Barbara Corcoran

Last updated

Barbara Corcoran
Barbara Corcoran (cropped).jpg
Corcoran in 2014
Born
Barbara Ann Corcoran

(1949-03-10) March 10, 1949 (age 75)
Edgewater, New Jersey, U.S.
Education St. Thomas Aquinas College (BEd)
Occupation(s)Commentator and Television personality, investor
Spouse
Bill Higgins
​
(m. 1988)​
Children2 [1]
Website Official website

Barbara Ann Corcoran [2] (born March 10, 1949) [3] is an American businesswoman, investor, syndicated columnist, and television personality. She founded The Corcoran Group, a real estate brokerage in New York City, which she sold to NRT for $66 million in 2001 and shortly thereafter exited the company. One of the show's original "Shark" investors, Corcoran has appeared in all 14 seasons of ABC's Shark Tank to date. [4] As of January 2023, she has made 130 deals on the show, the largest being a $350,000 investment for 40% of Coverplay. [5]

Contents

Corcoran is a columnist for More , The Daily Review , and Redbook , writes a weekly column in the New York Daily News , and has written several books. She has been featured on Larry King Live and NBC's Today show, and hosts The Millionaire Broker with Barbara Corcoran on CNBC.

Early life and education

Corcoran was born in Edgewater, New Jersey, [2] the second of 10 children [6] in a working class Irish-Catholic family. [7] Her mother, Florence, was a homemaker. Her father, Edwin W. Corcoran Jr., bounced from job to job throughout Corcoran's childhood. At times, her family relied on deliveries of free food from a friendly local grocer. Corcoran remembers her father as a man who occasionally drank too much and treated her mother with disrespect and condescension, particularly when he'd been drinking. [8]

Corcoran struggled throughout her schooling, and was labeled the "dumb kid" by her teachers and classmates. She later learned that she had dyslexia. and has stated that the bullying "drove her to work harder and learn the skills she needed to succeed". [9] She attended a local Catholic elementary school and started high school at St. Cecilia High School in Englewood. After flunking several courses during her freshman year, Corcoran transferred to Leonia High School, where she graduated as a D student. [10] [11]

Corcoran graduated from St. Thomas Aquinas College with a degree in education in 1971, faring better than she had in her previous schooling. [12] [13]

Career

After graduating from college, she taught school for a year but soon moved on. She had worked a total of 20 jobs by the time she was 23, [14] including a side job renting apartments in New York City. While she was a waitress, [15] her boyfriend convinced her to work for a real estate company. [16] She wanted to be her own boss, and in 1973, while working as a receptionist for the Giffuni Brothers' real estate company in New York City, co-founded The Corcoran-Simonè with her boyfriend, who loaned $1,000. [17] [10] She split from her boyfriend seven years later after he told her he was going to marry her secretary [16] and she then formed her own firm, The Corcoran Group. [18]

In the mid-1970s, she also began publishing The Corcoran Report, a newsletter covering real estate data trends in New York City. [13]

In 2001, Corcoran sold her business to NRT for $66 million. [19] [20] [21]

In September 2017, Corcoran was announced as a contestant for season 25 of Dancing with the Stars, where she was partnered with Keo Motsepe. [22]

In 2017, Corcoran's Shark Tank deal with The Comfy, an oversized wearable blanket, turned her $50,000 investment into $468 million. [23] [24]

Formerly known as Barbara Corcoran Venture Partners, today Forefront Venture Partners invests in high-growth, revenue-generating, early-stage companies. [25] [26]

Personal life

Corcoran lives in Manhattan with her husband, Bill Higgins, a retired Navy captain and former FBI agent who participated in the Gulf War. [27] The couple married in 1988. [28] Corcoran gave birth to their son in 1994, via in vitro fertilization, with an egg donated by her sister Florence. [21] [19] The couple later adopted a daughter. [1]

In 2001, she purchased a 2,700-square-foot apartment in a co-op building on Park Avenue for $3.5 million. [21] In 2015, she purchased a penthouse unit on Fifth Avenue for $10 million, [29] with ocean views. Corcoran purchased a double wide trailer home in California for $800,000. [30] [ when? ]

In 2019, for her 70th birthday, she held a mock funeral. [3]

