Daymond John Net Worth 2024: How ‘The People’s Shark’ Accumulated His Millions

As of 2024, Daymond John’s net worth stands at an estimated $350 million.

The People’s Shark is a popular investor, a brilliant entrepreneur, a fashion designer, and an author. What’s truly awe-inspiring is his humble start in life and business, initially working out of his mother’s house in Queens.

Today, his books top the bestseller lists, his ‘Shark Tank’ deals are mostly profitable, and Daymond was even named a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship by President Obama.

Below, you’ll find a short overview of the businessman’s current net worth and how he made his millions.

Daymond John’s Net Worth Breakdown:

Daymond John is not exactly transparent about his asset portfolio, but based on what we know about his Shark Tank investments and other ventures, we can estimate his total net worth and figure out roughly where his wealth comes from.

5 Facts About the Shark Daymond John

1. FUBU started with Daymond sewing hats in his mother’s house in Queens.
2. He has invested in over 60 businesses through “Shark Tank.”
3. His investment in Bombas has yielded $17.5 million.
4. Daymond John co-founded “Daymond John’s Success Formula” to teach entrepreneurship.
5. He has received numerous awards, including the NAACP Entrepreneur of the Year.

Latest News: Daymond John’s Shark Tank Investments Under Scrutiny

Daymond John  has faced controversies related to his business dealings and investments.

Some former business partners have accused John of unfair practices, claiming that his terms were predatory or unfavorable. In particular, his involvement with a seafood company,

Bubba Q’s Boneless Ribs, came under fire when the family accused him of attempting to “gut” their company. John has denied these claims, stating that his actions were within standard business practices, and he continues to defend his record as an ethical investor.

Daymond John’s Early Life

Daymond Garfield John was born on February 23, 1969, in Brooklyn, New York to Garfield and Margot John.

Following the family’s move to Queens, Daymond spent most of his childhood in a Queen’s neighborhood, Hollis. At this time, he met LL Cool J and Run DMC, his then-neighbors, and became close friends with them.

Margot and Garfield John divorced when their son was 10 years old.

Daymond took on responsibilities and started working to help his family at this young age. He earned $2 per hour for handing out flyers. He also enrolled in a special program that allowed him to work full-time and attend school on alternating weeks.

What makes his beginnings even more remarkable is that John is dyslexic, so education was most likely challenging for him as a youngster. Nevertheless, he persevered and graduated, subsequently working as a waiter at Red Lobster and managing a commuter van service.

Today, John is married to his second wife, Heather Taras, and has three children (two from his first marriage).

Daymond John Net Worth: How Did He Get So Rich?

Daymond John comes from a humble background, is dyslexic, and managed to combine his sewing skills with a $40 investment to turn it into a multi-billion dollar business. Let’s delve into his journey.

Daymond John’s First Business: The Beginnings of FUBU

Success for Daymond John began in 1992 when he co-founded a hip-hop fashion brand called ‘For Us, By Us’ or FUBU. The mission of the business was to sell clothing made by the people who wear it. This was a project he shared along with three friends from Queens: J. Alexander Martin, Keith Perrin, and Carl Brown.

Daymond John saw an opportunity to join the fashion market at a time when wool ski hats and hockey jerseys were all the rage, but a hat cost at least $20. He and Carl Brown shared the opinion that the clothes were overpriced, so they started sewing hats at half the price. Their startup capital was just $40, plus the use of his mother’s sewing machine.

John and Carl sewed 90 hats and sold them for $10 apiece on the corner of Jamaica Avenue back in 1992. They sold all of the hats in a single day and made $800 in profit. After this success, they started designing and printing t-shirts and recruited their friends J. Alexander and Keith.

Daymond’s mother has always been his strongest supporter. Seeing his passion and potential, she mortgaged the family home to raise $100,000 worth of capital for her son’s startup.

What’s most impressive about this is that he started the company while working full-time. When asked about this period of his life, John told CNN Business:

“I would come home at night, sew shirts, wake up in the morning and deliver the shirts, then go back to Red Lobster, because I had to pay the bills, but I also wanted to chase this dream, so I had to give up every single thing for it.”

