Mark Cuban on Sports, Healthcare, and Social Media

0:00:03 I look at business as a sport, and I just love to compete. I just like to be intellectually
0:00:07 challenged. I’m an independent. I don’t care about parties. I care less. I want to be where
0:00:11 different viewpoints are, an intellectual response rather than just a you suck response
0:00:16 that you get on social media. What happens when AI collides with salesmanship,
0:00:22 streaming era sports, and America’s most broken industry, healthcare? On today’s episode,
0:00:28 I’m joined by Mark Cuban, entrepreneur, Dallas Mavericks co-owner, and founder of Cost Plus Drugs.
0:00:33 We get into why he likes fiery group chats, the sales playbook behind modern politics,
0:00:38 how algorithms and AI are reshaping media, what he fixed first in US healthcare,
0:00:44 and discuss the hard-won lessons from owning an NBA team in the streaming era. Let’s get into it.
0:00:48 Mark, thanks for coming on the podcast.
0:00:50 Thanks for having me on. I’m excited to be here.
0:00:55 So we’ve spent a lot of time last couple years or so, but most of that time digitally and on group
0:00:59 chats. And one question that often I get in the group chat sphere is, how do these billionaires
0:01:04 have so much time to be on group chats? To which I say, oh, that’s actually the highest form, you know,
0:01:07 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Once you really make it, then you want to argue with your friends and
0:01:11 have interesting conversations. What’s your reflection on what you get out of these or what you spend time
0:01:14 on? You want to learn. You want to challenge yourself. You want to see what other people think
0:01:19 and why. Yeah. Because, you know, in a world that’s changing the way it is, I want to be where
0:01:26 different viewpoints are and have it be an intellectual response rather than just a you suck response
0:01:30 that you get on social media. Yeah. And one of the things I appreciate most about one of our group
0:01:35 chats is that you’re one of the lone dissent. Originally, it was on the election. Right. And it had
0:01:39 more of a right-leaning crowd. And you were one of the most prominent Democrats. I was a dissenter.
0:01:43 I’m not even a Democrat. I was just a dissenter. Yeah. And willing to sort of be independent and go,
0:01:46 what did you get out of that? Did you get sharper? Did you get argument smarter?
0:01:50 It wasn’t even so much that. I just, to me, there was a lot of things that didn’t make sense. Yeah.
0:01:56 And to them, it didn’t make sense where I stood. Yeah. And I wanted to get to the root of why people
0:02:01 came to those conclusions. Yeah. And typically, it just came down to trust. Yeah. But you don’t know
0:02:05 that that’s going to be the underpinning logic. Right. Until you ask the questions. Yeah. And so,
0:02:11 I think a lot of people presume in any type of group chat, right, that you know where everybody stands
0:02:16 and you think you understand why. Yeah. But it’s until you start kind of challenging them. And then
0:02:22 on top of it, it makes me reconfirm why I feel how I feel. Yeah. And that’s a win for me as well.
0:02:25 Totally. Yeah. I’m an independent. I don’t care about parties. I could care less.
0:02:29 Have you ever supported a Republican? Have I? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I don’t care. I voted for Republicans.
0:02:34 I just don’t care. Yeah. Right. I tried to look at each individual issue. I actually voted for George
0:02:38 Bush. Okay. We can argue about the quality, but it’s about the alternatives. Right. Right. And then
0:02:42 like the first time I ever, well, I don’t go back that far. Yeah. But in terms of the comparisons to
0:02:49 Trump, we’re both salespeople. Yeah. And I think that is a strength for me to understand him. Yeah.
0:02:57 Because at his heart, he just knows how to do PR and sales. Yeah. That’s who he is. Yeah. And that’s
0:03:02 how I’ve grown my businesses. Yeah. People always hear me talk about sales cures all and you have to
0:03:07 understand your market and context. And he’s brilliant at it. Yeah. He understands how to sell. He
0:03:13 understands how to use PR. He understands where leverage comes and when it doesn’t exist. Yeah. And how to
0:03:20 zig and zag when it doesn’t work. Yeah. And I think those are actually skills of people who have
0:03:24 built businesses. Those are entrepreneurial skills. Now, when you actually run the business, you have to
0:03:29 do all the work behind it. Yeah. And as a politician, that’s not always the case. And when did you realize
0:03:34 that business people would have platforms that would give them kind of distribution advantages in
0:03:38 reaching customers? Just when social media came out. Yeah. You were early to this. Yeah. You were very
0:03:41 early. Like you and Trump, like one of the early people. Yeah. I mean, right when Twitter started,
0:03:47 not 2006, but 2009 is South by Southwest when they were all pumping it up. Right. When it was all about
0:03:52 just where’s the party at? Yeah. But yeah, I mean, social media, obviously it’s like, why are people
0:03:57 following me? And it’s just, it’s aspirational at some levels. And I owned a Mav, so it was informational.
0:04:03 And then just with the technology background, it was informational there as well. So I could reach into
0:04:10 different domains. Yeah. And interact with people. And that creates a platform. And each platform has its own
0:04:14 look and feel. And you just learn how to deal with it accordingly. It’s going to be really interesting
0:04:16 because of AI. Right.
0:04:23 AI as multi-dimensional impact. Yeah. And how you create content, how that content is absorbed.
