Mark Cuban Wants Companies to Share IPO Riches With Workers: X User Calls Stock Options 'Bullsh*t'

Billionaire investor Mark Cuban is known for his massive investment returns in recent decades. He reportedly turned $33 million of Shark Tank investments into $250 million over 15 years. With a net worth of around $6 billion, Cuban continues to build robust businesses from scratch and mentor budding entrepreneurs.

In response to a recent X post about stock ownership in companies, Cuban noted that every employer should be required to offer all workers stock in the same way CEOs receive annual stock options.

Although he has long advocated for such a corporate structure, his latest post faced backlash, with an X user, who goes by the name NowSinister, arguing that 'stock options are bullsh*t,' until they have value or are fully-vested.

While Cuban acknowledged that the X user is correct, he explained that if there is an exit or IPO, 'your life is changed.'

Broadcast Sale Turned Employees Millionaires

In a 2019 GQ clip, Cuban had recalled that when he sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in 1999, 300 of the 330 Broadcast employees owned company shares and ended up becoming millionaires overnight. While those employees witnessed gains on paper due to rising share prices, Cuban ensured they also received cash payouts tied to the company's sale.

Back then, offering so many workers access to company ownership was unheard of, even attracted criticism, but it also created hundreds of millions of dollars in wealth from a single transaction.

Cuban executed the same strategy for every business he divested after Broadcast.com. 'In every business I've sold, I've paid out bonuses to every employee that was there for more than a year,' he wrote on X in 2024.

'Broadcast.com, 300 out of 330 employees became millionaires. Microsolutions, I paid out 20% to our 80 employees. HDNet wasn't as big, but it paid out about 20% of what I got to employees. Mavs wasn't a total exit, but we paid out more than $35M to employees,' Cuban had noted.

However, in response to Cuban's latest post, another X user described it as the 'dumbest tweet' ever from the billionaire, citing that private firms are not obliged to give any worker any form of ownership or profit sharing.

Another X user believes offering every employee ownership could create an ongoing liability for small businesses, as not everyone performs at the same level, let alone the level of a CEO.

However, some agree with Cuban's view that when you own company stock, 'then the better that company does, the better you do.'

An X user by the name TheQuantumFlux commented on Cuban's post: 'When employees feel invested in their work and their production/quality that feeds into the success of the company can be financially realised, then how they approach their work changes. It's why teams succeed and why teams fail. If not all the members of the team are invested, you are only as good as your weakest link.'

Cuban had explained in an X post last year that billionaire wealth has increased by $33 trillion since 2015 because 'the stock market has gone straight up.'

'You know who is funding the increase, particularly lately? Retail investors. 401Ks,' Cuban had noted on X. 'The better question is, why are we not giving incentives to companies to require them to give shares in their companies to all employees, at the same percentage of cash earnings as the CEO?'

Cuban proposed a system where stock options are awarded as a percentage of salary across the firm—if a CEO receives options worth 100% of their salary, all employees would receive options equal to 100% of their respective salaries.