Mark Cuban turned 300 of his employees into millionaires after selling a firm for $5.7 billion

MicroSolutions, a software firm, was Mark Cuban's first company. It was sold for $6 million. (Image credit: Reuters)

American businessman and Shark Tank judge Mark Cuban recently revealed that he turned 300 of his employees into millionaires when he sold an audio streaming service to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in stock in 1999.

In a post on X, the investor shared that whenever he sells a business, he always sets aside some of the proceeds to divide it among the company’s employees.

“In every business I’ve sold I’ve paid out bonuses to every employee that was there more than a year,” Cuban wrote, adding that when he sold Broadcast.com, 300 out of his 330 employees became millionaires. "Microsolutions, I paid out 20 percent to our 80 employees. HDNet wasn't as big , but paid out about 20 percent of what I got to employees, Mavs (NBA’s Dallas Mavericks) wasn't a total exit but we paid out more than $35 million to employees."

He also said that except HDNet (now known as AXS TV), none of the other companies 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

MicroSolutions, a software firm, was Cuban's first company. He had sold it to CompuServe in 1990 for $6 million, CNBC reported. According to his tweet, Cuban took 20 percent of the sale price and divided it among 80 of his employees, which amounts to roughly $15,000 shared among each of his 80 employees, if distributed equally.

The company also marked his first big entrepreneurial success, especially after Cuban nearly went broke when his secretary stole about $82,000 from the company.

“It was f****ed up,” Barstool Sports’ quoted him as saying in Pardon My Take podcast in 2020. But it also presented a silver lining. “It made us get our s*** together.”

Five years later, business had bounced back and Cuban sold MicroSolutions to become a millionaire. “You have to hustle the most when you think it’s the darkest,” he said.