0:04:29 Effectively, we all have our own feed. Yeah. No two people have the exact same feed. And, you know,
0:04:35 what Trump has done well is learn how to flood the zone. Yeah. So that no matter what that algorithm
0:04:40 finds for you, he’s going to find a way to you. Right. Whether it’s a positive or negative. And then you
0:04:47 look at Kamala and Brat Summer and fell off a coconut tree. Right. Brilliant. She had everything going for
0:04:51 her. But the Democrats didn’t have anybody who knew how to sell. Right. And so going back to your
0:04:59 question, it’s not so much reality stars or business people with followings. It’s people who know how to
0:05:06 use algorithms and understand how they work. And now as AI is evolving very quickly, knowing how to use AI
0:05:10 and what’s the impact on social media. Yeah. Because if it takes two seconds to generate on
0:05:16 VO and then pretty soon that becomes agentic. And pretty soon it’s, okay, everything, just videotape
0:05:22 everything that I do and everything and just create videos and just flood every single account that we
0:05:26 create. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, do people find themselves saying, I’m going to use social media
0:05:30 less because it’s all AI generated and I don’t know what’s real. There’s nothing social about it. Right.
0:05:36 Or do they think talking babies and gorillas as videos is the way to communicate? Yeah. And so it’s going to be
0:05:41 fascinating over the next three years because we don’t know that part. Right. And so we may find
0:05:47 ourselves in a scenario where we diverge from the traditional sales person putting it out there,
0:05:52 like Trump, and find our way to, okay, let’s understand how we do this. Yeah. It’s just like
0:05:58 polling. Polling is useless now. Yeah. You’re always behind. Right. And any one social media comment
0:06:05 can change how everybody feels in a nanosecond. And so how do people start integrating surveys? Yeah. You know,
0:06:10 I’m just continuously surveying with all those questions we get online and what direction does
0:06:15 that take us? How do I integrate that into video creation? Right. And how do I, I mean, what’s the
0:06:20 limit? Yeah. So you experimented with the social network a few years ago, the dust it was called.
0:06:24 When you look out five years from now, 10 years from now, do you think there’s a new platform that
0:06:28 emerges or do you think it’s kind of this like fragmented ecosystem that we have now? What is your
0:06:31 prediction for the future of social? Well, I mean, look at blue sky. Yeah. They, you know,
0:06:35 I’ve been around for a little while, but then all of a sudden when Trump got elected,
0:06:40 their usage just boomed. Right. I call it the fragmentation of like people didn’t like Elon,
0:06:44 you know, it’s not just that. But yeah, so they moved, right? But now it became its own silo. Yeah.
0:06:50 And so I think it won’t be social media. Right. But there’ll be media. Yeah. Because the,
0:06:57 depends on how much you believe in AI and where you think it’ll go. I always look at it as creative
0:07:03 people. They’ll be able to amplify their creativity. Yeah. And iterate incessantly. Right. And that will
0:07:08 create some amazing, incredible things. Are you just going to put it on X? Are you going to put it
0:07:12 on LinkedIn? Are you going to put it on blue sky? Are you going to put it on TikTok? You don’t have
0:07:19 control of the algorithm. Right. And so I think there’ll be something new. And I think how people
0:07:27 connect to that content will be the foundation of it because I think we’re tired of rage bait. Yeah.
0:07:33 And we’re tired of the fact that the algorithm presents what you seek effectively. Yeah. I think
0:07:40 instead we are going to get unique offerings that don’t seem to make sense right now. Yeah. And I think
0:07:47 part two to that is like, if you go on X and you use Grok, it almost always, unless it’s something that
0:07:53 Elon is individually interested in, it comes up with a legitimate answer. Right. And you get people who
0:07:56 say, well, hey, Grok, tell me which, and it doesn’t give them what they expect. Yeah. And I think that’s
0:08:01 a huge positive. Yeah. And it’s the same on other platforms as well, where you can just go to chat,
0:08:06 GPT, perplexity, whatever you use or all of them and ask questions. So you’ll see a reduction of
0:08:10 misinformation. Yeah. I hope. And by, with the reduction of misinformation, you’re going to have
0:08:16 less rage bait. Yeah. And with less rage bait, what’s the connection? And hopefully it’s better
0:08:21 quality content. Hopefully it’s, I don’t know. It’s just like if we were sitting here, just going to
0:08:27 brainstorm. Right. And just say, can we create our own new network? Yeah. Right. What would it include?
0:08:31 And what were the, what would the parameters be? And when you did it maybe five years ago, maybe it’s
0:08:35 more, was that like a snap competitor? I’m trying to remember. Yeah. No, it was 10 years ago. 10 years ago.
0:08:40 Yeah. 12 years ago. Yeah. And it was more because of what happened with the SEC, where I got charged by
0:08:46 the SEC for insider trading and they basically just took anything and everything I said out of context.
0:08:51 Right. Right. So I gave them everything I had and I got cleared in like 15 minutes. Yeah. But the point
0:08:56 was I wanted something that was truly private. Yeah. And so, and it still exists today, but I just use it
0:09:01 for mostly internal communications with our employees. Yeah. That makes sense. The, let’s go back to the
0:09:07 messaging on Democrats, Republicans. If you were in charge of the DNC, the Democrat party and controlled
0:09:12 both the platform and the messaging, what would you advise? What would the put? Well, first, you got to
0:09:16 have people that know how to sell. Yeah. You know, and second, you have to know what people want to buy.
0:09:22 Yeah. And people want to buy, quote unquote, just a better life. Yeah. You know, what the Democrats do
0:09:28 is they project, they extrapolate. Trump did this. Yeah. So it’s the end of the world. Yeah. The
0:09:33 Republicans are just like, what’s the price of tea in China? Right. Because I drink tea from China and
0:09:38 they did deal directly with what’s happening with you today. Yeah. And 99% of people in this country,
0:09:44 that’s what they care about first. Right. And so I would go to the Democrats and say, look at the
0:09:49 price of beef. Yeah. And I think that’s what the Democrats miss. They’re so intent on the T word,
0:09:54 right? Yeah. Everything is just a trigger word because they want people yelling and screaming at rallies.
0:09:59 And that’s great. Just like Trump did. If you have 10, 15,000 people with burning AOC and you want to
0:10:03 get them all riled up, it’s a pep rally. Yeah. Right. Say what you got to say for the pep rally.
