Mark Cuban was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on the 31st of July in 1958.
Cuban grew up in Mount Lebanon, a suburb of Pittsburgh, in a Jewish working-class family.
His grandfather changed the surname from "Chabenisky" to "Cuban" after his family
emigrated from Russia through Ellis Island. Cuban first ventured into business at age
12. He sold garbage bags to pay for a pair of expensive basketball shoes.
He was a sneakerhead too! At age 16, Cuban took advantage of a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette strike by
running newspapers from Cleveland to Pittsburgh. Instead of attending high school for his
senior year, he enrolled as a full-time student at the University of Pittsburgh.
He is also a Pittsburgh Steelers fan of the NFL. After one year at Pitt, Cuban transferred to
Indiana University where he graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in management.
CAREER In 1982 he bounced
out of Pittsburgh and headed to Dallas. Cuban landed a job selling software and
eventually formed his own consulting business, MicroSolutions. Cuban was soon an expert in the
field of computers and networking. He also had a knack for building a smart,
profitable company. In 1990, Cuban sold the firm to CompuServe for $6 million.
His fortune making was far from done. Sensing that a new world awaited with the development of the
Internet, Cuban and a business partner, Indiana alum Todd Wagner, started AudioNet in 1995.
Its formation was rooted in a desire to be able to listen to Indiana Hoosier basketball
games online. The company, despite its early critics, proved to be a smashing success.
Renamed Broadcast.com, the firm went public in 1998 and soon saw its stock reach $200 a share.
A year later, Wagner and Cuban sold out to Yahoo! for nearly $6 billion. Talk about an exit!
Cuban also brought his business acumen to the world of film and television production
by purchasing the Landmark Theatres chain and Magnolia Pictures in 2003.
He's listed as an executive producer for such acclaimed movies as Goodnight and Good Luck (2005)
and Akeelah and the Bee (2006). He further boosted his own celebrity with appearances on
the popular TV series Entourage and The League. Cuban also guess starred on the big-screen
version of Entourage and starred as U.S. President Marcus Robbins in the disaster flick Sharknado 3.
He also became a contestant on Dancing with the Stars in 2007. And of course he
began his long run as one of the investors on the wildly popular TV show Shark Tank.
Dallas Mavericks In 2000, Cuban introduced himself
to the NBA community when he purchased the Dallas Mavericks for $285 million from Ross Perot Jr.
For Cuban, a ¬¬world was a dream. The Mavericks, however, were far from a dream franchise.
Plagued by poor personnel decisions and mediocre players and coaches, the club
experienced more than a decade of non-playoff basketball and ¬were perennial bottom feeders.
Cuban used his new role as the owner to immediately change that.
With his trademark enthusiasm and doggedness, he revamped the culture of the team and its roster,
erecting a new stadium and pampering his players. Cuban showed himself to be the team’s biggest
booster. Choosing to sit with the fans, Cuban egged on opponents and ridiculed
refs, and the Mavericks responded positively to the new owner's zeal.
The team qualified for the playoffs in 2001 while they set a franchise record for wins with 57. The
Dirk Notwitzki led Mavs made it to the 2006 NBA Finals before losing to the Miami Heat.
In 2011, the Mavericks finally won the NBA title by beating LeBron’s Heat.
Yeah, we learned about Mark Cuban’s businesses. So with that, Mark Cuban has a current net worth of…
wait, we will get to that later. Now, let’s talk about his lifestyle and how he spends his moola.
Mansions Back in 1999, soon after
Yahoo acquired his company, the Mavericks owner bought himself a sprawling mansion.
The French chateau-style home is built out of stone and sits on a
massive property spread across 7 acres of land. The main house is designed to wrap around a grand
entrance with a fountain at its center and is an enormous 23,000 plus square feet in size.
Mark admitted that he bought the house ‘sight unseen’ and that still to this day he doesn’t
exactly know how many bedrooms and bathrooms the house has! Talk about having too much space.
Besides the main house, there is also a 3-story guest house, which looks nothing short of a family
home by itself. The property also came with 3 garages attached to the main house, but of course,
that was too little space for a billionaire to park all his toys and so Mark built 2 more.
