American entrepreneur Mark Cuban may be best known for his starring role in the TV show Shark Tank, and as the owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, but he is also an investor in a growing number of corporate enterprises.

Born in Pittsburgh, Cuban showed his enterprising skills at an early age. After graduating from Indiana University in 1981, Cuban formed his own consulting business in Dallas, called MicroSolutions, which he sold to CompuServe for $6 million, and in 1995 he co-founded AudioNet—renamed Broadcast.com—which he sold to Yahoo! for nearly $6 billion. In 2006, he established Sharesleuth, a research and investigation website to uncover fraud in financial markets; he also holds several patents.

Cuban has extended his talents to the entertainment industry. He has competed on the popular TV series Dancing with the Stars and served as executive producer on films that have been nominated for several Academy Awards, including Good Night and Good Luck and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.

Cuban is also known for many philanthropic endeavors, and he is the author of How to Win at the Sport of Business: If I Can Do It, You Can Do It.

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