Robert Herjavec

Robert Herjavec was born in 1962 in the former Yugoslavia, in what is now Croatia. His father was repeatedly jailed for speaking out against the Communist government, and the family fled — arriving in Halifax, Canada, in 1970, when Robert was 8 years old, with about $20 and no English. They lived in a relative's Toronto basement for roughly 18 months. "I didn't know we were poor," he has said, "until we came to Canada."

He graduated from the University of Toronto in 1984, then took whatever work he could — waiting tables, delivering newspapers, even working as a film assistant director — before talking his way into the technology industry. After being let go from an early tech job, he founded BRAK Systems from his home basement in 1990, building it into a leading Canadian internet-security integrator and selling it to AT&T Canada in 2000 for $30.2 million.

In 2003, he started The Herjavec Group with three employees and about $400,000 in revenue. He grew it into one of the largest IT and cybersecurity firms in Canada — $200M+ in annual revenue — sold a majority stake to Apax Partners in 2021, merged it with Fishtech Group to form Cyderes, and scaled it to roughly 1,000 global employees before stepping down as CEO in September 2024 to focus on investing, mentoring, and his board and advisory roles.

Along the way he became a television fixture: first on Canada's Dragons' Den (three Gemini Awards), then as an original investor on ABC's Shark Tank from its 2009 premiere — where, across ~17 seasons, his most successful deal, Tipsy Elves ($100K for 10%), grew into a brand doing $160M+ a year. He's an Emmy winner and a bestselling author three times over — Driven (2010), The Will to Win (2013), and You Don't Have to Be a Shark (2016) — with two of his books reaching the bestseller lists at the same time.