Cuban reported paid $13 million for the property. That’s an astounding
amount of money, especially back then. You wouldn’t expect a successful entrepreneur
like Cuban to own just one house, would you? The Mavericks owner sets his California base
in Laguna Beach — a small coastal city in Orange County. It is known for its many
art galleries, coves and beaches — where he purchased a swanky vacation home in a
resort-style oceanfront community. Back in 2018, Mark copped one of
only 13 private home sites that make up the Montage Residences resort. With 6 bedrooms,
each of them beautifully styled, 6 full bathrooms, and 3 half bathrooms, the house has a total of
7,867 square feet of pure awesomeness. Mark Cuban paid $19 million for this cool out pad.
Cars In addition to buying
nice cars for himself, Cuban is a family man. He was spotted driving himself and his family off
the set of Shark Tank in a Mercedes-Benz S600 Pullman Guard limousine. The Guard is no joke;
its primary responsibility is to keep celebrities safe, sporting bulletproof tires,
all-around armoring, and a steel bulkhead to protect the driver’s neck in case of attack.
With all of this armoring and safety equipment, the Guard weighs 11,200 pounds and takes a year
and a half to go from order to delivery. It’s incredibly exclusive to even order, and very few
people can afford to own it in the first place. The car is worth $1.56 million, making it the
most expensive Mercedes-Benz on the market today and a far cry from Cuban’s humble beginnings.
One of Cuban’s most unique cars is the 1955 Ford Customline that he bought in 2013. The
backstory behind this car is different than the others, though. To find this ride, he went on
reality TV show Fast N’ Loud and had the Gas Monkey garage crew find him the perfect car.
His requirements? “An ‘Oh my goodness!’ cruiser.” This Ford vehicle certainly fits, with a sleek
white exterior paint, all-green interior, and a vintage fender that are sure to turn heads.
The vehicle was initially a museum piece that was restored, but the tires are still the original.
Private Jet Cuban has not one but multiple private jets! His
first jet was the Gulfstream G550. He said though it was “brutally expensive”, it has been one of
his best investments. The pricey jet saved him hours upon hours of time, which is the one asset
nobody can own. The $40 million purchase also put Cuban’s name in the Guinness World Records
for the largest single e-commerce transaction. The jaw-dropping record stands to this day.
Cuban also bought a Boeing 757 so he could transport his basketball team, the Dallas
Mavericks, anywhere they needed to go. Outfitted to accommodate players over seven feet tall,
the spacious aircraft boasts a medical treatment room, a weight room, and excellent connectivity.
He shelled out a massive $36 million. Talk about traveling in style.
Charity Cuban founded the Fallen
Patriot Fund to help families of U.S. military personnel killed or injured during the Iraq War.
Cuban also made a $5 million donation to Indiana University for the "Mark Cuban Center for Sports
Media and Technology", which was built inside Assembly Hall, the school's basketball arena.
During the pandemic, Cuban posted an offer on LinkedIn to small business owners who had
questions about what to do in order to survive the economic downturn being caused by the pandemic.
He said people could ask him anything, but that his preference was "going to be helping
small businesses trying to avoid layoffs and hourly reductions." There were more
than 10,000 comments in response to his offer. Later that year, Cuban picked up homeless former
NBA player Delonte West from a gas station in Dallas. He paid for a hotel room for West along
with his treatment at a drug rehab center. He seems to be doing better and recently tried out
for the Big 3 basketball league. Family
The love of Mark Cuban’s life is Tiffany Stewart. They met at a Dallas gym around the
time Mark was selling his second company. They got married in 2002 in Barbados and they are
still going strong. They have three children: daughters Alexis and Alyssa and son Jake.
Despite being wealthy, Mark tries not to spoil his kids.
"I’m not the dad that comes home with a ton of presents. I am the dad that says, ‘Pick that
up. Take that; put it in the sink. No, you have to earn that,’” he said in an interview “I want them
to recognize that the only thing special about themselves is what they make for themselves.”
NET WORTH If you've noticed,
Mark Cuban is living the life he deserves. Apart from great business success, he contributes
positively to the lives of many people. But without any going further, let’s reveal
Mark Cuban’s net worth. Mark Cuban has a net worth of $4.7 billion dollars. One of the richest people
in the world, and the most popular NBA owner. See you on the next one, and peace out.