0:10:09 But if you want to get people to pay attention, I’ll give you an example. I was in Indiana. I have a
0:10:15 company, Shark Tank company, Guardian Bikes, and we moved 80% of their manufacturing to Seymour, Indiana.
0:10:21 Yeah. And so they invited me in and we celebrated. And they’ve grown from $200,000 at Shark Tank.
0:10:26 They’ll do $120 million now. Yeah. And so we got into a little bit and then we had a question and
0:10:31 answer and somebody stood up. I saw on the news and they started getting the question and I just
0:10:37 blurted up, I don’t watch the news. Yeah. And the place went nuts. It just erupted, right? Like of all
0:10:43 the things we talked about for an hour and a half. Yeah. That by far got a 10x response. Yeah. That set
0:10:48 volumes to me, right? In terms of where people’s heads are at. Yeah. They don’t want to deal with all that
0:10:54 shit anymore. Yeah. They don’t want to hear about the end of democracy. They don’t want to hear that
0:10:58 Trump is an ultimate cancer. Yeah. Put aside whether or not you believe it’s true. Right. That’s not the
0:11:04 goal. Yeah. The Democrats always lose track of the goal. They lose sight of what the end game is. Yeah. If
0:11:09 you want to replace Trump, if you want to win the midterms, it’s not about ripping on Trump. That’s been
0:11:14 said for the last 10 years. Yeah. But how are you changing people’s lives? Yeah. And then I got into it with
0:11:21 somebody else on the Democrat side via email and it was about oligarchs and billionaires. Go get them.
0:11:26 I’m like, fine, I’ll pay more taxes. I don’t care. Right. But do you think other than the 942
0:11:32 billionaires in this country, right? Other than getting people riled up, how are you changing
0:11:37 anybody’s life? Yeah. Right. People want to know that you’re impacting their life. Yeah. They want to
0:11:41 know that things are going to be better. We hear about housing. We hear about should they go to college or
0:11:46 not the threat of AI in their mind, right? All these different things that they truly worry about
0:11:53 and talk about at the dinner table. Yeah. How often do the Democrats talk about it? And then it’s like,
0:11:59 well, let’s go get the billionaires. And I’m like, okay, if you want, what’s the goal? Do you want to
0:12:04 reduce income inequality? I think go to the billionaires and give them incentives, which really
0:12:10 made them mad, right? Companies incentives, not the individual 942 to, you know, your taxes will go
0:12:18 instead of 27%, let’s say, you’ll stay at 21% if everybody gets equity in the company. Right. And
0:12:24 it’s on a, Perry Pursuit is not the right word, but it’s on an equal percentage of take-home pay. Yeah.
0:12:31 That you get relative to the CEO down to whoever, right? Now, you know, you have appreciable assets.
0:12:35 Upside, yeah. Yeah. And when people have appreciable assets, you know, beyond just a home,
0:12:41 A, if it appreciates, they can buy a home. Yeah. And B, the wealth gap doesn’t increase. Yeah.
0:12:47 You know, and it gets closed down. You know, if you do go, if you do a little research and,
0:12:53 because I was just curious about all this and I went to perplexity and I’m like, what’s the earnings of
0:12:58 people who are in ESOPs, employee stock ownership plans, versus everybody else? It’s dramatically higher.
0:13:03 Yeah. It’s not even close. Right. They make more than union employees. Yeah. You know, because,
0:13:08 and there’s less turnover. Yeah. And so there’s a lot of good reasons and you don’t have to be in
0:13:13 power as a Democrat to do those things, to go to the local employer. Yeah. And say, why, you know,
0:13:18 we’re going to protest you unless you create an ESOP plan that everybody gets to participate in at the
0:13:23 same level as a percentage of earnings as the CEO. I think that’s the best form of UBI, which is instead
0:13:28 of free money, just upside in our SB 500, upside in the economy. Yeah. And there’s places for UBI too,
0:13:32 right? So if you’re a caretaker, you’re taking care of your parents. Yeah. I got no problem with that
0:13:35 because you’re paying for it one way or the other, you know, through Medicare, through Medicaid some
0:13:41 way. Yeah. But to your point, right, appreciable assets change your life. Yeah. And if you don’t
0:13:46 have any, there’s no way you can keep up. Yeah. You know, because the stock market’s going up. Yeah.
0:13:53 Do we think that, I guess, you know, it seems like the Mamdani sort of like socially progressive,
0:14:00 economically populist sort of, you know, combination, AOC in a different way, you know,
0:14:04 Bernie without sort of, you know, he was the supportive version. Is that the future of the
0:14:10 Democratic Party? He learned from Trump. He’s the progressive Trump. Yeah. Yeah. Just lie.
0:14:17 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, day one, groceries are going to be cheaper. I’ll just, I’ll open the
0:14:23 grocery store because I’ll sound more progressive that way. Right. Day one, buses are free. And then
0:14:27 everything else, he kind of mealy mouths back to the middle. Yeah. You know, and kind of gives a
0:14:31 little bit on the edge for the progressive to be happy. Right. But he’s smart. Start saying,
0:14:36 I’m reducing grocery prices. Trump has increased. I’m reducing them day one. Right. When we have the
0:14:41 house back, we are going to reduce grocery prices. How are you going to do it? Oh, we’re going to do
0:14:47 it. Trust me. Because that’s the bifurcation between Trump fans. Yeah. And Trump haters. But in
0:14:50 terms of substance, do you think the future of the Democratic Party is more like a Bernie Sanders
0:14:54 economic populism or do you think it’s more, you know, marketing? I don’t know. I don’t know. Yeah. I
0:14:59 think, I think whatever gets results. Yeah. You know, I give Bernie credit because he was the first to
0:15:04 talk about a living wage. Yeah. And it took him decades. Right. But we’ve gotten there and he kept on
0:15:12 pushing through. So he deserves a lot of credit. But it more plays to his base. Yeah. Than anything
0:15:18 else. And, you know, Elizabeth Warren had the CFPB. Right. That’s okay. Right. You can argue both
0:15:24 sides. But she got something done. I don’t know what the Democrats are doing that’s getting shit done.
