Mark Cuban Tells New Grads to Work for Small Businesses

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The billionaire entrepreneur says small businesses are the best place to launch a career in the age of AI.

Mark Cuban’s Advice for Fresh Graduates

Most college graduates dream of landing at a big-name company for a solid salary, and a professional experience that impresses everyone. 

But billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban thinks that strategy is exactly backward.

Earlier this month, Cuban took to X with a with a advice for new graduates:

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He pointed out that small businesses create roughly 60% of new jobs in the U.S. every year. AI, he argued, is now making it easier and faster for smaller firms to go head-to-head with larger competitors. And as that advantage grows, so will their share of hiring.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed that between the third quarter of 2020 and the third quarter of 2025, companies with fewer than 250 employees accounted for 51% of net job creation. 

Cuban expects that number to climb higher as AI tools give small businesses capabilities they never had before.

Why This Is a Real Opportunity for New Grads?

Small businesses move fast. There are no six-month onboarding programs, no layers of approval, and no waiting two years to actually do something meaningful.

Cuban himself agreed with a commenter that joining a small business, you will get five years of experience in about 14 months.

That speed matters in a job market where AI is reshaping every industry. 

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs research estimates that around 300 million jobs globally are exposed to AI automation, and a quarter of all U.S. work hours could potentially be handled by AI systems.

Big corporations are trimming. Small businesses are hiring. That gap is exactly where opportunity lives.

How New Grads Can Actually Help?

When someone argued that small businesses would simply use AI to stay lean and hire fewer people, Cuban replied:

"The smallest businesses don't have the depth of expertise in AI. They need the help. Kids coming out of college have that expertise."

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It is not just that small businesses are hiring more. It is that recent graduates have something specific those businesses desperately need, which is fluency with AI tools. 

A college student who has spent the last two years using AI for research, writing, coding, and analysis has skills that a 20-person local firm simply cannot afford to build internally. That gives new grads genuine leverage and a skill set with real value on day one.

Cuban also pushed back on the idea that small businesses are quietly automating their way to a leaner headcount. 

Responding to a comment that AI will mainly help small businesses cut jobs and reduce staff. He disagreed, saying that AI is not just about replacing workers.

Instead, he believes small businesses can use AI to handle tasks they never had the time, money, or resources to do before.  AI can help companies get more work done. 

Bottom Line

The concern about AI and jobs is real, but Cuban’s advice is practical. 

He believes that the place where you will learn the most, contribute the fastest, and ride the AI wave most effectively is not a Fortune 500 company. It is the small business down the street that just figured out what an LLM can do and has no idea where to start.