Mark Cuban

Mark Cuban, born July 31, 1958, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is an American businessman, entrepreneur, and television personality whose public life has stretched across personal computing, internet media, sports, entertainment, and reality television. He is the former principal owner and current minority owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, co-owner of 2929 Entertainment, and from 2012 to 2025 was one of the main “sharks” on ABC’s Shark Tank. As of January 2026, Forbes estimated his net worth at US$6 billion.

Cuban grew up in Mt. Lebanon, an affluent suburb of Pittsburgh, in a working-class Jewish family. His father, Norton Cuban, was an automobile upholsterer, and Cuban described his mother, Shirley, as someone with “a different job or different career goal every other week.” His family history included immigration from the Russian Empire, Bessarabia, and Lithuania, and his paternal grandfather changed the surname from Chabenisky to Cuban after the family came through Ellis Island.

Business came early. At 12, Cuban sold garbage bags to pay for expensive sneakers. A few years later, he sold stamps and coins. At 16, during a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette strike, he ran newspapers from Cleveland to Pittsburgh. Instead of finishing his senior year of high school, he enrolled full time at the University of Pittsburgh, then transferred to Indiana University Bloomington, where he graduated from the Kelley School of Business in 1981 with a Bachelor of Science degree in management. He chose Kelley without visiting because it had the least expensive tuition among the top 10 business schools. In college, he tried ventures including a bar, disco lessons, and a chain letter.

After graduation, Cuban returned to Pittsburgh and worked at Mellon Bank, where he immersed himself in machines and networking. In 1982, he moved to Dallas, first working as a bartender at Elan and then as a salesperson at Your Business Software, one of the earliest PC software retailers in Dallas. He was fired in less than a year after meeting a client to seek new business instead of opening the store. With support from former customers, he co-founded MicroSolutions, a systems integrator and software reseller. The company grew to more than $30 million in revenue, and in 1990 Cuban sold it to CompuServe for $6 million, making about $2 million after taxes.

In 1995, Cuban and fellow Indiana University alumnus Todd Wagner joined Audionet, combining their interest in Indiana Hoosiers basketball and webcasting. With a single server and an ISDN line, Audionet became Broadcast.com in 1998. By 1999 it had 330 employees and $13.5 million in second-quarter revenue, and that year Yahoo! acquired it for $5.7 billion in stock. Cuban later described himself as very lucky to have sold before the dot-com bubble burst, while also noting that he hedged against the Yahoo! shares he received. He continued with Wagner at 2929 Entertainment, which produced and distributed film and video, purchased Landmark Theatres in 2003, and released Steven Soderbergh’s Bubble in 2006.

Cuban’s public image has also been shaped by the Dallas Mavericks, their 2011 NBA Championship during his ownership, his disputes with league management, his investments in startups, and his long run on Shark Tank. His words resonate because they come from repeated practice: selling early, learning new tools, taking chances, and staying visibly involved. One quote often linked to him captures that energy: “Always wake up with a smile, knowing that today you are going to have fun accomplishing what others are too afraid to do.”