Her hobbies include skiing and going to the beach. [31]

Selected bibliography

Related Research Articles

Kleiner Perkins, formerly Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), is an American venture capital firm which specializes in investing in incubation, early stage and growth companies. Since its founding in 1972, the firm has backed entrepreneurs in over 900 ventures, including America Online, Amazon.com, Tandem Computers, Compaq, Electronic Arts, JD.com, Square, Genentech, Google, Netscape, Sun Microsystems, Nest, Palo Alto Networks, Synack, Snap, AppDynamics, and Twitter. By 2019 it had raised around $9 billion in 19 venture capital funds and four growth funds.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">EQT Partners</span> Swedish investment firm

EQT is a Swedish global investment organization founded in 1994. Its funds invest in private equity, infrastructure, real estate, growth equity, and venture capital in Europe, North America, and Asia Pacific.

Junior M.A.F.I.A. was an American hip hop group from Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York City. The backronym M.A.F.I.A. stands for Masters At Finding Intelligent Attitudes. They were formed and mentored by New York rapper The Notorious B.I.G. In 1995, they released their debut album, Conspiracy. The success of the group's singles "Player's Anthem" and "Get Money" helped launch the career of Lil' Kim as a solo artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tim Draper</span> American businessman

Timothy Cook Draper is an American venture capital investor, and founder of Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), Draper University, Draper Venture Network, Draper Associates and Draper Goren Holm. His most prominent investments include Baidu, Hotmail, Skype, Tesla, SpaceX, AngelList, SolarCity, Ring, Twitter, DocuSign, Coinbase, Robinhood, Ancestry.com, Twitch, Cruise Automation, PrettyLitter and Focus Media. In July 2014, Draper received wide coverage for his purchase at a US Marshals Service auction of seized bitcoins from the Silk Road website. Draper is a proponent of Bitcoin and decentralization. Draper was also one of the first investors in Theranos.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chris Sacca</span> American businessman

Christopher Sacca is an American venture investor, company advisor, entrepreneur, and lawyer. He is the proprietor of Lowercase Capital, a venture capital fund in the United States that has invested in seed and early-stage technology companies such as Twitter, Uber, Instagram, Twilio, and Kickstarter, investments that resulted in his placement as No. 2 on Forbes' Midas List: Top Tech Investors for 2017. Sacca held several positions at Google Inc., where he led the alternative access and wireless divisions and worked on mergers and acquisitions. Between 2015 and 2020, he appeared as a "Guest Shark" on ABC's Shark Tank. In early 2017, Sacca announced that he was retiring from venture investing. In 2021, Sacca announced that he was back into venture investing with a focus on Climate issues.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kevin O'Leary</span> Canadian businessman and television personality (born 1954)

Terrence Thomas Kevin O'Leary, sometimes called Mr. Wonderful or Maple Man, is a Canadian businessman, investor, journalist, and television personality. From 2004 to 2014, he appeared on various Canadian television shows, including the business news programs SqueezePlay and The Lang and O'Leary Exchange, as well as the Canadian reality television shows Dragons' Den and Redemption Inc. In 2008, he appeared on Discovery Channel's Project Earth. Since 2009, he has appeared on Shark Tank, the American version of Dragons' Den.

Anywhere Advisors is a residential real estate brokerage company in the United States of America. A subsidiary of Anywhere Real Estate, Inc., its headquarters are located in Madison, New Jersey. As of 2022, the company owns and operates more than 40 brokerage firms in approximately 55 U.S. markets. Most firms are branded under the Coldwell Banker, Coldwell Banker Commercial, Sotheby's International Realty or Corcoran Group brands.

Dolly Lenz is a real estate agent in New York City. It is estimated that through 2007 she sold $7 billion in real estate including $748 million in 2006.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daymond John</span> American businessman, investor, and television personality

Daymond Garfield John is an American businessman, investor, and television personality. He is best known as the founder, president, and chief executive officer of FUBU, and an investor on the ABC reality television series Shark Tank. Based in New York City, John is the founder of The Shark Group.

<i>Shark Tank</i> American reality television series

Shark Tank is an American business reality television series that premiered on August 9, 2009, on ABC. The show is the American franchise of the international format Dragons' Den, a Japanese TV series. It shows entrepreneurs making business presentations to a panel of five venture capitalists called "sharks" on the program, who decide whether to invest in their companies.

