Cuban assembled this from his blog, and the format shows — short, repetitive, and unusually direct about money.
On customers
“I personally think that the only way you can connect to your customers is to put yourself in their shoes. For me personally, if I can’t be a customer of my own product, then I probably am not going to do a good job running the company.”
— Mark Cuban, How to Win at the Sport of Business The sharper version, which he says he repeats to himself rather than out loud:
“Treat your customers like they own you. Because they do. You have to re-earn your customer’s business every day.”
— Mark Cuban, How to Win at the Sport of Business
On spending
His startup rules are the most-quoted part and the most useful, because they are specific about where money should not go:
“No offices. Open offices keep everyone in tune with what is going on and keep the energy up. If an employee is about privacy, show them how to use the lock on the john. There is nothing private in a startup.”
— Mark Cuban, How to Win at the Sport of Business And the filter he applies before any of it:
“Don’t start a company unless it’s an obsession and something you love. If you have an exit strategy, it’s not an obsession.”
— Mark Cuban, How to Win at the Sport of Business
Where to be sceptical
Cuban’s fortune came substantially from selling Broadcast.com to Yahoo! for $5.7 billion in 1999, a transaction whose timing is not reproducible and which the book does not dwell on. The operating advice is sound and hard-won from his earlier company; the implicit promise that following it produces his outcome is not something the book earns.