0:15:29 Yeah. You know, and that’s the change in their focus. And that’s what’s going to guide what type
0:15:34 of candidate. Right. Because you got to be able to sell. Yeah. Got to understand technology and got
0:15:41 to be able to implement technologies. And I said this to Jason Calacanis 15 years ago, maybe. I’m
0:15:46 like, look, if we can improve efficiency and reduce the cost of government. Yeah. You can increase the
0:15:51 money you give to people. Yeah. Take half the savings. Here’s a bigger check. Wow. Right. That’s what the
0:15:55 Democrats could be doing. We want to give you more money. Yeah. Right. That’s what the Republicans
0:15:59 do. Great. We’re making a promise. Democrats, we’re going to use AI. And if we need to give it UBI,
0:16:03 if we need to tax robots, we’re going to tax robots. You know, the whole Bill Gates thing,
0:16:08 a quarter hour, dollar an hour, whatever. And then we’re going to take the benefit of that and write
0:16:13 you a check. That’s going to be your UBI or your tax credit or whatever. They just don’t think like
0:16:19 that. Yeah. They don’t think, where is the solution? How do I get there? How do I sell it in a form
0:16:24 that’s easy to digest so people understand it? They don’t get, AI is like going to change
0:16:30 everything. Yeah. You know, how can we not use this in government to be more effective? Yeah.
0:16:35 I mean, that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Right. Let’s go deeper there because I know AI is one of
0:16:39 the things you wanted to chat about, something you spend a lot of time thinking about. When you look
0:16:44 out at the next few years, what do you think is underappreciated or underrealized about how AI is
0:16:48 going to change a specific category or a specific way of life? I think it democratizes
0:16:55 a lot of things. Yeah. You know, particularly education. Well, I understand the fear and the
0:17:00 first pass is never the way it ends up. Yeah. You know, I got two kids in college now, one in high
0:17:05 school. Hell yeah, they cheat with it. Yeah. You know, they do. But then I started talking to this
0:17:10 teacher from Pennsylvania. I forget what’s the town in Pennsylvania. She just emailed me and she was
0:17:15 like, what can I do to integrate AI into my classroom where it’s not just them giving me answers to
0:17:19 questions? And I said, well, you know, make it more like Jeopardy. Yeah. Right. And she’s like, well,
0:17:26 okay, here are the four causes. Use ChatGPT to find the four causes of the American Revolution and write
0:17:30 up what it says. And then we’re going to discuss in class and you pick which one do you think is the most
0:17:35 impactful. Yeah. And then we’ll discuss that in class. Just changing the paradigm of how they would
0:17:41 do things. And so, but back to your question, I think democratization of education is key because
0:17:49 a kid with a cell phone can, an internet access can go to, you know, any large language model and ask
0:17:55 anything. Yeah. And ask it to, you know, hey, I’m eight years old and I want to learn to speak Polish
0:18:00 because my grandmother’s from Poland. Right. Would you put together a class for me and give me, you know,
0:18:05 and teach me how to speak Polish? Yeah. It will. Right. How else are they going to do that? You know,
0:18:11 sign up for Duolingo. Right. You know, you know, I’m, I’m really curious about baseball. Yeah. Right.
0:18:16 Who are the best baseball players and why? Right. And, you know, teach me about the statistics behind it.
0:18:22 Yeah. And always on tutor. Yeah, absolutely. How about in healthcare? It’s an area you’ve spent a ton
0:18:26 of time in with the cost plus drugs. Right now, you know, healthcare is like 20% or something of the
0:18:30 economy. Yep. In the future, is that number going higher? Is that number going lower? You know,
0:18:35 talk about what’s going to happen there. It’ll go higher, but because we’re going to get some
0:18:38 amazing treatments. Oh, interesting. So the product will get better. The service will get better. Right.
0:18:45 Because now you get, you know, single treatment cures that might cost $3 million. Yeah. That,
0:18:52 you know, that jacks up the total cost. Right. But in terms of how we do healthcare, everything I do,
0:18:56 I put into chat GPT project first. Yeah. You know, and share it with the doctor. And then I ask my doctor,
0:19:00 do you use this stuff or open evidence? Like, hell yeah, we do it. So I think healthcare will
0:19:05 get better qualitatively. I think we’ll be, we’ll benchmark ourselves a lot more and that’ll make
0:19:10 us healthier. Yeah. In a lot of ways. I think where the challenge and the hard part is, other than the
0:19:17 obvious, you know, optimization and processes and hospitals and all that, the challenge is how we
0:19:25 value IP. Yeah. Because if I’m MD Anderson, if I’m Stanford, any research hospital, any scientist in
0:19:30 healthcare, you’re an idiot if you publish it. Right. You’re an idiot if you patent it. Because it’s a
0:19:35 immediately going to get absorbed into a large language model. Yeah. And you’ve lost control
0:19:40 of it and you’ve lost ownership of it. And I think what’s going to happen is, you know, and I’ve said
0:19:46 this as I’ve talked to CEOs of research hospitals, et cetera, you need to silo your stuff. Yeah. And you
0:19:52 need to take what you siloed and either do your own model or put it out to bid. Right. And let the
0:19:57 foundational models compete because they’re in a death war. Yeah. You know. And they need specialized data.
