- Mark Cuban said that becoming a billionaire is essentially just "luck" on Trevor Noah's podcast.
- "A billionaire who thinks they could just do it all over again is lying their ass off," he said.
TV personality and businessman Mark Cuban admitted that he couldn't become a billionaire again if he had to start over because it's essentially just "luck" and anyone who thinks they can is "lying."
The 65-year-old, who is estimated to be worth over $6.8 billion, spoke on Trevor Noah's podcast "What Now?" about why he sold his majority stake in NBA team the Dallas Mavericks, and his plans to leave the TV show "Shark Tank" after 15 seasons.
At one point Noah questioned him about how he became a billionaire to which Cuban responded frankly: "Anybody who's a billionaire who thinks they could just do it all over again is lying their ass off.
"If the internet stock market hadn't just taken off when we were starting AudioNet, you wouldn't even know who I was. That's just the way it works," he said referring to his streaming company that later became Broadcast.com.
Cuban admitted that he could probably be a millionaire multiple times over because he knows how to hustle and sell, but that he probably wouldn't be a billionaire.
"But the whole billionaire side of it, the hundreds of millions of dollars, that's just insane and that was luck," he said.
Cuban explained that there are only a few opportunities that can get you to that level of wealth — from starting a hedge fund and raising lots of money, to taking a company public or selling a private company.
"To be a billionaire there's gotta be something very leverageable, something that just explodes financially.
"But there's a whole lot of people who are really really smart, who do each of those things or one of them really well, and we don't know who they are," he added.
Cuban has amassed his wealth through a series of shrewd business deals and investments. He previously admitted to putting $1 billion into Amazon stocks alone, Business Insider reported.
Cuban started his own company MicroSolutions in 1982 and sold it eight years later for $6 million, and made $2 million from the deal.
But his biggest deal was when he sold his company Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in stock in 1999.
Cuban bought the Dallas Mavericks team for $285 million in 2000 and sold it to the Adelson family in December. The purchase value is estimated at $3.5 billion.