According to @mcuban, he agreed to a Shark Tank deal with Blue Apron but backed out when the company attempted to change the terms (source: Mark Cuban on X, Sep 20, 2025). According to @mcuban, he said this context relates to an Axios report dated 2021-09-15 and claimed the timing was the day after Ballmer invested $50 million (source: Mark Cuban on X, Sep 20, 2025). According to Axios, Blue Apron’s co-founder Matthew Salzberg agreed to step aside, invested $3 million personally, and ceded control by converting supervoting shares to single-vote shares, while investor Joseph Sanberg committed up to $75 million to support a turnaround (source: Axios, Sep 15, 2021). According to Axios, Blue Apron shares traded below $4 earlier that week versus an adjusted IPO price of $150 after a 1-for-15 reverse split in 2019, underscoring severe equity value erosion at the time (source: Axios, Sep 15, 2021). According to Axios, revenue declined 48% from its 2017 peak, the company held $51 million in cash and $27 million in debt as of June 30, 2021, and burned $14 million of cash in the first half of that year, flagging liquidity and dilution risks for equity holders (source: Axios, Sep 15, 2021). According to the IMF and Federal Reserve research, traders monitoring small-cap equity stress like APRN’s historical case often track broader risk sentiment for crypto because equity–crypto correlations rose markedly after 2020 (source: IMF Global Financial Stability Note, Jan 2022; Federal Reserve FEDS Notes, 2022).