Mark Cuban

Mark Cuban is slated to appear in the upcoming season of “Dancing with the Stars.” Cuban is the billionaire entrepreneur who also owns the NBA team the Dallas Mavericks and 2929 Entertainment. He is also the chairman of HDNet, an HDTV cable network.

Mark was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on July 31, 1958. Mark sold items and held part time jobs even while still in high school. He enrolled as a full time student at the University of Pittsburgh before completely his senior year in high school. After transferring to Indiana University in Bloomington, he graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration in 1977.

Cuban moved to Dallas in 1982. At first, he worked as a bartender, but then became a salesman for Your Business Software. He decided to open his own company called MicroSolutions, a system integrator and software reseller. In 1990, Cuban sold MicroSolutions to Compuserve for $6 million dollars. In 1995, Mark and a college alum Todd Wagner started Audionet, which became Broadcast.com. By 1999, the company employed 330 people and had annual revenues of nearly $100 million dollars. Yahoo! acquired Broadcast.com and Cuban received $5.9 billion in Yahoo! Stock.

Unlike many dotcomers who made a lot of money only to lose it quickly, Cuban avoided loss of wealth by diversifying his monies. He purchased a majority of the Dallas Mavericks from H. Ross Perot, Jr. for $285 million in January 2000. Since he purchased the team, their winning percentage has increased and they have reached the playoffs every season. Cuban has expressed interest in purchasing an NHL team (the Pittsburgh Penguins), but that has not materialized. He has also expressed interest in owning a Major League Baseball team and has sent in a contract to purchase the Chicago Cubs.

Cuban also is involved in social software and distributed networking as the owner of IceRocket, a search engine that searches blogs for content. He is also a partner of RedSwooch, which uses peer-to-peer technology to deliver media such as video or software. He is an investor in Weblogs, Inc., a network of blogs. Cuban has even taken a stab at acting, showing up in films such as Breaking the F-ing Rules, All In, Like Mike 2: Streetball, Lost at Sea, Talking about Sex, and an episode of “Walker, Texas Ranger.”

Cuban is currently listed as #407 according to Forbes’ “World’s Richest People” list. He has been married since 2002 to advertising executive Tiffany Stewart. They have one daughter, born in 2004. He created the Fallen Patriot Fund, which helps the families of military killed or injured in the Iraq War. So far, the fund has received donations from 48 states, Italy, and three provinces in Canada that total more than $2.5 million dollars, with Cuban donating one million dollars himself.

For “Dancing with the Stars,” Cuban is partnered with Kym Johnson, who previously partnered with Jerry Springer and season four runner-up Joey Fatone. Cuban is an athletic person, but underwent hip replacement surgery for his left hip in June 2007. Doctors were predicting he would be able to carry out regular activities, but we will have to wait to see if the surgery affects his dancing ability.

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