People in Technology: Mark Cuban

One of the most interesting people in technology, in my opinion, is Mark Cuban. Mark is famous for being the loudmouth owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA franchise, however, Few people know how Mark Cuban originally became wealthy. Many assume his millions were made through the Dallas Mavericks without recognizing the fact that you need millions to buy a professional franchise.

Mark was born outside of Pittsburg, PA to a working class family and put himself through College at Indiana University. He began his work in technology as a software salesman at a company called Your Business Software, but was fired for showing up to work late. He used established clients from his YBS to start his own company MicroSolutions, a software reseller and systems integrator. MicroSolutions blossomed quickly and would pave the way for internet technologies Carbon Copy, Lotus Notes, and Compu Serve. Mark sold his first cash cow MicroSolutions for $6 million (pocket change compared to what he was about to make).

Mark's big money project was his founding of internet webcaster audionet. Cuban and a fellow Indiana alum started Audionet to cover college basketball on the web with one server and an ISDN line. Audionet was renamed Broadcast.com and when the internet boom hit Mark felt it in his pockets. In 1999 Yahoo bought Broadcast.com for $5.9 billion in yahoo stock.

Mark was savvy enough to diversify his funds. One major way of doing this was his purchase of the Dallas Mavericks. He bought the majority stake in the Mavs from Ross Perot Jr. for $285million. his net worth today is $2.8 billion and his is listed ad number 166 on forbes list of the world's richest people.