Robert Herjavec

He is happily married to Diane Plese, an optometrist. The couple married in a Croatian church in Mississauga, a Canadian city near Toronto. They are blessed with three children; two daughters, Caprice and Skye, and a son named Brendan.

He was born on September 14, 1962, in Varaždin, Croatia (formerly Yugoslavia). When he was eight, his family moved to Canada.

In 1970, the family arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia aboard the ‘Cristoforo Colombo’. They eventually settled in Toronto where they lived in the basement apartment of a family friend’s home for eighteen months.

He graduated from New College at the University of Toronto, with a degree in English literature and political science. To support the family financially, he took on a variety of minimum wage jobs such as waiting tables, delivering newspapers and retail sales.

His first job was related to films where he operated behind the camera in various production roles. He worked as one of the assistant directors in several productions including an unreleased movie ‘The Return of Billy Jack’, filmed in 1985-86. His early film career concluded with the position of Field Producer of the ‘XIV Winter Olympic Games’ for Global TV.

Later he learned of an opening at a computer startup called ‘Logiquest’, which used to sell IBM mainframe emulation boards. Although he was under-qualified for the position, he managed to secure a job for himself by offering to work for free for the first six months to earn his stay. He eventually became the General Manager of Logiquest.

In 1990, he left the company to start his own company which he managed to establish under the name of ‘BRAK Systems’ from the basement of his home. Soon it became Canada’s top provider of Internet Security Software. In 2000, ‘BRAK Systems’ was brought by ‘AT&T’ for $100 million. Within another couple of years, he managed to sell another technology company to Nokia for $ 225 million.

After a brief retirement as a stay-at-home father, he returned to the business arena and established a new company by the name of ‘The Herjavec Group’ in 2003. He currently serves as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the company which is one of Canada's fastest-growing technology organizations.

Along with being a successful entrepreneur, he is also a leading television personality. He features in two national versions of ‘Dragons' Den’, one in Canada on the CBC TV series ‘Dragons' Den’, and in America on the ABC series ‘Shark Tank’.

In 2003, he founded ‘The Herjavec Group (THG)’ which has grown from three employees in 2003 to 150 employees as on 2013. The company’s sales which were $400K in 2003 increased to over $125 million in 2012. The company has registered over $500 million in sales in the last 10 years and is considered to be Canada's largest IT security provider.