American billionaire and sports figure Mark Cuban was born on July 31, 1958 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Cuban, whose original family name, Chabenisky, was shortened when his grandparents migrated to the United States, was already a businessman during his growing up years. Cuban’s first venture to the business world was when he was 12 years old; he sold garbage bags so he could buy the basketball shoes he wanted.

When Mark Cuban was still in school, he entered various professions — bartender, disco dancing instructor, and party promoter. The money he paid his college tuition with came from collecting and selling stamps. Cuban earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from Indiana University’s Bloomington Campus in 1981.

In 1982, Mark Cuban went to Texas and worked as a bartender there. He also worked as a salesperson for Your Business Software for less than a year. Soon after, Cuban founded his company, MicroSolutions, and took some of his former customers to his business. MicroSolutions functioned as a reseller of software such as Carbon Copy, Lotus Notes, and CompuServe. Cuban sold his company to Compuserve in 1990. The trade was worth $6 million.

In 1995, Cuban and Todd Wagner entered the online business with Audionet as their launching platform. Audionet served as a webcasting site, particularly of basketball. In 1999, Audionet (which was renamed to Broadcast.com in 1998) was sold to Yahoo for $5.9 billion worth of Yahoo stocks.

A year later, Mark Cuban went on to buy basketball franchise Dallas Mavericks for $285 million from H. Ross Perot, Jr. Cuban is described by the sports media as the ultimate sports fan, citing his sitting with fans in the sidelines wearing the teams’ colors. Cuban’s involvement in the world of sports also expands to hockey, baseball, and mixed martial arts.

Forbes lists Cuban as the world’s 133rd richest person, with a net worth of $2.8 billion. Aside from business and sports, Cuban is also an active philanthropist whose projects are centered on the families of fallen US soldiers and other military personnel.

Currently, Cuban owns HDNet and HDTV Cable Network. Cuban is also a critic on government policies.

Additional Information about Mark Cuban:

The Wikipedia biography of features a biography of Mark Cuban.

Mark Cuban is the founder of the Fallen Patriot Fund.

In this Huffington Post article, Mark Cuban criticizes President Obama’s choice of economic advisers.