Thrive: 30 Inspirational Rags-to-Riches Stories

Mark Cuban

Mark Cuban was born and raised in a middle-class neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His father worked at a car upholstery shop and his mother was a homemaker. His grandfather emigrated from Russia and supported his family by selling merchandise out of the back of a truck. At age twelve, Mark sold garbage bags door to door in order to save for a pair of shoes. Throughout high school, he worked as a stamp and coin salesman.

Mark skipped his senior year of high school to enroll at the University of Pittsburgh, before transferring to Indiana University a year later. To earn a profit, Mark taught disco classes, started a chain letter, and raised $15,000 from one of his college professors to open a bar. It was popular around campus but was forced to close because of a wet T-shirt contest involving an underage girl. After graduation, Mark moved back to Pittsburgh and took a job with Mellon Bank, which was looking to install computers. Mark immersed himself in the study of machines and networking, while working to incorporate an entrepreneurial spirit into his job. He often wrote notes to the CEO, invited senior executives to happy hour to network with the younger employees, and started a newsletter. His boss, however, felt threatened. "Who the f— do you think you are?" he yelled.

At twenty-four years old, Mark quit his job and travelled to Dallas, Texas in his 1977 Fiat X19 that had a hole in the floorboard and needed oil every sixty miles. He moved into a tiny apartment with five friends and slept on the floor. Mark had no closet or dresser, so he stacked his clothes in a corner. He worked as a bartender, while applying for other jobs. He interviewed with a company named Your Business Software, which sold PC software to businesses and consumers, one of the first in Texas. At the time, Mark bought a $99 Texas Instruments computer and taught himself how to program in code. The company was impressed and offered Mark a sales position at $18,000 per year, plus commission. Mark accepted.

Nine months into his job, Mark was about to close a $15,000 sale for the company. However, he was fired for closing the sale instead of opening the store that morning. This was the turning point of his career. Mark went back to the customer and asked him for the job with his newly-formed company, MicroSolutions, which sold software, provided training and configured computers. The customer agreed. Mark eventually expanded his company into selling local-area networks, installing personal computers (PCs) for small- and medium-sized businesses, as well as reselling products from Televideo and Novell. MicroSolutions grew into a company with $30 million in revenues, which Mark later sold to CompuServe in 1990 for $6 million. He later invested profits from the sale to start AudioNet, later renamed Broadcast.com, which Mark wisely sold to Yahoo, in 1999, at the height of the dot-com bubble for $5.7 billion in stock. The sale made Mark a billionaire.