Corcoran Group is an American real estate firm founded in 1973 by Barbara Corcoran.

Michael Gary Rubin is an American businessman and philanthropist. He is the founder and CEO of Fanatics, a global digital sports platform that consists of several businesses, including licensed sports merchandise, trading cards and collectibles, sports betting and iGaming, special events, and live commerce. He is also a board member of Rue Gilt Groupe, which includes RueLaLa.com, Gilt.com, and ShopPremiumOutlets.com. He previously founded GSI Commerce in 1998, selling it to eBay in 2011 for $2.4 billion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lori Greiner</span> American businesswoman and TV personality.

Lori Greiner is an American businesswoman and television personality. She is known for her QVC show Clever & Unique Creations (2000–present) for which she has been called the "Queen of QVC", and for being an investor on the reality series Shark Tank (2011–present). She has hundreds of inventions and holds over 120 patents. She is the president and founder of For Your Ease Only, Inc.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniel Lubetzky</span> American businessman

Daniel Lubetzky is an American billionaire businessman, philanthropist, author, and founder and executive chairman of snack company Kind LLC.

Nardo's Natural is a family-owned organic skincare company headquartered in Clearwater, Florida.

Onevest, a New York–based investment crowdfunding site for startups that was acquired by Business Rockstars in April 2018, allowed entrepreneurs to raise capital from accredited investors. In July 2014, startups launching on Onevest had collectively raised over $66 million.

Louise Mintz Sunshine is an American real estate professional and founder of the Sunshine Group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scrub Daddy</span> American cleaning product company

Scrub Daddy Inc. is a cleaning product company best known for eponymous sponges it manufactures in the shape of a smiley face. Most products are made of a polymer which changes texture – firm in cold water and soft in warm water. As of 2019, Scrub Daddy had the highest revenue of any product successfully pitched on the ABC reality show Shark Tank.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PiperWai</span> American deodorant brand

PiperWai is an American deodorant brand. It was featured on Shark Tank in December 2015 and received an offer from Barbara Corcoran. The product experienced the "Shark Tank effect" and sold out within five minutes of airing, with more than $1 million in sales over the next month. The company's founders, Sarah Ribner and Jess Edelstein, did not accept Corcoran's offer after a year of negotiations and became self-funded.

Concierge Auctions is a residential real estate company based in New York and Texas. It auctions properties to the highest bidder.