Soon enough, his nocturnal sewings turned into a full-time job. He quit his food service job and focused fully on FUBU, eventually growing it into a global company with billions of dollars in sales!

How Did FUBU Become a Success?

When J. Alexander Martin and Keith Perrin joined the venture, the partners began designing t-shirts, sweatshirts, and hockey jerseys displaying the FUBU logo. They built brand recognition by loaning some of their products to rappers to wear in their music videos. After a short while, their products ended up in over 30 rap videos.

In 1993, Daymond John reached out to his former neighbor LL Cool J and gave him a FUBU t-shirt to wear in a commercial for The Gap. This boosted the popularity of the brand tremendously and at one point, John received $300,000 in orders.

To complete all these orders, his mother had to take a second mortgage since the young businessmen were turned down by over 20 different banks. His mother finally used the last of her money to advertise their business in the New York Times.

All the investments finally paid off when FUBU got a deal with Samsung Textiles.

Within six years of its founding, FUBU was generating over $350 million in revenue per year. To date, the brand has earned over $6 billion in sales worldwide.

FUBU has existed for over two decades now and includes several lines. It recently started selling its shoe products at Wal-Mart.

Daymond John on Shark Tank

Recent generations know Daymond John not for his FUBU brand, but for his role in the hit ABC reality show ‘Shark Tank’. When Daymond was already successful as the CEO of FUBU in 2008, he was approached to join the program as a shark.

Since his debut, John has invested over $8.5 million of his own money in business ideas for the program.

When asked about his role in Shark Tank, John told Business Insider:

“When I got the call it was a waste of my time. I was like, ‘This crappy show? Nobody will ever watch it. Who the hell is going to watch five business people talking?’”

However, the show took off and became one of the most popular reality shows in the world. In 2016, Variety reported that sharks make an average of $50,000 per Shark Tank episode. This number is possibly higher today, but there’s no public information to confirm it.

Daymond is not the richest shark on the show – far from it. The title currently belongs to Mark Cuban whose net worth is over $5 billion.

Shark Daymond John’s Most Profitable Investments

During his appearances as a Shark, Daymond has invested over $8.5 million in businesses. Let’s take a look at some of them.

Bombas

The most successful investment John made on the show is in the sock company Bombas. In 2014, the founders of Bombas, David Heath and Randy Goldberg, pitched their ideas to the Sharks.

One of the reasons why John invested in the business is because, for every pair of ultra-comfy Bombas sold, a pair was donated to charity. The shark invested $200,000 in a 17.5% stake in the company.

On a podcast episode of The James Atucher Show, John shared the reasons behind his investment:

“Number 1 the socks are amazing, they have no seams on the front so your toe doesn’t get jammed up. Number 2 is they donate a pair to the homeless shelter, because the homeless, one of their biggest challenges is the care for their feet.”

In 2018, Bombas was bringing in around $100 million a year, which was a massive leap from only $4.6 million in 2015. The brand also sells t-shirts and underwear.

Today, the exact yearly revenue of the business is unknown, but Market Realist estimates it to be around $100 million. This would mean that John has about $17.5 million in earnings from the investment.

Mission Belt

Mission Belt is a company that makes belts without holes, i.e. ratchet belts that use a release lever to adjust. The company puts a dollar of every sale into a fund for small-business owners in developing countries. In the fourth season of ‘Shark Tank’, Daymond John offered $50,000 for 37.5% of the company.

The business has been hugely successful with over $25 million in revenue.

Bubba’s-Q

In the fifth season of the show, Daymond struck a $300,000 deal and bought 15% of Bubba’s-Q, a barbecue business from the owner Al ‘Bubba’ Baker. At the time, the business was making $154,000 in sales per year, and today, that number hits over $16 million. This is largely a result of deals John helped the company make with multiple fast-food chains and restaurants.

However, this particular partnership turned out to be challenging. At one point, John made the headlines when he secured a restraining order against Al Baker and his family. He took this action as a response to defamatory comments about the investor and the deal.

Apparently, Baker and his family accused John of taking more than his share of the company’s profits. In 2019, they reached a legal settlement where the family got its restraining order and was barred from disparaging John publicly.