0:20:02 They need all the data they can get, specialized or general. Yeah. Right. Because everything that’s
0:20:07 accessible on the internet. Yeah. They’re getting or got. Right. And so the people who are creating new
0:20:12 things, whether healthcare or anything for that matter, are going to start siloing it and putting
0:20:16 it out to bid. And I think even within the government. Right. Yeah. So we see all these research grants
0:20:20 getting pulled. Yeah. I told somebody I know, you know, in the administration, I’m like,
0:20:26 no, keep on doing it, but put it out to bid for people, you know, for the models to get access to
0:20:33 it. Back to your question again, it will change because there’ll be millions of models as opposed
0:20:38 to just singular foundational models. And I think I’ve talked to folks at Microsoft, Meta and other
0:20:42 places. I think they disagree with that. Yeah. You know, that they think there’s just all this
0:20:47 information is going to be available so that the hospital system or the university, whatever it is,
0:20:51 or the, the grantors will just say, go ahead and take it. Yeah. Hell no. So you think there’ll be a
0:20:56 flourishing of startups that will have kind of access to specialized data and either put it to bid or.
0:21:00 Or just like MD Anderson will have their own large legacy model, you know, and you’ll just have to,
0:21:04 to know where to go. Yeah. And just like right now, you know,
0:21:09 ChatGPT is not going to give you the same answers perplexity as Cloud, et cetera. You’re going to go and
0:21:13 use multiple of them and you’ll say, here’s the input, the output I got here, here, here. And you’ll
0:21:19 put it in somewhere else to have them assemble it. But I think there’ll be millions of models and
0:21:25 there’ll be front ends for those models that can’t go out and do a million of them, but that help curate
0:21:28 what’s best for what you’re trying to accomplish. If you could wave a wand and change anything about
0:21:32 how we do healthcare in this country or where we can learn from other countries, what would you
0:21:38 change? You get rid of the insurance companies and the PBMs because they do all they can to not
0:21:46 take risk. Yeah. And they do all they can to introduce opacity to the system. And if you look
0:21:50 at, you know, particularly on the drug side, if you look at all the other countries, we’re trying to do
0:21:56 MFNs to match their pricing. Yeah. They don’t have PBMs. Yeah. You know, when you look at the internals,
0:22:00 the biggest PBMs cause all the problems. Like literally,
0:22:08 we get emails all the time. People who are on Medicare Part D for drugs come to Cost Plus Drugs
0:22:10 because we’re cheaper than their co-pays. Yeah.
0:22:16 That makes no sense. But it’s the federal government that approves those plans. And those plans in
0:22:22 Medicare Part D are run by individual insurance companies. Then if you look on a bigger platform,
0:22:28 form just for healthcare in general, you know, think about how healthcare works here, 80 to 60.
0:22:30 You have an insurance company? Yeah.
0:22:31 Do you guys self-insure? Do you know?
0:22:33 I just joined so I’m going to have to say that.
0:22:36 Oh, yeah. Okay. So, you know, let’s just pretend you’re self-insured. You’re one of the bigger
0:22:40 companies. Sure. So, an insurance company comes to you knowing you self-insure. Yeah.
0:22:42 Right? And they put together a list of plans. Yeah.
0:22:48 And then those plans, no one ever asked why were those plans defined the way they were? Yeah.
0:22:53 They just assume we just get our choice of plans and we pick them. Right. Well, there’s an inverse
0:22:58 relationship between premium and deductible. Right? They never check, do credit checks on the
0:23:02 deductibles, do they? And younger people, they’re taking the higher deductibles because they presume
0:23:08 they’re going to be healthier. But the people who are making the determination that they’re using the
0:23:14 higher deductible plan, half of them don’t have enough money for the deductible. Right? So, we’ve got an
0:23:19 insurance system driven by these insurance companies, even if the risk is absorbed by companies
0:23:25 or partially by the taxpayers, right, that are designing plans that they know the people who
0:23:30 are buying the plans can’t afford to utilize. And what happens then, that turns the hospital
0:23:33 into a subprime lender. Right.
0:23:38 Because now they go in either through the emergency room or they show up not knowing what their deductible
0:23:42 is. And then the hospital will loan them money because they want them to reach, be able to pay
0:23:47 the deductible. So, then they can then charge the insurance company or the employer if they’re
0:23:52 self-insured. But wait, there’s more. Right? So, then let’s just say someone went in, gets a hip
0:23:58 replacement, pays their $5,000 deductible, and they own $10,000. Right? The insurance company,
0:24:02 even though they have a contract that says it’s $15,000 between the provider and the payer,
0:24:07 the insurance company, they don’t just write the check for $10,000. Right? They say, we’ll give you
0:24:12 $7,000. If you don’t like it, come and get us. And so, when you talk to a hospital CFO,
0:24:15 they’re like, we lose 3% to 5%. Wow.
0:24:20 We can lose as much as 50% on the subprime lending, you know. And so, they have to event all these costs
0:24:25 to compensate for what’s happening on the other side on the payment process. Then, of course,
0:24:30 you have the preauthorizations. And most of the preauthorizations get approved after everything is
0:24:34 said and done. But they get the time value, the money of the premium and not having to pay it.
0:24:38 And they’ve eaten up all these doctors’ time. And the doctors are the ones getting underpaid.
0:24:44 So, you’re going in for a heart transplant. And, you know, the doctor might make $10,000 unless it’s
0:24:50 a big name, you know, surgeon. I want my doctor making a shit ton of money, right? To make sure
0:24:57 that, you know. So, you have this connectivity between all the pieces that really hasn’t been
0:24:58 thought out. Right.
0:25:03 And those insurance companies either own the PBMs or are owned by the PBMs. And what they do,
0:25:09 because they’re together and they also are vertically integrated to own clinics and hospital,
0:25:15 not necessarily hospital, but clinics and other providers, right? So, they have all these intercompany
0:25:21 transfers that allow them to gain the system. So, with the ACA, you, depending on the circumstances,
0:25:25 the insurer has to pay out 80 to 85 percent. Yeah.
