Mark Cuban’s Worst Investment on Shark Tank

Mark Cuban is well known for making great financial moves, such as buying and then selling the Dallas Mavericks for an enormous profit. He even owns an entire town in Texas. While we frequently hear about his successful financial decisions, it’s important to remember that finance is a risky business, and not all his investments have been home runs.

If you’ve never watched the popular TV show “Shark Tank,” it features Cuban and a group of investors known as “sharks” listening to pitches from entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurs aim to secure funding to help their businesses grow. The show has been airing for over a decade, and Cuban has invested over $20 million into 85 startups from the show. However, in a recent podcast interview, he revealed that he has taken a net loss across all the deals combined.

On an episode of the “Full Send Podcast,” Cuban discussed the worst investment he ever made on the show. It was for a product called “The Breathometer,” which was pitched in 2013 as “the world’s first smartphone breathalyzer” by an entrepreneur named Charles Michael Yim.

Yim claimed the device could send Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) level readings to your phone and offer the option to call a cab if the user was too intoxicated. It sounded like a great invention, especially in a place like Texas, where DUI rates are relatively high.

All five sharks, including Cuban, invested in Yim’s idea, pooling together a $1 million investment for a 30% stake. This investment valued Yim’s business at $3.3 million.

However, Cuban noticed a few weeks later that Yim’s social media posts showed him flying around the world and socializing with celebrities and other billionaires. Cuban was concerned that Yim wasn’t focused on working on the “breathometer.” Yim claimed he was “networking” on behalf of the business, but according to Cuban, “all the money was gone” before long, and he called it his “biggest beating.”

According to a report from CNBC, Yim eventually moved away from the Breathometer in 2016 to work on another product. In 2017, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a complaint against Yim and Breathometer, alleging that the company had misled consumers about the product.

In the same month, Breathometer reached a settlement with the FTC over the complaint, forcing them to refund everyone who purchased the product. Yim admitted that he hadn’t committed to proper testing of the product but denied Cuban’s allegations. He did mention that the “sharks” might recoup some of their money soon, as the company had recently agreed to be acquired.