When the Bakers broke the agreement, calling the deal ‘a nightmare’ in the L.A. Times, John was granted a permanent injunction in court.

Moki Doorstep

In the 10th season of ‘Shark Tank’ in 2019, husband-and-wife entrepreneurs Zach and Alyssa Brown came on the show offering 5% of their company Moki Doorstep to the sharks. John offered to buy the company outright for $3 million and the couple accepted.

Moki is an aluminum step designed to reach the rooftop of a car.

See More of Daymond John’s highlights in the tank here:

Daymond John as an Author

In addition to his business ventures and investments, Daymond John is also the author of seven books:

• The Power of Broke
• Rise and Grind
• Powershift
• The Brand Within
• Little Daymond Learns to Earn
• Display of Power: How FUBU Changed a World of Fashion, Branding, and Lifestyle
• Founding FUBU

Daymond John’s Success Formula Program

In 2015, Daymond John co-founded a program dedicated to teaching entrepreneurs useful business lessons called Daymond John’s Success Formula. The name of the program was changed to Next Level Success in 2019.

The program, joined with the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, offers scholarships worth $1,500 to two aspiring entrepreneurs every year.

In addition to this, John runs “Daymond on Demand”, an online training program for entrepreneurs.

Awards

In 2015, President Obama named Daymond as a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship.

He’s received several other accolades in his career:

• Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Structured Reality Program for ‘Shark Tank’ in 2014 through 2017
• Award for Outstanding Instructional Literary Work at NAACP for The Power of Broke
• NAACP Entrepreneur of the Year
• Ernst & Young’s NY Entrepreneur of the Year
• Congressional Achievement Award for Entrepreneurship

Other Ventures

In 2005, John was the executive producer of “The Crow: Wicked Prayer” starring Edward Furlong, David Boreanaz, Tara Reid, and Dennis Hopper.

John is the CEO of The Shark Group, a brand management and consulting company. The Shark Group has offices in Manhattan.

Part of Daymond John’s net worth comes from his public speaking appearances. You can book Daymond to speak at an event. His rates range from $500 to $500,000.

What Else Does Daymond John Invest In?

The majority of Daymond John’s net worth comes from his Shark Tank salary and investments. To date, he’s made over 60 deals on the reality show, most of which remain profitable.

John’s investments don’t stop here, though.

Crypto, Stocks, and Other Assets

Based on his posts across social media platforms and his interviews, it’s very likely that Daymond John owns assets like cryptocurrencies and invests in stocks. He recently encouraged investors to learn more about crypto as an asset class and is especially focused on Bitcoin and Ethereum.

He also stated that he has a diverse portfolio across different asset classes like real estate, crypto, and stocks, and he has mentioned that his biggest investments are in apparel brands.

Still, the businessman is not very transparent about his investments, so we can’t pinpoint how they contribute to his net worth.

Real Estate

In terms of real estate, the business magnate and his family live in a luxurious apartment in New York City. His wife, Heather, often posts images and videos from their home on her Instagram account.

They also own a cabin in Dutchess County that sits on hundreds of acres.

Cars

Finally, the Shark Tank host owns several cars worth over $300 million, including:

• Tesla Model S –
• Cadillac
• Ferrari GTC4 Lusso
• Mercedes-Benz SUV AMG G63
• Rolls Royce Phantom VII
• Rezvani Vengeance

What Can We Learn From Daymond John’s Success?

Daymond John’s journey to success is truly remarkable.

As a person who grew up poor and had to work from the age of 10, his journey to becoming a centimillionaire is absolutely incredible. He and his mother took a tremendous risk by investing all of their money and getting a mortgage on their home to build his first company but it paid off.

John’s story is proof that, when you are good at something and believe in yourself, you can succeed.

However, it’s important to note that it took much more than just money and courage to amass such fortune. Daymond John’s determination and dedication to his craft are the true drivers behind his success story.

When you look at the lives of most incredibly successful people you will almost always find that their perseverance is foundational to their success.

So next time you are having trouble with a business or job and want to quit, remember that persevering through that struggle is a vital part of success.