Story of Mark Cuban

Mark Cuban was born on July 31, 1958 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His father spent nearly half a century working at a car upholstery shop. His grandfather emigrated from Russia and fed his family by selling merchandise out of the back of a truck.

As a kid Cuban always wandered for a better life. At the age of 12, he sold sets of garbage bags to save up for a pair of expensive basketball shoes he liked. He earned extra dollars in high school by becoming a stamp and coin salesman. He started taking psychology classes at the University of Pittsburgh during his junior year of high school. Then he skipped his senior year and enrolled full time at the college.

After graduated from the Kelley School of Business in 1981 with a B.Sc. in Business Administration, Cuban moved back to Pittsburgh and took a job with Mellon Bank, just as the company was ready to switch over to computers. In 1982, Cuban moved to Dallas, 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 a job selling software, and eventually formed his own consulting business, MicroSolutions, with support from his previous customers from ‘Your Business Software’. The company was an early proponent of technologies such as Carbon Copy, Lotus Notes, and CompuServe. In 1990, Cuban sold MicroSolutions to CompuServe for $6 million and made approximately $2 million after taxes on the deal.

In 1995, Cuban and fellow Indiana University alumnus Todd Wagner started ‘Audionet’. Its formation was rooted in a desire to be able to listen to Indiana Hoosier basketball games online. With a single server and an ISDN line, Audionet became ‘Broadcast.com’ and the firm went public in 1998. Soon its stock reaches $200 a share. A year later, Wagner and Cuban sold out to Yahoo! for nearly $6 billion.

In 2000, Mark Cuban introduced himself to the NBA community when he purchased the Dallas Mavericks for $285 million from Ross Perot Jr. After this ownership he has been the source of extensive media attention and controversy involving league policies.  He attacked the league’s former director of officiating, Ed Rush, saying that he “might have been a great ref, but I wouldn’t hire him to manage a Dairy Queen.” He has amassed more than $2 million in NBA fines for his controversial comments over the years. During this time In September 2002, Cuban married his longtime girlfriend, Tiffany Stewart in Barbados. They have three children together. In 2011, the Mavericks finally won the NBA title by defeating the Heat.

Cuban also brought a touch of innovation to his ownership of the team and he was the first owner to launch his own blog. The blog became wildly popular, receiving thousands of emails a day from his readers.

In April 2010, Cuban loaned the newly formed United Football League (UFL) $5 million. He did not own a franchise and he was not involved in day-to-day operations neither of the league nor of any of its teams. In January 2011, he filed a federal lawsuit against the UFL for their failure to repay the loan by the October 6, 2010 deadline. In 2011, Cuban was No. 211 on Forbes’ list of “World’s Richest People”, with a net worth of $2.6 billion. In February 2016, Cuban purchased a principal ownership stake in the Professional Futsal League.

Mark Cuban is a great example of someone who loves business and who is dedicated to rising up and becoming a self-made man. He has also written a book and since 2012 has been a guest judge on the hit TV series “Shark Tank.” “Shark Tank” is an amazing opportunity for the guest judges to hear hundreds of previously vetted business proposals a year. Mark Cuban has found the perfect way to get incredibly wealthy.