.

"I found I wasn't nearly as good at first impressions as I thought I was," Cuban says. "If I go in a business office, no problem; every day, I've got millions of dollars on it. Put me in a sports environment -- I'm not there, but I'm getting better. But these are just normal people.

"That's one of the lessons: You don't get a second chance to make a first impression."

[KoriEllis]

Cuban, who sold garbage bags door-to-door at 12, cofounded a computer-consulting firm in 1983, which he later sold for millions. Then he and pal Todd Wagner (also an executive producer on the show, with creator David Young and Clay Newbill) began supplying audio and video over the Internet. Their Broadcast.com company's initial public offering in 1998 broke stock-market records. A year later, Yahoo! bought the company for $5.7 billion.

Holy cow! I knew he made a killing with broadcast.com, but I had no idea he sold it for $5.7 BILLION after just one year.



Damn.

[Pooh]

I wonder how much he would get for that company now

[smeagol]

A bag of doughnuts

[TwoHandJam]

Holy cow! I knew he made a killing with broadcast.com, but I had no idea he sold it for $5.7 BILLION after just one year.

A lot of stuff was unbelievable at the start of the stock market bubble/internet craze. I'm sure Mark was ambitious and worked hard but amassing a fortune of that size had a lot to do with being in the right place at the right time. Not purely dumb luck but the hysteria at the time for all internet related companies was unprecendented. Most companies valued at billions of dollars weren't even profitable.