Mark Cuban explains how he helped turn 300 of his employees into millionaires

Billionaire Mark Cuban isn’t opposed to sharing the wealth.

In a Tuesday post on X, the investor said he’s maintained a business practice throughout his decadeslong career that has helped hundreds of people cross over to millionaire status.

When selling a company, Cuban said he always sets aside some of the profits to pay out his employees.

“In every business I’ve sold, I’ve paid out bonuses to every employee that was there more than a year,” Cuban wrote.

The approach dates back to 1990 when Cuban sold his first company, MicroSolutions, a software firm that garnered $6 million at the time, he told CNBC Make It.

Cuban said he paid out 20% of that profit to the company’s 80 employees, which, if distributed equally, would equal $15,000 per staffer.

In the years that followed, Cuban was an early investor in the streaming platform AudioNet, taking operational control of the service that would eventually become Broadcast.com.

When he ultimately sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in stock in 1999, Cuban said 300 of the company’s 330 employees became millionaires thanks to his employee payout practice.

Cuban said he’s continued to set aside profits for loyal employees since becoming a billionaire in 1999. The businessman sold his majority stake in HDNet, now AXS TV, in 2019, paying out 20% of what he made to employees, he wrote.

Cuban added that HDNet was the only one of his companies to do layoffs immediately following its sale.

The billionaire, who bought the Dallas Mavericks NBA team in 2000, said he paid out more than $35 million to employees after selling his majority stake in the basketball team last year.

“I just believe it’s the right thing to do,” Cuban said on Friday. “Everyone that contributes should benefit as well.”

Cuban is worth an estimated $5.4 billion, according to Forbes.