Mark Cuban, the billionaire entrepreneur identified for his success with the Dallas Mavericks and his time on Shark Tank, as soon as confronted a second that just about destroyed his younger firm. In a candid dialog, Cuban shared the story of how a trusted worker virtually left his enterprise utterly bankrupt — taking $82,000 out of the $84,000 that they had within the financial institution.
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All of it occurred within the early days of Cuban’s first firm, MicroSolutions. Again then, Cuban and his small group have been surviving on a good funds, making each greenback depend.
He remembers the second he bought a name from the financial institution that will ship chills down any entrepreneur’s backbone. The receptionist at MicroSolutions, Renee Hardy, had a fairly simple job: put together the seller funds, seal them in envelopes, and drop them on the submit workplace.
Nevertheless, she had different plans. As an alternative of sending the funds to their rightful locations, she used a trick as previous as time — Wite-Out. She lined up the payees’ names and wrote her personal, taking these checks straight to the financial institution.
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“I bought a name from the financial institution saying, ‘Sir, this girl simply got here by way of the drive-thru and the checks have been whited out,’” Cuban mentioned, nonetheless amazed by the reminiscence. He requested if that they had cashed them, and the response made his coronary heart sink: “In fact we did, we’re a financial institution, sir.” Identical to that, she had drained $82,000 — virtually the whole lot MicroSolutions had on the time.
“We have been flat broke,” Cuban mentioned. Cuban confronted a disaster which may have completely shut down the corporate, with simply $2,000 remaining within the financial institution and vendor funds already bouncing. He needed to give every vendor a name, lay out the circumstances, and implore them to cooperate along with his firm.
