The Biography of Mark Cuban: Early Life, Business life, Net Worth and His Investments

I still work hard to know my business. I’m continuously looking for ways to improve all my companies, and I’m always selling. Always.

                                             -Mark Cuban

Mark Cuban is an American businessman, sports entrepreneur, and investor. He is the owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, co-owner of 2929 Entertainment, co-owner of Brondell, and Chairman of AXS TV. He ranks No.499 on the Forbes 2020 World's Billionaires list, with a net worth of $4.3B as of May 27, 2020. A major part of his fortune came from the high-profit business deals, which includes his investments made on ABC’s Shark Tank, Dallas Mavericks, and the $5.7 billion sales of his Broadcast.com. Another part of his fortunes come from the sales of his majority stakes at AXS TV and HDNet for an undisclosed amount.

Early life and education

Mark Cuban was born on July 31, 1958, to Shirley and Norton Cuba.

He had his first business at the age of 12, where he sold garbage bags to get a pair of expensive basketball, and eventually moved to sell stamps and coins. By 16, he ran newspapers from Cleveland to Pittsburgh and got paid for the work. By his senior year, rather than attending high school, he enrolled at the University of Pittsburgh to begin his tertiary education. He later transferred from the University of Pittsburgh to Indiana University after a year. He eventually graduated with a B.S in Management from the Kelley School of Business.

Spanning through his stay at college, he ran a couple of businesses—bar, disco lessons, and chain letter. He also took up a couple of jobs including party promoter, bartender, and disco dancing instructor.

Career History

In 1982, Cuban started his first official work as a bartender at ‘Elan’ a bar at Greenfield Avenue. After his bartender job at Elan, he secured yet another job as a salesperson at a PC software retailing store in Dallas, Your Business Software. The job didn’t last a long while as he was laid off a few months later for putting personal interest before work.

A few years later after leaving ‘Your Business Software’, Cuban started his own company, MicroSolutions, which started out as a system integrator and software reseller. Companies such as Lotus Notes, CompuServe, and Carbon Copy were major inspirations for Cuban, and the company’s largest clients came from Perot Systems.

From the inception to 1990, MicroSolutions generated over $30 million worth of revenue and was later sold for $6 million to CompuServe in 1990. Cuban has always been about the money, anything that wasn’t bringing in money was a complete waste of time, he later had this to say, “The only way you’re going to get me for a meeting is if you’re writing me a check.”

Media Business & Mavericks Dallas

In 1995, Cuban, Todd Wagner, and Chris Jaeb co-founded ‘Audionet’, a broadcast station birthed from their love of college basketball and webcasting. By 1998, Audionet became Broadcast.com using a single server and an ISDN line, by the following year the company had successfully grown and expanded that it had at least 330 employees and generated a $13.5 million worth of revenue by the second quarter. Later in 1999, Broadcast.com was sold off to Yahoo! at the sum of $5.7 billion in Yahoo! stock.

The sale of Broadcast.com launched Cuban into the next phase of focus. He was smart enough to distribute his wealth to avoid being a victim of a market crash. He then co-founded another company with his long-time business partner and friend, Wagner—the 2929 Entertainment which specializes in vertically integrated production and distribution of films and videos.

2929 Entertainment fully launched Cuban into showbiz, as the company purchased Landmark Theatres in 2003, and 58 arthouse movie theatres. The company had gotten involved with CBS through the How ‘Bubble’. He further went into showbiz by partnering with TV houses like ABC and CBS to produce and sponsor TV series. One of his popular TV series involvement is the ABC reality show, Shark Tank—a major investment of the show comes from Cuban. Since his involvement with Shark Tank, the show has received high ratings and won the Primetime Emmy Awards three consecutive times.

Cuban seemed to have magic for transforming low rated teams to high rated teams. In the early 2000s, Cuban became the majority holder of the Dallas Mavericks for a sum of $280 million, before then, the team had been regarded to be the ‘worst’, however, with the involvement of Cuban the team topped the NBA champions list. In a Forbes report, the Dallas Mavericks were worth $2.5 billion as of February 2019.

From software to media, Cubans next business interest was the internet. He started the Bailoutsleuth.com in 2008 as an online platform for the grassroots to have an oversight of the U.S. government’s financial institutions “bailout” worth $700 billion.

Investments

As one with the ‘magic touch’ for businesses, Cuban has greatly invested his time and money in startups that holds a lot of potentials. One of his first investment was a toilet-seat making company, Brondell Inc., San Francisco. His next investment was the Goowy Media Inc. and internet software startup located in San Diego. Later in 2006, Sharesleuth.com, an investigation website owned by Christopher Carey was financed by Cuban who then had an interest in trying out a new business model for making online journalism financially profitable.

Cuban finally touched down the world of literature where he partnered with Mascot Books to publish Let’s Go, Mavs! A children’s book, in 2007, And by 2011, he had published his 30,000-word e-book, How to Win at the Sport of Business: If I can Do It, You Can Do It.

His other investments include a venture capital to Motionloft, an analytics company, and a 50% stake investment in Veldskeon shoes, alongside Ashton Kutcher, and Steve Watts with his wife, Angela.

Movie/ TV appearances

●     Shark Tank

●     Sharknado

●     Dancing with the Stars

Mark Cuban can be best described for his undying passion for business, especially making meaningful investments with high-profit yields. Despite the low level he had to start from, Cuban never gave up on his ambitions.