| Mark Cuban | |
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Cuban in San Francisco, California, September 8, 2014
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| Born | 31 July 1958 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Residence | Dallas, Texas, U.S. |
| Alma mater | University of Pittsburgh Indiana University, Bloomington |
| Occupation | Owner of Dallas Mavericks Co-owner of 2929 Entertainment Chairman of AXS TV Television personality Entrepreneur |
| Net worth | US$3.4 billion (March 2017) |
| Political party | Independent |
| Spouse(s) | Tiffany Stewart (m. 2002) |
| Children | 3 |
Mark Cuban (born July 31, 1958) is an American businessman who is the owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, co-owner of 2929 Entertainment and chairman of the AXS TV. He is also one of the main “shark” investors on the ABC reality television series, Shark Tank. In 2011, Cuban wrote an e-book, How to Win at the Sport of Business, in which he chronicles his life experiences in business and sports.
Early life
Mark Cuban was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His father, Norton Cuban, was an automobile upholsterer, while Cuban has described his mother, Shirley, as someone with “a different job or different career goal every other week.” He grew up in the suburb of Mount Lebanon, in a Jewish working-class family. His paternal grandfather changed the family name from “Chabenisky” to “Cuban” after his family emigrated from Russia through Ellis Island. His maternal grandparents, who were also Jewish, came from Romania. Cuban’s first step into the business world occurred at age 12, when he sold garbage bags to pay for a pair of expensive basketball shoes. At age 16, Cuban took advantage of a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette strike by running newspapers from Cleveland to Pittsburgh.
Instead of attending high school for his senior year, he enrolled as a full-time student at the University of Pittsburgh where he joined the Pi Lambda Phi International fraternity. While attending the University of Pittsburgh, he held a variety of jobs including a bartender, disco dancing instructor, and a party promoter. After one year at the University of Pittsburgh, he transferred to Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, and graduated from the Kelley School of Business in 1981 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Management. He chose Indiana’s Kelley School of Business without even visiting the campus because “it had the least expensive tuition of all the business schools on the top 10 list”. During college he had various business ventures, including a bar, disco lessons, and a chain letter.
Business career
In 1982, Cuban moved to Dallas, Texas, where he first found work as a bartender, and then as a salesperson for Your Business Software, one of the earliest PC software retailers in Dallas. He was fired less than a year later, after meeting with a client to procure new business instead of opening the store.
Cuban started his own 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 made approximately $2 million after taxes on the deal.
Cuban is the co-founder of Broadcast.com, the internet streaming service he sold to Yahoo! for $4.8 billion in 1999. The billionaire, who appears on investor-themed reality show “Shark Tank,” is the majority owner of NBA franchise Dallas Mavericks and has stakes in movie cinemas, television channels and technology startups.
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