References

  1. 1 2 Barbuti, Angela (April 18, 2014). "Barbara Corcoran of 'Shark Tank': 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know". Heavy.
  2. 1 2 "Barbara Corcoran Biography". TV Guide . Retrieved February 27, 2020.
  3. 1 2 Moniuszko, Sara M. (May 1, 2019). "'Shark Tank' star Barbara Corcoran held a fake funeral for her 70th birthday". USA Today . Archived from the original on October 23, 2019. Retrieved October 23, 2019. The 'Stark Tank' star, who turned 70 on March 10...
  4. ↑ "About Barbara". Barbara Corcoran official website. Archived from the original on March 29, 2009. Retrieved February 28, 2013.
  5. ↑ "Barbara Corcoran's Shark Tank track record". Sharkalytics. Archived from the original on February 9, 2020. Retrieved February 27, 2020.
  6. ↑ Stern, Carly (July 8, 2019). "What's in a Pitch? Barbara Corcoran Knows All Too Well". Ozy . Archived from the original on October 23, 2019. Retrieved October 23, 2019.
  7. ↑ Real Estate Mogul: Barbara Corcoran. NPR. April 24, 2017.
  8. ↑ Frieswick, Kris (November 2016). "Why Barbara Corcoran Thinks Growing Up Poor Is a Key Ingredient for Success". Inc. Magazine. Retrieved January 15, 2021.
  9. ↑ Locke, Taylor (March 10, 2020). "Barbara Corcoran: How dyslexia 'made me a millionaire'". CNBC. Archived from the original on March 13, 2020. Retrieved August 19, 2020.
  10. 1 2 Corcoran, Barbara; Littlefield, Bruce (2011). Shark Tales: How I Turned $1,000 Into a Billion Dollar Business. Penguin Books. p. 64. ISBN   978-1-59184-418-1.
  11. ↑ Locke, Taylor (March 10, 2020). "Barbara Corcoran: How dyslexia 'made me a millionaire'". CNBC. Archived from the original on March 13, 2020. Retrieved January 15, 2021.
  12. ↑ "Alumni Hall of Fame". St. Thomas Aquinas College. Archived from the original on October 23, 2019. Retrieved October 23, 2019.
  13. 1 2 Livingston, R.T. (December 2000). "The Corcoran Group: A Marketing Maven Forges into the Future". The Cooperator. Archived from the original on October 23, 2019. Retrieved October 23, 2019.
  14. ↑ "barbara corcoran: About". Barbara Corcoran official website. Archived from the original on March 29, 2009. Retrieved January 15, 2021.
  15. ↑ "Shark Tank Bio". American Broadcasting Company . Archived from the original on March 15, 2023. Retrieved March 15, 2023.
  16. 1 2 Lebowitz, Shana (November 21, 2017). "Barbara Corcoran's ex-boyfriend dumped her for her secretary — and it was the best thing to happen to her career". Business Insider .
  17. ↑ Berger, Sarah (December 29, 2017). "How this important skill helped Barbara Corcoran turn a $1,000 loan into a $66 million empire". CNBC . Archived from the original on October 23, 2019. Retrieved October 23, 2019.
  18. ↑ How to Get a Shark to Invest by Barbara Corcoran. March 15, 2018. Archived from the original on December 15, 2021 – via YouTube.
  19. 1 2 Green, Penelope (September 25, 2005). "The Real Estate 'Queen' in Her Hive" . The New York Times . ISSN   0362-4331. Archived from the original on May 8, 2014. Retrieved February 18, 2017.
  20. ↑ "Barbara Corcoran: Rejection Breeds Success" . The Wall Street Journal . June 2, 2011. Archived from the original on April 2, 2017. Retrieved August 4, 2017.
  21. 1 2 3 McGeveran, Tom (December 1, 2001). "Corcoran Sells Out to Giant Group NRT; Will Barbara Stay?". The New York Observer . Archived from the original on October 23, 2019. Retrieved October 23, 2019.
  22. ↑ "Meet the 'DWTS' season 25 celebrity cast: Frankie Muniz, Barbara Corcoran and more". ABC News . September 6, 2017. Archived from the original on September 6, 2017. Retrieved October 23, 2019.
  23. ↑ Fernandez, Celia (July 3, 2023). "Barbara Corcoran says this 'Shark Tank' deal turned her $50,000 investment into $468 million". CNBC. Retrieved July 17, 2023.
  24. ↑ "Barbara Corcoran Reveals Her Best 'Shark Tank' Investment Has Made Her $468 Million So Far — And Nobody Wanted It". Yahoo Finance. July 11, 2023. Retrieved July 17, 2023.
  25. ↑ "Forefront Venture Partners Portfolio Investments, Forefront Venture Partners Funds, Forefront Venture Partners Exits". www.cbinsights.com. Retrieved July 17, 2023.
  26. ↑ "Forefront Venture Partners -- About Us". Forefront Venture Partners - helping early stage companies scale to new heights. Retrieved July 17, 2023.
  27. ↑ "Alpha Women, Beta Men". New York .
  28. ↑ Calaway, Libby (May 12, 1999). "The Most Henpecked Man in Manhattan". New York Post . Archived from the original on December 3, 2017. Retrieved December 2, 2017.
  29. ↑ Gould Keil, Jennifer (April 8, 2015). "Broker legend Barbara Corcoran buys $10M penthouse". New York Post . Archived from the original on April 3, 2019. Retrieved October 23, 2019.
  30. ↑ Net, Solen Le (July 14, 2023). "Shark Tank star Barbara Corcoran shares a glimpse inside her mobile home". Express.co.uk. Retrieved July 17, 2023.
  31. ↑ "A look at Barbara Corcoran, 'Shark Tank' investor and founder of NYC real estate brokerage". Fox Business. Associated Press. August 6, 2014. Archived from the original on October 23, 2019. Retrieved October 23, 2019.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.