Robert Herjavec is best known as one of the five investors on ABC’S “Shark Tank.” But he has quite a backstory. Not only is he a millionaire thanks to some successful companies he has founded, he also maintains a fun social life with truly interesting hobbies. Robert Herjavec was born on September 14, 1962, in Zbjeg, Croatia. When he was 8, he fled the communist regime with his family to live in Canada. At the time he spoke no english. When his family left Croatia with one suitcase and $20 in hand. They lived for 18 months in a friend’s basement while they began rebuilding their new life in North America. His first jobs were as a newspaper deliveryman and a waiter. These early experiences in customer serivce taught him the ins and outs of …show more content…
Before entering into entrepreneurship, however, he dabbled in other careers. They included retail, television, and even a stint as a collection agent. A little while later, he got a job at the company Logiquest. His first role there was in sales, but he rose all the way up to become general manager. In 1990, he was fired from the company. Also in 1990 he launched his own internet security company, BRAK Systems, in his basement. According to Robert, he never thought he’d enter the world of entrepreneurship. His reason for founding BRAK: He needed to pay his mortgage somehow. The same year he found BRAK Systems he married Diane Plese. They have 3 kids, two daughters, and a son. After 10 years BRAK Systems became Canada’s largest internet security company. Herjavec began accumulating his wealth. He and Plese ended up buying a 50,000-square-foot mansion in Toronto. BRAK Systems sold to AT&T for 30.2 million cash in 2000. After the sale, Herjavec began working for AT&T and then took a job at the company RAMP Networks. He served as VP of sales at RAMP, helping the company sell to Nokia for $225 million. After this acquisition, Herjavec decided to retire for a few years to be with his three children. After three years, Herjavec got the entrepreneur bug again. So in 2003, he founded the internet security company The Herjavec Group. They Herjavec Group has become the fastest Canadian security
He worked hard for every part of life he earned as an Italian-American in the early 20th century. His life would pave the way, quite literally, for millions of Americans, including my father. My father is a proud American who works everyday to sew his own piece of cloth into the fabric of history this nation wears. A famous Italian- American songwriter, Bruce Springsteen, writes, “There’s diamonds in the sidewalks, the gutter’s lined in song.” In a way, he was right. There are riches to be had but only if one chooses to see all of the potential in the settings around himself and put in effort. My great-grandfather knew this and chose to forge his own destiny. A destiny many immigrants strive toward
At the time that this family arrived in the United States, a new wave of Eastern European immigration - spurred by growing industrialization and the advances in technology leading to the establishment of steel mills and other manufacturing and raw material processing factories and plants - was reshaping the American labor force. Djuro's experiences, and those of his son-in-law, Mike Dobrejcak, reflect a certain level of hostility towards these Eastern and Central Europeans from "mainstream" Americans and earlier, more acc...
just wanted a job, he went from place to place trying as hard as he
One of the biggest impacts on his life was when he and his family moved across
Mark didn’t settle for the low price and sold the company to Yahoo for an astounding 5.7 billion. Mark’s entrepreneurial
The co-founder, Mark Butler, owes a major note to the other original partner, who Mark bought out. He has a mortgage on his 12-year-old house and no other significant investments. Mark’s personal references indicate that he is hard-working and watches his business very closely.
practice of law. He was naturally talented in the new job and soon found himself very
He lost his job when he broke his hand boxing. He went out looking for a job every morning, hoping they would pick him up at the docks.
He knew people loved hardworking-immigrant-make-good stereotype, which he hated before. He told his stories with many believable details even made
he took a two year break to direct and run a company at the National
However his greatest obstacle during this time was in December of 1981 when fellow employee Tribble left the team to finish medical school. This left Andy in charge of the team on top of his normal workload. According to Steve Capps (who joined in towards the beginning of 1983) Hertzfeld kept the software team focused despite the mounting pressure. He goes as far as to say that he was “…incredibly lucky to be in the right place at the right time to play a significant role in the development of a world changing product, redefining personal computing and delivering it to the rest of us. It was exciting to watch it take root and transform businesses and lives.
He was a child during the Great Depression and World War II, his life from there was filled with war and hardships as he lived the life of a poor immigrant. Children during the Great Depression had it rough. They had to mature sooner due to the
Mycoskie dabbled in many business adventures, beginning with laundry services during college and moving towards advertising and marketing afterwards. Mycoskie even participated in the second season of the television show The Amazing Race. It was not until he founded
In 1990, he joined D.E. Shaw and Company. He helped the company build the most technically advanced hedge funds on Wall Street. He eventually went from being a computer expert to a money manager, and became the company's youngest vice president. In 1994, Jeff read a statistic that said the Internet was growing at a rate of 2300% per year. He decided to leave D.E. Shaw and Company to form Amazon.com, which he named after the seemingly endless South American River.
His parents were very hard workers, his father was an air brake mechanic, at the