Mark Cuban stock options philosophy is simple: every employee should get company stock, from the CEO to the janitor. He said that is how workers share in the upside and help narrow income inequality.
“I would like to see it so that every single CEO, founder, entrepreneur does what I did, which was to give equity to every single employee,” Cuban said on the What It Takes podcast. “The way you’re going to reduce income inequality for anybody who works with somebody is making sure they get shares of stock and then they benefit.”
Broadcast.com and MicroSolutions
Cuban has already pointed to his own record. In 1999, he gave 330 employees at Broadcast.com stock before Yahoo acquired the company for $5.7 billion, and he said those awards made 300 of them millionaires. He also gave equity and cash bonuses to employees of MicroSolutions, a pattern that matches the broader philosophy he is pressing now.
He has tied that view to pay in more direct terms, too. Cuban has advocated for a $20 federal minimum wage, wrote that he “made sure they all got raises” after seeing workers in need of government assistance at a company he invested in, and said, “It was embarrassing to me that we didn’t pay enough.” He also said, “I’ve made, or helped make, at least a thousand millionaires.”
Juan Hernandez at SpaceX
The SpaceX example puts numbers behind the idea. Juan Hernandez joined SpaceX in 2015 earning $28 per hour, and now holds an estimated $880,000 in shares following SpaceX’s IPO, according to the. A little more than a month after that IPO, SpaceX had already minted at least 4,400 millionaires.
That employee-gain story sits beside a harder reality. S&P 500 CEOs made 285 times more than the median pay of their workers in 2024, up from 268 times in 2023, while average chief executive compensation reached $18.9 million after rising $1.4 million, or 7%, year over year. Cuban’s pitch answers that gap with ownership, but it leaves the mechanics to companies: stock plans have to reach the rank and file, not just the top.
Elon Musk and upside
Elon Musk has made a similar case, telling Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, “I’ve always had the philosophy that everyone at the company should receive stock in the company, so that they can participate in the upside of the company.” That puts two high-profile voices on the same side of the argument, even as the pay gap keeps widening.
For workers, the practical issue is whether broad equity becomes a standard part of pay or stays dependent on a sale, an acquisition, or an IPO. Cuban’s own history shows the stock has to be real, and it has to reach the people doing the work, if the promise is going to turn into wealth.
