If you have heard about and watched the popular American reality TV show Shark Tank, chances are you already know one of the Sharks Mark Cuban. Today, Cuban is turning 65 years old, clocking a net worth of $5.1 billion, according to Forbes.
He also owns the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks basketball team and co-founded a company named Cost Plus Drugs in January 2022 to reduce prescription medicine prices.
If you are wondering how Cuban was able to build so much wealth, let’s take a brief look at his journey as a businessman, investor, and famous TV personality.
Early career
Cuban first tasted success at the young age of 12 years. He started out with a simple idea of buying lots of garbage bags from a friend’s dad for $3 and re-selling them door-to-door for $6. He has since revealed how he made an effective 14-second pitch to convince people.
As a teenager, he sold stamps and coins and learned to do business by leveraging his experience. In the 80s, Cuban entered Indiana University to pursue business administration and managed to save $15,000 as a college student.
With that money, he purchased a bar called ‘Motley’s Pub’ and operated it, and the student bar soon got famous marking it as Cuban’s first big success. After completing college, he started his entrepreneurial journey by building a computer company named MicroSolutions.
He grew this business for seven years and sold the company for a whopping $6 million to CompuServe in 1990. Cuban became a millionaire and soon purchased a lifetime flying pass with American Airlines to travel the world.
Becoming a billionaire
Mark Cuban is an active investor in the stock and cryptocurrency market. During his initial trading days, he pushed his net worth to $20 million and quickly knew he wouldn’t have to work now.
In 1995, he and his college friend came up with a new business idea to start a website called AudioNet, which helped people listen to basketball games online. Soon, online videos flooded the website, and the millionaire changed the website’s name to Broadcast.com.
Broadcast.com was the first-ever online streaming website that went public on July 18, 1998. Cuban’s net worth jumped to $300 million as the stock prices increased, and his website become a well-known platform for online entertainment.
Tech company Yahoo showed interest in buying Broadcast.com, and Cuban sold the website for approximately $5.7 billion in 1999, making him a billionaire.
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Shark Tank journey
Cuban joined the ABC reality television programme Shark Tank in its second season in 2011. Today, it is one of the longest-running series and is currently on its 14th season.
On Shark Tank, Cuban invested around $20 million in 85 companies across 111 episodes, as stated by a fan-made site Sharkalytics.
The fun fact is that Cuban is the only billionaire shark on this programme and is accompanied by Kevin O’Leary-“Mr Wonderful”, Robert Herjavec, Barbara Corcoran, Lori Greiner, and Daymond John.
Edited by Suman Singh
