Kevin Hart has made multiple investments in businesses, but he told Mark Cuban on his Peacock streaming podcast that he had one investment he turned down that he wished he had taken.
The investment? Uber when it was in its early phases.
Hart would have been an early investor in Uber if not for his initial mistrust of the application’s concept in 2009.
Missed Opportunity
“Troy Carter tells me he’s like, ‘Kev, there’s this thing, man. It’s called Uber. You got to invest in it. Listen, it’s easy to understand, right? It’s basically like strangers giving, like, people they don’t know rides, like people can call on other people for rides,'” Hart recalls to Cuban on an episode of his podcast, Hart to Heart that aired on July 20.
“I was like, what? He was like, ‘people can just – There’s an app and you say you need a ride and whoever’s close to you that is like one of the drivers under our app will come get you.'”
Carter Connection
Hart, whose net worth is estimated to be $200 million, and entertainment mogul Carter are close friends and business partners. They met in 2007 when Carter was a talent manager at Sony Music Entertainment. Hart was a struggling comedian then, but Carter saw his potential and signed him to his management company.
Carter helped Hart to launch his career and become one of the most successful comedians in the world. He also helped Hart launch his own production company, HartBeat Productions, and his comedy brand, Laugh Out Loud.
“I was like, Sounds like murderville to me. He’s like, he’s like, ‘No, man, it’s over. Trust me, man. They’re going to have, like, different tiers to it. You go,’ I said; this guy has to be the stupidest sh-t I ever heard. You want me to give you money to be like, because you’re telling me that, first of all, you asked me to pick somebody up. I’m gonna go. I don’t know that person. I ain’t picking them up. Get the f*** out,” the comedian said.
During the conversation, Cuban confessed that he thought the same thing of Uber when it was pitched to him.
Cuban was told that Uber would replace taxis. Uber came to his attention in 2010; however, when told that the then-startup wanted to be sold for $10 million, Cuban attempted to negotiate a $5 million price for it.
The company stopped contacting Cuban, a billionaire investor in Alibaba, Spotify, and Square. Cuban is also the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and the co-owner of 2929 Entertainment.
The Success of Uber
Uber Technologies Inc., founded by Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp, is now one of the most valuable companies in the world, with a market capitalization of more than $80 billion since the rideshare company went public in 2019 – it is $94 billion company as of July 2023.
If Hart had invested in the company, he would have made a lot of money.
“I think, I think Troy may have asked me for $50,000 to $75,000, and that would have been, you know, $100 [million],” Hart said.
“Just think, if I would have given him – $250 grand on a $5 million or $10 million valuation, it’d be billions,” Cuban said.
Hart’s Fortune
Despite his misfortune, Hart has other assets to fall back on, such as his HartBeat Production and Laugh Out Loud, which have now been united to become one of the leading providers of humorous narrative and experiences with HARTBEAT, according to Forbes.
HartBeat has formed a $100 million investment from Abry Partners, a private equity firm that purchased a minority position in the new company, after more than a decade of capitalizing on his own successes to construct two high-growth enterprises. HARTBEAT was advised on the transaction by Evolution Media Capital and a team from Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP led by Sophia Yen, a partner in the Entertainment Group.
Throughout the 2020s, he made several investments, including an electrolyte beverage brand, BrightFox in 2021, a social food ordering platform, Snackpass in 2022, and amassage therapy device company, Therabody, in 2022.
