Mark Cuban may be a billionaire now, but back in the 1980s, he was just a young tech founder trying to make his mark. During a 2022 episode of the Full Send Podcast, which is available on YouTube, Cuban shared a story from a night at COMDEX, which he claims was a major tech trade show in Las Vegas, where he found himself upstaged by none other than

Microsoft co-founder

Bill Gates. At this event, Cuban recalled chatting with a group of women when they suddenly disappeared, only to learn they had left with Gates, who had just taken

Microsoft

public and was quickly becoming a tech icon. Cuban noted jokingly that Gates took away “his girls.”

During the podcast (Cue: 24.29), when asked about a business competition that keeps him up at night, Cuban shared the story about him and Bill Gates in Las Vegas. Cuban said, “I'll tell you a story about in Vegas back in the day about Bill Gates. This is way back, it used to be like the biggest trade show in the world was called Comdex. It was a technology trade show, and it was like 125,000 people here, and I started my company when I was 26, 27, right along this. So, I just thought I was a bada**, right? So I'm hanging with these girls, and this was right when Microsoft had gone public. So, one day no one knows who Bill Gates is, the next day he's the king of tech and all this money and all this snap.”

As the hosts asked Cuban about his net worth at the time, He said: “I was maybe worth a million dollars. So I'm buying these girls drinks and doing shots and everything, and they're like I gotta go to the bathroom. I think for real. Then they don't come back and I'm like what the fu**. Then my buddy goes yo, Do you know who Bill Gates is? (laughs).”The hosts asked if that incident fired him up or motivated him, Cuban noted: “It did motivate me right to go on to the next, such a good story (laughs), but it's 100% true.”