0:25:27 It’s called the medical loss ratio. Yeah.
0:25:31 And so, you would think that’s just straightforward. But if you’re vertically integrated,
0:25:32 Yeah.
0:25:36 you can put some over here, put all the profits into your PBM.
0:25:36 Right.
0:25:40 and show that you’ve spent all this money because you wrote that check to the PBM.
0:25:40 Yeah.
0:25:52 And so, that’s what happens. One of the biggest insurance companies had $161 billion of intercompany
0:25:53 transfers. Oh, my God.
0:25:58 Intercompany transfers. That’s 0.3 percent of our GDP.
0:26:00 Wow. Just moving money around to make more money.
0:26:02 Just moving money around to make more money.
0:26:06 So, if you’d get rid of them, would you, who should take the risk? Would you replace anything?
0:26:11 So, yeah. So, it’s a great question, right? So, healthcare is easy, right? Presuming,
0:26:15 you know, if you get the right doctor and everything, you go to the doctor and they tell you what’s
0:26:21 right or wrong, right? Go home. Wrong? Okay. What do I need? Then, once you know what you need,
0:26:25 there’s only two questions, whether it’s medication, surgery, whatever it is. How much does it cost?
0:26:26 And how do you pay for it? Yeah.
0:26:31 Costplusdrugs.com is still the only pharmacy company that publishes an entire price list.
0:26:36 The only one. And we’ve been in business three and a half years. That in and of itself,
0:26:42 is crazy. But then, once you get into the system, right, and you don’t know what anything costs,
0:26:47 then they can charge you whatever. And then, in terms of how do you pay for it, that’s who takes
0:26:53 the risk. Right. And so, deductibles are going up, no matter whether it’s Medicare Part D,
0:26:58 even Medicare Part A and B have higher deductibles. Medicare Advantage, they shrink the network and
0:27:03 create networks. So, out of pockets going up. So, patients are the first line of defense that the
0:27:09 insurance companies are trying to push the risk on. But better, in my mind, is to combine kind of a
0:27:14 market where you get rid of the insurance companies, there’s no premiums. Get rid of the big PBMs,
0:27:22 there’s no, you know, manipulation, if you will, of the funds with intercompany transfers.
0:27:31 And you say to, you create tools that allow patients or their employers working with them to go out there
0:27:38 and find the best solution for them and to shop. And hopefully, you’ve saved a lot of money from your
0:27:44 not paying premiums and you can pay for what you need. But what you can’t pay, the government will
0:27:49 owe you that money if it stays within the price parameters that have been set. So, it’s negotiating
0:27:53 without negotiating, right? And they’ve done that to a certain extent, reference-based pricing with
0:27:59 Medicare, you know, and Medicaid for Medicaid patients. And so, now, if you or I can pay for
0:28:04 it, we just pay for it. But we’ve saved all that money in not paying premiums. And slowly but surely,
0:28:11 we’re getting more and more reinsurance options for individuals. So, for catastrophic insurance. So,
0:28:16 you know, in case, God forbid, the worst thing happens, you have an option. So, that’s one place of
0:28:21 risk. But if you’re not paying premiums to an insurance company, you can pay for your reinsurance.
0:28:27 And then, if your hip replacement is $15,000 and you have $3,000, you can use financing, but it’s
0:28:32 guaranteed by the government. Yeah. Kind of like we do with college. You know, you can use the financing
0:28:37 the school has, right? But it’s guaranteed by the government. Kind of like we do with houses. Yeah. You can
0:28:43 use the mortgage plan, but it’s guaranteed by the government. Right. The most important thing that we have
0:28:49 available to us, our healthcare, the government’s like, whatever. Right. You know? So, if you take
0:28:55 the risk and allocate it within a price control, price control is the wrong word. But if you want,
0:29:01 if you’re a patient, you’re shopping for care, and it stays within the benchmarks that are set,
0:29:06 then go for it. If you want to spend more, right? You think the doctor doesn’t participate and you want
0:29:10 to get better? Go for it. But then, all of a sudden, you’ve got all this money that’s not being paid
0:29:15 in premiums that’s available to people to use, to save, whatever. That’s how I would look at it.
0:29:20 Yeah. So, you’ve built Cost Plus Drugs, partially because you have this, well, you care about it,
0:29:24 obviously. You have this distribution advantage. You have the capital advantage to get it started.
0:29:29 Let’s imagine if you were a young entrepreneur, you know, a mid-20-something, Mark Cuban, in 2025,
0:29:34 and trying to, you know, be immensely successful like you’ve been. How would you think about that? Or what
0:29:37 would you pursue? For Cost Plus Drugs? No, no, no. Because you as an entrepreneur.
0:29:43 Like, if I was just getting out of college right now, oh, I’d be all AI every day, right? Because
0:29:48 I think the disconnect, I think employment for computer science graduates, and I said this 10
0:29:53 years ago, I got crushed, 2017 actually. I said, you know, AI is going to put programmers out of
0:29:59 business at the beginning stage programmers. And people just, oh, you’re an idiot. But now big
0:30:04 companies are going to find ways to use AI. They’re going to reduce, you saw Salesforce or whatever
0:30:11 laid off people. Small companies have no clue. Yeah. You know, and there are only 22,000 companies,
0:30:17 I remember this from the Kamala campaign, 22,000 companies with 500 more employees. 30 million,
0:30:24 right? Now, a lot of them are single entrepreneurs, but, you know, 5 million have 500 or less.
