Barbara Corcoran

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Barbara Corcoran built one of New York’s best-known real estate firms before becoming a Shark Tank investor.

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Barbara Corcoran is an American business executive who parlayed an unconventional start in real estate into one of New York City’s best-known brokerage firms and a second career as a television investor. After selling the Corcoran Group for $66 million in 2001, she became an investor on ABC’s Shark Tank reality series, where her emphasis on ambition and execution has shaped dozens of investment decisions.

Corcoran was born March 10, 1949, to Florence and Edwin W. Corcoran Jr., the second oldest of 10 children. Raised in Edgewater, New Jersey (across the Hudson River from New York City), she grew up in a crowded, working-class household. Her father worked primarily as a printing-press foreman, and the children shared two bedrooms while their parents slept on a couch in the living room.

She struggled academically from an early age and was later diagnosed with dyslexia. In school, she earned poor grades and was often dismissed as unintelligent, an experience that contributed to a lasting sense of insecurity but also pushed her to develop other strengths. “I was labeled a dunce,” Corcoran has recalled, noting that she had difficulty with reading and numbers throughout her schooling.

Despite those challenges, she graduated high school and went on to complete a bachelor’s degree in education from St. Thomas Aquinas College in 1971.

After graduating from college, Corcoran held a series of jobs. While working as a waitress in New Jersey, she met a real estate developer named Ray Simone, who became her boyfriend. Simone suggested that she would be good at selling real estate. At his urging, Corcoran took a job as a receptionist in Manhattan for a pair of landlords, providing her first exposure to the business.

Several months later, Simone loaned her $1,000 to start a small real estate office in Manhattan, which the two operated together under the name Corcoran-Simone.

In 1980, Simone told Corcoran that he was going to marry her secretary. Although Corcoran’s relationship with Simone ended, she continued working at the business for more than a year as it was divided between the two partners. After the split was completed, she established her own company, the Corcoran Group.

Operating in New York’s highly competitive real estate market, Corcoran focused on differentiating the Corcoran Group through marketing, data, and how properties were listed, rather than on scale alone. From the outset, she emphasized visibility as a way to attract both clients and agents.

One of Corcoran’s earliest and most effective tools was The Corcoran Report, a newsletter she began publishing to track pricing trends and conditions in New York’s residential real estate market. Distributed widely within the industry and to potential clients, the report helped establish the company as a leading source on local housing trends at a time when such market data wasn’t readily available.

As the firm’s profile grew, the Corcoran Group expanded its roster of agents and listings and became a prominent presence in New York residential real estate. Corcoran’s emphasis on branding and selective recruitment helped the firm compete against larger brokerages, and by the 1990s, it was widely regarded as one of New York’s most prominent residential brokerages.

In 2001, Corcoran sold the Corcoran Group to National Realty Trust for $66 million. Following the sale, she stepped away from running a real estate brokerage and began focusing on writing and other pursuits.

She published several books drawing on her experiences in real estate and entrepreneurship, including Shark Tales: How I Turned $1,000 into a Billion Dollar Business; If You Don’t Have Big Breasts, Put Ribbons on Your Pigtails: And Other Lessons I Learned from My Mom; and Nextville: Amazing Places to Live the Rest of Your Life. The books combined personal narrative with business advice and helped establish her as a public voice.

Corcoran joined the ABC television series Shark Tank in 2009 as one of the reality show’s investors. On the program, entrepreneurs pitch business ideas in hopes of securing mentorship and funding to start or expand a company. Corcoran, along other investors including Kevin O’Leary, Mark Cuban, Lori Greiner, Daymond John, and Robert Herjavec, evaluates proposals, offers advice, and decides whether to invest.

Her first few years on the show were uneven, as she adjusted from running a real estate brokerage to investing in consumer products and early-stage companies. Over time, she developed a more consistent approach, placing greater emphasis on the entrepreneur behind an idea rather than the product itself. Ambition, execution, and sales ability matter more to her than technical novelty, Corcoran has said.

Among Corcoran’s investments on the show was The Comfy, a wearable blanket business founded by brothers Brian and Michael Speciale. She invested $50,000 in the company, which went on to generate significant sales and proved to be one of her most lucrative deals.

Corcoran married Bill Higgins, a former naval officer and FBI agent, in 1988. The couple have two children.

Corcoran owns a penthouse apartment in Manhattan and a house on Fire Island. She has also owned a converted 19th-century schoolhouse in the Hudson Valley town of Pawling. She owned a mobile home in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, which was destroyed in wildfires in early 2025; she had owned the residence for several years and has publicly discussed the loss and her desire to rebuild.

Corcoran’s career has had a lasting influence on both residential real estate marketing and contemporary perceptions of entrepreneurship. Through the Corcoran Group, she popularized the use of branding, data, and media coverage as competitive tools in an industry that had been long dominated by scale and personal networks.

Through her long-running role on Shark Tank, Corcoran also became a prominent public advocate for early-stage entrepreneurship, often focusing on a founder’s ability to turn an idea into a viable business, rather than the technical novelty of the product itself. Her visibility as an investor and business executive brought greater public attention to how small businesses are evaluated and funded.