Robert Herjavec

Robert Herjavec (; ; born September 14, 1962) is a Canadian businessman, investor, and television personality. Herjavec founded BRAK Systems, a Canadian integrator of Internet security software, and sold it to AT&T Canada (now Allstream Inc.) in 2000 for $30.2 million. In 2003, he founded The Herjavec Group, now one of the largest information technology and computer security companies in Canada, with over $200 million in annual revenue. He has been featured on several versions of the business reality series Dragon's Den as an investor, including the Canadian CBC series Dragons' Den, the American ABC's version of the series Shark Tank, and from 2023, on the Australian Network 10 version also titled Shark Tank. He has also written books on advancing in business. Herjavec received the 2012 Ernst & Young Ontario Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Technology and the 2012 Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal by the Governor-General of Canada for Outstanding Service to Canada. Early life Herjavec was born in 1962 in Varaždin, SFR, Yugoslavia (present-day Croatia), and spent his early childhood in Zbjeg. In 1970, when Herjavec was eight, the family left the country, which had previously incarcerated Herjavec's father, Vladimir, for speaking out against the governing system. According to Herjavec, "He’d drink a little too much and then say bad things about Communism, and got thrown into jail 22 times for being an anti-Communist." Herjavec's family arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with a single suitcase and only $20. The family eventually settled in Toronto, where they lived in a family friend's home basement for 18 months. For Herjavec, who spoke no English, the transition proved difficult. Having grown up on a farm and raised by his grandmother among neighbors with similar lifestyles, he found himself in a much poorer economic class than his neighbors.