0:30:30 That’s where you want to go try to get a job. Because if you’re AI native, because you’ve been using it
0:30:34 through your four years of college or two years, you know, or, you know, two years from now, having
0:30:39 had four years experience, they need you. Yeah. You know, maybe they have one person who’s picked it
0:30:44 up, two people. Yeah. But if you have a business background, which you can learn in school, and you
0:30:49 become an AI native, you can walk into a small company and say, I can help you. Right. I can create
0:30:54 agents for you that’ll go out and look for things. We had, one of my Shark Tank companies is Rebel Cheese,
0:31:02 and they added a direct to consumer business. And they created an agent that compares the weight
0:31:08 that comes off a scale for what they’re saying or the box type and what they were invoiced by UPS or
0:31:16 FedEx and compared to the price list. Always got overcharged. Always. This little company is saving,
0:31:22 you know, thousands of dollars a week just by using an agent, you know, and it was not anything
0:31:29 difficult or, you know, advanced. So being able to walk into a company and say, I can do this,
0:31:33 I can do this, I can do this. Yeah. It’s no different than what systems integrators have
0:31:37 done for decades. Right. You know, that’s what I did in my first company, Micro Solutions. Yeah.
0:31:42 You don’t understand PCs. You’re a small company. I do. I know networks. I can program. I’m going to
0:31:46 write you an application that emulates what you’re doing, but faster. Yeah. Now it’s no longer about
0:31:53 emulation. Those days are gone. It’s about how do we change the process by removing pieces to make
0:31:57 you more efficient, more productive, more profitable. Yeah. So you wrote the PC wave as you say, then you
0:32:02 wrote the internet wave with broadband. You had a big outcome there. If you were starting a company
0:32:06 today, would you try to build a foundation model company or vertical application or? No, neither.
0:32:10 Yeah. What would you do? Because they’re all going to be customized. Yeah. I literally would
0:32:16 hone my business skills as much as possible. Right. Um, domain knowledge will be more, domain novel
0:32:22 knowledge combined with understanding of AI is the win. Right. So you would go with some sector that
0:32:26 hasn’t yet been developed by AI and built a company. Or just small companies. Yeah. You know, regardless
0:32:29 of sector. Yeah. But if you wanted to start something that could be big one day. Right. Because if I work
0:32:34 with one shoe company and I analyze what they do, then I say, okay, I’m going to charge you expert
0:32:39 transaction. Yeah. And I’m going to do the agent for you and I’m going to monitor the agents. Yeah.
0:32:44 It’s SaaS at one level. Right. Right. But it’s customized SaaS where it, you know, and as AI
0:32:50 advances, the model advances and the agent advances. And so, you know, factories, you know, talking
0:32:56 now, like at Cost Plus Drugs, we have a robotics factory. Yeah. And we use AI agents to monitor
0:33:02 everything. Right. You know, and our cost to run the factory is a fraction of pretty much everybody
0:33:08 other than India and China. And we’ll catch up to them. Yeah. You know, and so understanding how business
0:33:13 works, having that domain knowledge, and then being able to apply it and then being able to scale it
0:33:18 by taking it to all those companies in similar circumstances or creating agents that modify the
0:33:22 agents based off of the information you’re getting from all your customer companies. Yeah. That’s the
0:33:27 new SaaS potentially. Yeah. Totally. I want to zoom out and talk just general business success and
0:33:32 advice. The internet lists your net worth, I believe it, over a billion or something to the effect.
0:33:37 Yeah. But one thing that, you know, typically when people become super wealthy, it’s because of like
0:33:43 one big thing. Yeah. But it seems like you’ve sort of compounded wealth in decades. And I think the
0:33:46 biggest liquidity events, though, I don’t mean if I’m wrong, are the company you sold and the
0:33:51 software. And the maps, yeah. And so, and then there have been other efforts. What do you think is the
0:33:54 thread, the through line when you look at your career and the ways in which you’ve made money
0:33:59 that others can learn from? I look at business as a sport. Yeah. Right. And I just love to compete.
0:34:05 Yeah. You know, and that keeps me going. Just, you know, there’s always something new and always
0:34:10 something changing. And it’s almost like the forums, right? I just like to be intellectually challenged.
0:34:13 Yeah. When I first started, I was always the youngest guy walking in the room. Now I’m the oldest guy
0:34:18 walking in the room. And I like kicking everybody’s ass where I can, right? Yeah. You know, you went,
0:34:22 you got your CS degree from Harvard. Fuck you. I don’t care, right? Sounds like when Gary King Ross.
0:34:30 You know, but I, I like that challenge. Yeah. And I understand patterns and I understand being able
0:34:34 to create new things. And I think that’s served me really well. It’s like cost plus drugs. Yeah.
0:34:40 You know, we launched in January of 2022. We’re serving millions of customers. Yeah. We’re changing
0:34:45 people’s lives. Yeah. And everybody thought I was an idiot. You know, you’re taking, and we’re working
0:34:48 outside the system. Right. We’re, you know, everybody, Amazon, everybody else. Okay. We’re going to work
0:34:52 with the big PBMs. Yeah. Because that’s where the money is. And I’m like, no, they’re the problem.
0:34:56 Yeah. You don’t work with the problem. Right. You know, it’s the innovator’s dilemma. Yeah. You know,
0:34:59 we’re going to take what they can’t do. And, you know, when you run with the elephants, there’s the
0:35:05 quick and the dead. Yeah. We got to be quick and aggressive. And, and so I think that’s a big part of
0:35:09 my skill set. Yeah. You know, whether it’s starting AudioNet, which is the first streaming company,
0:35:15 HDNet, the first all high def network, you know, cost plus drugs, what I do with the Mavs in terms of
0:35:19 bringing in technology, it was always about, you know, Steve Jobs said it best. Everything’s a
0:35:23 remix. Yeah. You know, it’s about taking what I know. Right. And just learning whatever’s coming
0:35:28 up and what new technologies and remixing it to apply to something different. Right. When you
0:35:32 bought the Mavs, did you have a sense that 20 years later, it could be, you know, worth an order of
0:35:37 magnitude more? No. It wasn’t a business. No, no, no. In fact, like I paid 285 million for the Mavs in
0:35:44 2000. In 2010, the NBA couldn’t even sell the New Orleans franchise. Really? There were no buyers.
