‘Shark Tank’ Cast: Facts You Need to Know For the 100th Episode

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(ABC)

The Shark Tank cast joins together on November 14th to celebrate their 100th episode.

This is the first time in history that all the investors are on the show at the same time.

To celebrate this milestone, learn a fun fact about each of the sharks.

To read all of Heavy’s Shark Tank coverage, click here.


1. Mark Cuban Founded a Computer Company Without Ever Owning a Computer

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After getting fired from a company called Your Business Software, he decided to start his own in 1983.

He told Forbes about his venture at just 25 years old:

I started a company called Micro-Solutions. I was a PC consultant, and I sold software and did training and configured computers. I wrote my own programs. I immersed myself in the PC industry and studied Microsoft and Lotus and watched what the smartest people did to make things work.

By 1990, his company was grossing $30 million per year, and when he sold his company to CompuServe, he earned millions of dollars.

For the full article on Mark, click here.

2. Barbara Corcoran Was a ‘Sexy’ Waitress Who Turned $1,000 Into a $5 Billion Business

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In 1973, Corcoran founded The Corcoran Group with very little capital.

While waitressing at a New Jersey diner, working 18-hour days, she met builder Ray Simone.

He was an older man, but they started dating and moved in together in New York City.

He gave her the money to start an apartment rental agency in Manhattan in exchange for 51 percent of the business.

According to Business Insider, she encourages women to wield their sex appeal to get ahead:

I would’ve never gotten the $1,000 to start my business if I wasn’t sexy.

She said that it was sheer luck that brought Simone to her:

I was waitressing one night and I was lucky enough to have Ramon Simone walk in and order his cup of tea at my counter instead of the other waitress’ counter.

By 1975, the couple had 14 agents. However, when Simone announced he was marrying his secretary, they had to split the business.

Simone told Corcoran that her real estate career was pretty much over, since, at that time, there were no female-owned real estate firms in the city.

She said in Fortune magazine, “As we divided the company in 1978, he said, ‘You’ll never succeed without me.’ ”

She sold the business in 2001 for $70 million.

It is now a $5 billion company and one of the biggest real estate firms in New York.

For the complete article on Barbara, click here.

3. Lori Greiner Created Over 400 Products

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In 1996, she invented, patented, produced and marketed her first product – a plastic jewelry organizer for earrings.

She was inventing it solely for practical reasons, never thinking it would lead to international recognition.
She told philly.com:

…I had a lot of jewelry that was just thrown in a box, and it was a mess. I couldn’t find anything. I really just thought it would be great to find a solution for my earrings so I could find what I wanted.

During her first cable TV appearance, she sold 2,500 earring organizers in just two minutes.

With an estimated net worth of over $100 million, she now owns 120 U.S. and international patents.

For the facts on Lori, see here.

4. Robert Herjavec Is the Nice One

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(ABC)

He’s married to Diane Pelse, a Croatian optometrist who he met when he went for an eye appointment. There was a time in his life when he was a stay-at-home dad to the couple’s three children. 

As far as balancing family and business, he told MSN Autos, “You know, I think as busy as I am I always make time for my kids. I was always very lucky. I sold my first company, made a lot of money and stayed home for three years. So, I have a great relationship with my kids. But I think it’s hard to balance. I really do. I think you have to make some choices.”

He lives in a lavish home in Montreal with his family.
In fact, Herjavec started on the Canadian version of the show, Dragons’ Den, along with Kevin O’Leary.

He told Business Insider why the show is so successful:

It’s the American Dream. It’s the desire to better one’s position in life, and who doesn’t have that desire? I think when people watch the show, they always think, ‘That could be me,’ and it really could. I mean, anybody can get on our show. Mind you, we’ve had 145,000 people apply this year, and 230 got on. But it’s the only show where you don’t have to have god-given talent in order to be successful. You don’t have to have a voice, and you don’t have to be able to dance. You can come on with an idea, and get an investment, and become very wealthy.

Another positive part of the show is that is changing the way small businesses are perceived.

He told ABC, ” I think Shark Tank is making business cool in our own small way – and of course, as a boring old computer guy, I am appreciative that my name and cool would ever be used in the same sentence.”

For our article on Robert, click here.

5. Daymond John Started FUBU While Working at Red Lobster

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(ABC)

In 1989 he started the urban clothing company, which stands for “For Us By Us,” due to a void he saw in clothes for inner city kids.

In the beginning, he called upon his Hollis, Queens neighbors, L.L. Cool J and Salt and Pepa, to wear his clothes.
“Even though I had placed our product in the hottest music videos out there, I was still working full-time at Red Lobster. To the public, FUBU was a huge company. Little did they know that I was still serving them shrimp and biscuits,” he told Four Hour Week.

People thought he had a huge company but in reality he only had 10 t shirts to back it up. Watch his interview with Entrepreneur, above, where he talks about his early career.

He began with an extremely modest $40 and in 1998, sales were at $350 million. He told Four Hour Week, “…I recognized when launching FUBU that “For us, by us” was such a powerful statement, and I knew that the world needed to see we actually meant it. That’s why my three business partners and I were at the front of a lot of our advertising and media. It communicated to our community that we were authentic and so was our brand.’

His routine would consist of sewing, packaging, and shipping his product in the morning. When he was done, he would start his 4 o’clock shift at Red Lobster, where he was a waiter.

To earn start-up capital, John and his mother mortgaged their home for $100,000. From ’89 to ’92, John had to close down FUBU three times because he ran out of money. One day in 1992, he and his friends made a big order of hats and sold them on the streets of Queens, and made $800 in just a few hours.

To read our piece about Daymond, click here.

6. Kevin O’Leary Got His Nickname ‘Mr. Wonderful’ on the Show

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He told Boston Magazine how the moniker came about :

In season one, someone was trying to sell a publishing deal to us for music and I proposed an aggressive 51 percent equity position because I wanted control of the business. And Barbara [Corcoran] said, “Well aren’t you Mr. Wonderful?” and I said,’You know what Barbara, I am!’

The public have taken the name usage to an extreme.
He continued, “Now it’s at a whole new level. I show up at hotels and my reservation is under the name Mr. Wonderful. They don’t even know my real name. That’s just nuts.”

As you can see from Twitter, both O’Leary and fans alike use the nickname lovingly:

For the facts on Kevin, click here.