Mark Cuban (born July 31, 1958 in Pittsburgh) is an American billionaire entrepreneur. He is the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, an NBA team, and Chairman of HDNet, an HDTV cable network.
Early life
Mark Cuban (his family’s last name was shortened from Chabenisky when his grandparents, Russians, arrived at Ellis Island) grew up in Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania; a suburb of Pittsburgh in a working class family; his father was an automobile upholsterer. Cuban’s first step into the business world occurred at age 12, when he sold garbage bags in order to pay for a pair of expensive basketball shoes. While in school, he held a variety of jobs, including bartending, disco dancing instructor, and party promotion. He paid for college by collecting and selling stamps (Philatelic Investment), and once gained about $1,100 from starting a chain letter.
Rather than attending high school for his senior year, Cuban enrolled as a full time student at the University of Pittsburgh, becoming a member of Pi Lambda Phi International Fraternity. After one year at the University of Pittsburgh, he transferred to Indiana University’s Bloomington, Indiana campus and graduated in 1981 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration. He played rugby union football while at Indiana, taking up the position of number 8.
Bartender to dot-com billionaire
In 1982, Cuban moved to Dallas, Texas. Cuban first found work as a bartender, then as a salesperson for Your Business Software, one of the first PC software retailers in Dallas. He was terminated less than a year later for not opening the store on time while out making a sales call finalizing a large software purchase with a customer.
Cuban started a company, MicroSolutions, with support from his previous customers from Your Business Software. MicroSolutions was initially a system integrator and software reseller. The company was an early proponent of technologies such as Carbon Copy, Lotus Notes, and CompuServe. One of the company’s largest clients was Perot Systems. In 1990, Cuban sold MicroSolutions to Compuserve—then a subsidiary of H&R Block—for $6 million. He netted approximately $2 million after taxes on the deal.
In 1995, Cuban and fellow Indiana University alum Todd Wagner started Audionet, combining their mutual interest in college basketball and webcasting. With a single server and ISDN line, Audionet became Broadcast.com in 1998. By 1999, Broadcast.com had grown to 330 employees and annual revenues near $100 million. In 1999, during the Dot-com boom, Broadcast.com was acquired by Yahoo! for $5.9 billion in Yahoo! stock.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Cuban
