Mark Cuban

Mark Cuban

Mark Cuban is an American billionaire entrepreneur who is most famed for being the owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA basketball team. Winner of GQ magazine’s ‘Men of the Year’ and included in New York Times ‘Year in Ideas’, Mark is among the most influential personalities of the business industry.

This powerful business magnate was born on 31st July 1958 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Mark was just twelve when he entered the business world by selling door to door goods in order to buy very expensive basketball shoes for himself. He attended University of Pittsburgh as a full time student and in his final year moved to Indiana University. In 1981 he graduated with a BA in business administration. The next year he went to Dallas, Texas where his first job was of a bartender. He also worked at ‘Your Business Software’ as a salesman, where his job lasted for less than a year. He started his own company ‘MicroSolutions’ that he sold for 6 million dollars in 1990. In 1995 Mark started a webcasting venture combining it with his interest ‘basketball’. Called ‘Audionet’, this website had just one server and one ISDN line. During the dot.com boom he changed its name to Broadcast.com and in 1999 it had expanded to 330 employees and generated revenue of 13.5 million dollars. Broadcast.com was bought by Yahoo for almost 6 billion dollars in their stock.

In 2000, Mark acquired the Dallas Mavericks for 285 million dollars to become part of his favorite sports. The club which had faced its share of bad decisions and poor choice of players now started moving towards success under the enthusiasm and determination of Mark Cuban who proposed new ways into the way the club was run. He was the biggest promoter for the club that soon responded positively to Mark’s zealous techniques. Consequently, Dallas Mavericks qualified for the playoffs in just one year and set a record of 57 wins the next year. They qualified for the NBA finals in 2006 losing it but eventually succeeding in 2011. One of his clever and highly appreciated tactics was to launch his blog where he shared his insights on the game.

His other venture includes purchasing the HDnet, which is a high definition TV network and producing two hit movies namely ‘Goodnight and Good luck’ and ‘Gonzo: the Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson’. He bought Landmarks Theater chain in 2003 and also has a share in Lions Gate Entertainment. He is the owner of Magnolia Pictures and Magnolia Home Video along with leading several social software and Distributed Networking ventures. He made investments in many other businesses and internet startups such as Sharesleuth.com and Bailoutsleuth.com. He recently wrote an e-book comprising of 30,000 words, called ‘How to Win at the Sport of Business: If I Can Do It, You Can Do It.’

Mark faced some controversies regarding insider trading where the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission filed a law suit against him. He has also been fined by the NBA for passing critical statements that cost him $1,665,000. In 2011, Mark was number 459 on Forbes ‘World’s Richest People’ list. His current net worth is 2.3 billion dollars.