Mark Cuban (born July 31, 1958) is an American billionaire entrepreneur. He is the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, an NBA basketball team, and Chairman of HDNet, an HDTV cable networkBiography
Mark Cuban (his family's last name was shortened from Chabenisky when his grandparents immigrated to America) was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and grew up in the Pittsburgh suburb of Mt. Lebanon, in a Jewish working class family. His father Norton 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 bartender, disco dancing instructor, and party promoter. He paid for college by collecting and selling stamps, and once gained about $1,100 from starting a chain letter.
Rather than attend high school for his senior year, Cuban enrolled as a full time student at the University of Pittsburgh. 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.
Family and personal interests
In September 2002, Cuban married Tiffany Stewart, an advertising executive, in Barbados, with a wedding reception at the American Airlines Center. Their first daughter Alexis Sofia was born on September 25, 2005; their second daughter, Alyssa, was born in 2007.The family lives in the Preston Hollow area of Dallas, in a 24,000-square-foot (2,200 m2) mansion Cuban family mansion in Dallas that Cuban bought for $13 million.
career
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.
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 retained approximately $2 million after taxes on the deal.
In 1995, Cuban and fellow Indiana University alumnus 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 $13.5 million in revenue for the second quarter. In 1999, during the Dot-com boom, Broadcast.com was acquired by Yahoo! for $5.9 billion in Yahoo! stock.
Billionaire entrepreneur
After the sale, Cuban diversified his wealth to avoid exposure to a market crash. As of 2009, Cuban is #296 on Forbes' "World's Richest People" list, with a net worth of $2.3 billion. The Guinness Book of Records credits Cuban with the "largest single e-commerce transaction," after paying $40 million for his Gulfstream V jet in October 1999.
Cuban continues to work with Wagner in another venture, 2929 Entertainment, which provides vertically integrated production and distribution of films and video. On September 24, 2003, the firm purchased Landmark Theatres, a chain of 58 arthouse movie theaters. The company is also responsible for the updated version of the TV show Star Search, which was broadcast on CBS. 2929 Entertainment released Bubble, a movie directed by Steven Soderbergh, in theaters and on DVD on the same day in January 2006 as a simultaneous release.
Cuban was featured on the cover of the November 2003 premiere issue of Best magazine announcing the arrival of High Definition Television. Cuban also was co-founder (with Philip Garvin) of HDNet, the first high-definition satellite television network.
In February 2004, Cuban announced that he would be working with ABC television to produce a reality television series called The Benefactor. The premise of the six-episode series involved 16 contestants vying to win $1 million by participating in various contests, with their performances being judged by Cuban. It premiered on September 13, 2004 but due to poor ratings was cancelled before the full season aired.
Cuban financially supported Grokster in the Supreme Court case, MGM v. Grokster.[30] He is also a partner in Synergy Sports Technology, a web based basketball scouting and video delivery tool, used by many NBA teams.
Cuban has spearheaded ventures in the social software and distributed networking industries. He's an owner of IceRocket, a search engine which scours the blogosphere for content. Cuban was also a partner in RedSwoosh-a company which uses peer-to-peer technology to deliver rich media, including video and software to a user's PC, later acquired by Akamai. He was also an investor in Weblogs, Inc. which was acquired by AOL.
In 2005, Cuban invested in Brondell Inc., a San Francisco startup making a high-tech toilet seat called a Swash that works like a bidet but mounts on a standard toilet. "People tend to approach technology the same way, whether it's in front of them, or behind them", Cuban joked. He also invested in Goowy Media Inc., a San Diego internet software startup.
In April 2006, Sirius Satellite Radio announced that Cuban would host his own weekly radio talk show, Mark Cuban's Radio Maverick. However, the show has not materialized.
In July 2006, Cuban financed Sharesleuth.com, a web site created by former St. Louis Post-Dispatch investigative reporter Christopher Carey to uncover fraud and misinformation in publicly traded companies. Experimenting with a new business model for making online journalism financially viable, Cuban disclosed that he would take positions in the shares of companies mentioned in Sharesleuth.com in advance of publication. Business and legal analysts questioned the appropriateness of shorting a stock prior to making public pronouncements which are likely to result in losses in that stock's value. Cuban insisted that the practice is legal in view of full disclosure.
In October 2008, Cuban started Bailoutsleuth.com as a grassroots, online portal for oversight over the US government's $700 billion dollar "bailout" of financial institutions.
