Mark Cuban, born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is, as many may know, a very successful business man today. He was born into a working-class family in which his father worked as an automobile upholsterer and his mom would rotate between jobs every week. Although he wasn’t necessarily born into a business family, he would grow up being a very business minded person. In fact, at the age of 12 years old, he would go door to door selling garbage bags to raise money for some expensive sneakers.
In Cuban’s final year of high school, rather than attending his classes, he decided to enroll in the University of Pittsburgh instead. Here, he joined a fraternity known as the Pi Lambda Phi. Later, he transferred to the Indiana University and graduated from the Kelley School of Business with a B.Sc. in Business Administration. Throughout his college life, he had multiple business ventures such as a bar and disco lessons to pay for his college tuitions.
After graduating, Cuban moved to Dallas where he created MicroSolutions. MicroSolutions was a computer consulting service, and he later went on to sell the service in 1990 to CompuServe. But, it did not end here as Cuban’s business ventures continued. In 1995, after facing the problem of not being able to listen to Hoosiers Basketball games out in Texas, Cuban along with his friend, Todd Wagner, came up with a solution. This solution was known as Broadcast.com, which was a website where you can stream audio over the internet. This was a success, and in a small time period of four years, he was able to sell Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.6 billion dollars.
Five years later, sticking to his passion with basketball, he would buy the Dallas Mavericks for $285 million from H. Ross Perot. He was laughed at for buying the team for so much money, but they would go on to win the championships in 2011 and he was able to earn $177 million dollars in revenue, and he continues to hold the team today. They are still listed as one of Forbes most valuable franchises in sports.
Today, Cuban is the chairman and CEO of AXS T.V., he owns the Dallas Mavericks and he is one of the Sharks, on ABC’s hit television show Shark Tank. On this show, he continues to invest in many small business and companies in which he gains profits from as well. He is currently 58 years old and is valued at $3.2 billion dollars.
Who knew that a small boy growing up in the suburbs would one day grow up to be a big business man? Cuban has always valued hard work,, and he exemplified that with all of his business ventures, even from day one with the garbage bags. As he puts it, “Sweat equity is the most valuable equity there is. Know your business and industry better than anyone else in the world.”
Biography
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This was very informative! I think its great how so many people in this world go from almost nothing to being such successful people! I think hard work is the key and I’m pretty sure Cuban would agree!