The Biography of Robert Herjavec. A Classic “Rags to Riches” Story

Abstract or Introduction

At the age of eight, Robert Herjavec and his family moved from Croatia to Canada in order to escape Josip Broz Tito’s communist regime. Robert’s family eventually moved to Toronto where both his parents worked minimum wage jobs and tried to learn English. In 1984, in an attempt to support his family, Robert graduated the University of Toronto with a degree in English literature and political science and began his career. Upon graduation Robert convinced a company called Logiquest, who sell IBM mainframe emulation boards, to give him an entry level position by working the first 6 months for free.

In 1990, after climbing the ranks to General Manager of Logiquest, Robert was fired so he started his first company called BRAK Systems (a Canadian integrator of Internet security software) (Ernest and Young, 2013). BRAK was sold to AT&T in 2000 for $30.2 million and is worth over $100 million today (Kopun, 2010). After taking a couple years off to raise his children and spend time with his wife at the time, Diane, Robert started another company after himself called The Herjavec Group (THG), another Internet security solutions integrator (Mielach, 2012).

According to Branham Group, a Toronto based Technology Consulting firm, THG is Canada’s largest IT security providers and between 2007-2012 grew at a rate of 643% to $125 million in sales and150 employees (Branham, 2012). Today, Robert is still the CEO of THG and because of his successful business career, Robert may be seen on TV as either the “nice dragon” on Dragons Den or dancing with Kym Johnson on Dancing with the Stars