Mark Cuban invested in 85 companies on Shark Tank. At one point he said he was losing money. One of the best-known entrepreneurs in the country had put about $33 million into those companies, and in 2022 he said, on a cash basis, ‘I’ve gotten beat.’ His Shark Tank investments were underwater.
By the time he left the show, he said he had gotten as much as $25 million back in cash, and he estimated that the companies he still owned were worth at least $250 million. That’s a very different picture from the earlier snapshot. The investing lesson is that in startups and private companies you’re probably going to have losers, and some holdings will look underwater for a while. You don’t have to be right every time. You have to build a portfolio that can grow as a whole.
Key points
- Cuban invested in 85 Shark Tank companies and, for a stretch, said those investments were underwater on a cash basis.
- He had put in about $33 million; in 2022 he described himself as having ‘gotten beat.’
- By the time he left the show, he reported as much as $25 million back in cash and estimated the remaining companies at $250 million or more.
- The lesson is to judge a private-company portfolio over time, not on every individual winner or on a single snapshot.
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