50 facts you didn’t know about Mark Cuban

Learn 50 things about a "shark" investor on the television series Shark Tank.

1. Mark Cuban is an American businessman, investor, film producer, author, television personality and philanthropist.

2. Mark Cuban is the owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, Landmark Theatres, and Magnolia Pictures, and the chairman of the HDTV cable network AXS TV.

3. Mark Cuban is also a "shark" investor on the television series Shark Tank.

4. In 2011, Cuban wrote an e-book, How to Win at the Sport of Business, in which he chronicles his life experiences in business and sports.

5. Mark Cuban was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Shirley and Norton Cuban, who was an automobile upholsterer.

6. Mark Cuban grew up in the affluent suburb of Mount Lebanon, in a Jewish working-class family.

7. His grandfather changed the family name from "Chabenisky" to "Cuban" after his Russian family landed on Ellis Island.

8. Cuban's first step into the business world occurred at age 12, when he sold garbage bags to pay for a pair of expensive basketball shoes.

9. While attending Mount Lebanon High School he held a variety of jobs including a bartender, disco dancing instructor, and a party promoter.

10. Rather than attend high school for his senior year, he enrolled as a full-time student at the University of Pittsburgh where he joined the Pi Lambda Phi International fraternity.

11. After one year at the University of Pittsburgh, he transferred to Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana and graduated from the Kelley School of Business in 1981 with a B.S. in Business Administration.

12. Mark Cuban chose Indiana's Kelley School of Business without even visiting the campus because "it had the least expensive tuition of all the business schools on the top 10 list".

13. During college, he had various business ventures, including a pub, disco lessons, and a chain letter.

14. In 1982, Cuban moved to Dallas, Texas.

15. Mark Cuban first found work as a bartender, then as a salesperson for Your Business Software, one of the first PC software retailers in Dallas.

16. Mark Cuban was fired less than a year later, after meeting with a client to procure new business instead of opening the store.

17. Mark Cuban started a company, MicroSolutions, with support from his previous customers from Your Business Software.

18. In 1990, Cuban sold MicroSolutions to CompuServe-then a subsidiary of H&R Block-for $6 million.

19. In 1995, Cuban and fellow Indiana University alumnus Todd Wagner started Audionet, combining their mutual interest in Indiana Hoosier college basketball and webcasting.

20. With a single server and an ISDN line, Audionet became Broadcast.com in 1998.

21. After the sale of Broadcast.com, Cuban diversified his wealth to avoid exposure to a market crash.

22. In 2011, Cuban was No. 459 on Forbes‍ '​ list of "World's Richest People", with a net worth of $2.6 billion.

23. The Guinness Book of Records credits Cuban with the "largest single e-commerce transaction", after he paid $40 million for his Gulfstream V jet in October 1999.

24. Cuban continues to work with Wagner in another venture, 2929 Entertainment, which provides vertically integrated production and distribution of films and video.

25. 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.

26. 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.

27. Mark Cuban was featured on the cover of the November 2003 premiere issue of Best magazine announcing the arrival of High Definition Television.

28. Mark Cuban also was co-founder (with Philip Garvin) of AXS TV (formerly HDNet), the first high-definition satellite television network.

29. In February 2004, Cuban announced that he would be working with ABC television to produce a reality television series, The Benefactor.

30. Mark Cuban financially supported Grokster in the Supreme Court case, MGM v. Grokster.

31. Mark Cuban is also a partner in Synergy Sports Technology, a web based basketball scouting and video delivery tool, used by many NBA teams.

32. Mark Cuban has also spearheaded ventures in the social software and Distributed Networking industries.

33. Mark Cuban is an owner of IceRocket, a search engine which scours the blogosphere for content.

34. 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.

35. In July 2006, Cuban financed Sharesleuth.com, a website created by former St. Louis Post-Dispatch investigative reporter Christopher Carey to uncover fraud and misinformation in publicly traded companies.

36. In April 2007, Cuban partnered with Mascot Books to publish his first children's book, Let's Go, Mavs!.

37. In November 2011, he wrote a 30,000-word e-book, "How to Win at the Sport of Business: If I Can Do It, You Can Do It", which he described as "a way to get motivated".

38. In October 2008, Cuban started Bailoutsleuth.com as a grassroots, online portal for oversight over the U.S. government's $700 billion "bailout" of financial institutions.

39. In April 2011, Cuban put Magnolia Pictures and Landmark Theatres up for sale, but said, "If we don't get the price and premium we want, we are happy to continue to make money from the properties."

40. On January 4, 2000, Cuban purchased a majority stake in the NBA's Dallas Mavericks for $285 million from H. Ross Perot, Jr.

41. At WWE's Survivor Series in 2003, Cuban was involved in a staged altercation with Raw General Manager Eric Bischoff and Raw wrestler Randy Orton.

42. On December 7, 2009, Cuban acted as the guest host of Raw, getting revenge on Orton when he was the guest referee in Orton's match against Kofi Kingston, giving Kingston a fast count victory. He then announced that Orton would face Kingston at TLC: Tables, Ladders & Chairs. At the end of the show, Cuban was slammed through a table by the number one contender for the WWE Championship, Sheamus.

43. Since 2009, Cuban has been a panelist at the annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.

44. Mark Cuban started the Fallen Patriot Fund to help families of U.S. military personnel killed or injured during the Iraq War, personally matching the first $1 million in contributions with funds from the Mark Cuban Foundation, which is run by his brother Brian Cuban.

45. On February 9, 2009, Cuban announced the "Mark Cuban Stimulus Plan", involving what he called "an open source exchange of ideas". His plan entails individuals posting ideas that fit certain criteria (profitability within 90 days, no advertising, certain banking controls for Cuban) in the hopes that either Cuban will fund them, or other individuals will take up the ideas thereby stimulating the economy.

46. In September 2002, Cuban married Tiffany Stewart in Barbados.

47. They have three children: daughters Alexis Sofia (born 2003) and Alyssa (born 2006) and son Jake (born 2010).

48. They live in a 24,000-square-foot (2,200 m2) mansion in the Preston Hollow area of Dallas, Texas.

49. Cuban voices himself in the 2014 episode of American Dad! "Introducing The Naughty Stewardesses".

50. Cuban first appeared on Shark Tank in Season 2 as a guest shark, and has been a regular since then.

Source: Wikipedia.org