Before Mark Cuban ever hit the “woah” on TikTok with his daughter, the video-sharing app was Musical.ly and Cuban wanted to be an investor.
“I remember when it was Musical.ly and I tried to invest… Oh my god, I loved it because I could just turn it on and there would be 15,000 people live immediately that I could talk to,” Cuban said of the livestreaming option on the now defunct video streaming app, in an interview with social media personality Jules Terpak last week.
His bid for an investment in Musical.ly was unsuccessful, however, because the company wasn’t looking for more funding, he tells CNBC Make It. Musical.ly later merged into TikTok a year after it was acquired by Chinese parent company Bytedance for upwards of $800 million in 2017.
Cuban, who initially created a TikTok account to see what his kids were watching, said he liked Musical.ly and early iterations of TikTok because they fostered spaces for authentic and fun connection.
Now the app — which faces an uncertain future as it battles a potential ban — “feels more corporate” and business-driven, especially with the introduction of new revenue-generating features, Cuban told Terpak.
“I liked it better when it was dances [and] music… Now it’s a business,” he said in the interview.
While it’s unclear how much Cuban wanted to invest in Musical.ly and what that investment would be worth today, Cuban has said that some of his investments, at least on ABC’s “Shark Tank” are not to make money.
He’s invested close to $29 million on companies from the show, the billionaire told The Dallas Morning News in February. But as of 2022, “on a cash basis,” Cuban was in the red from his exited “Shark Tank” investments, he said in a now deleted post on X.
“Sometimes my deals are purely to help someone or send a message,” he said in the post.
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