0:35:49 Wow. And the valuation had gone down. Wow. Not up. It wasn’t until. So you thought it was a bad
0:35:52 purchase from a financial perspective? From a financial perspective, it was awful. Right. Plus,
0:35:57 I was losing money every year. So it had nothing to do with money. But I loved it. Right. That was the
0:36:01 key part. And I think it elevated your profile in a way that probably helped your other business.
0:36:05 Oh, yeah. For sure. Yeah. And then Shark, that got me to Shark Tank and the rest is history.
0:36:15 But, you know, I just, the way I looked at it back then is I’m having fun. I’m blessed. Right. I’m
0:36:19 going to make the use of my time so I enjoy every minute of it. But what changed the economics of the
0:36:24 NBA was, you know, linear media being competitive. Yeah. You know, and that goes back, you know,
0:36:28 things I look for. I always look for death wars. Yeah. Right. Well, you’ve got competitors that
0:36:32 one’s going to win and one’s going to lose. Right. And they have to go all in. Yeah.
0:36:37 Just like with AI right now. Right. They all, they’re spending tens of billions of dollars a year.
0:36:41 Yeah. There’s, you know, they’re making obscene amount of cash flow and they’re spending it all.
0:36:45 Yeah. Right. They’re paying a billion dollars to people to come over. Yeah. Right. What does that
0:36:51 tell you? Yeah. That anything you can sell to them that really differentiates them, they’re going to buy.
0:36:57 And so, but, you know, with the Mavs, it was, I didn’t see it as an investment, but it wasn’t until
0:37:01 the death wars hit linear television. Right. And then all the TV deals went skyrocketing. So that’s
0:37:06 what made it, you know, the difference between 2025 and 2020, in 2010, in terms of why the NBA teams have
0:37:11 gotten so much more valuable is, is TV. Yeah. A little bit of real estate so you can build around. Right.
0:37:18 But, um, it’s a hundred percent streaming slash TV. The question becomes what, you know, how long does
0:37:24 this sustain? Right. You know, if, if you look at, so like Major League Baseball didn’t get a deal done
0:37:29 with ESPN and saw their rights start to decline. Yeah. But it was right around the time, I think it was
0:37:34 Peacock who bought just one NFL playoff game. Yeah. You know, and got like a hundred thousand new
0:37:37 subscribers or a million, a hundred million new subscribers, something ridiculous. Right. Yeah.
0:37:42 That all of a sudden set a benchmark. So this season, right. Starting with the NBA season,
0:37:50 how well that does in terms of driving subscriptions and reducing churn, that’s going to make or break
0:37:56 everything that comes forward for all sports. Yeah. I also wonder if, you know, one thesis I have is,
0:38:01 uh, that, uh, you know, value capture will reflect value creation. It just, when the market gets more
0:38:05 efficient. And so, and NBA players, it seems like don’t have equity in the league. And I wonder if,
0:38:10 uh, in the future, they’re going to band together and just say, I don’t think you can. Right. Because
0:38:17 father time’s undefeated, you know, so at what point do you stop? Right. And, um, the, the price of the
0:38:23 franchises now are so high. I mean, how much can you give them? Right. And I don’t, I don’t, I’m not
0:38:29 going to say it’s never going to happen, but you know, I think it could be a question, but the other,
0:38:34 the other point is that there’s only like two players that fill an arena. Yeah. Steph and LeBron.
0:38:38 Right. Like when Luca played for the Mavs and I had nothing to do with the trade. When Luca,
0:38:43 when Luca played for the Mavs, we didn’t play to sold out buildings. He would draw fans. Don’t get
0:38:47 me wrong. But not every building was sold out. When Giannis would come to Dallas, it didn’t necessarily
0:38:55 mean we were going to sell out. Yeah. But the whole concept of what drives, um, attendance has changed
0:39:01 dramatically. Yeah. And what drives viewership on television in particular, because now, um,
0:39:04 fans are fans of the players more than they are the teams. Right. Like when we grew up,
0:39:08 it was like you were, I grew up in Pittsburgh, so you’re a Steelers fan. You’re a Pirates fan.
0:39:12 That’s why I wonder if they’re going to team up and say, Hey, you know, when Benyama, the new
0:39:16 generation, you know, we could start a new league and get Cooper flags. Yeah, exactly. It’s expensive.
0:39:20 Right. Start a new league. Yeah. There’s a lot of infrastructure. Yeah. NBA is its own.
0:39:24 And even with Caitlin Clark, I don’t know all the WNBA numbers now, but most of them aren’t making
0:39:29 money. Right. Even in the NBA, most teams aren’t making money before revenue share. Right. The,
0:39:33 um, I know that you were dismayed at the Luca trade. We were sort of in the group chat when it
0:39:38 happened, but I just want to reflect. Yeah. I was so devastated by, by it, that it seemed so unfair
0:39:43 for the Mavs not to get picks back or Austin Reeves or whatever. I don’t want to really, I was
0:39:48 complaining to my girlfriend at the time, you know, like many people were. And I even remember reading
0:39:53 this, this conspiracy theory that it was on purpose to take the value of the franchise to then move to,
0:39:57 you know, Las Vegas. Yeah. No. And I was like, Oh, this is the only way it can make sense. No.
0:40:01 How do we not get more for Luca in the, in the street? I wish I knew. I wish I knew. But,
0:40:05 but then the Cooper flag, they, I mean, it’s the world works. Yeah. The basketball guys were looking
0:40:09 kindly upon us. Yeah. The world works in a, in mysterious ways. But so I have a dream to be a
0:40:14 part owner someday as well. And I’ve wondered if, if the strategy is either to compete for a championship
0:40:20 or do the Oklahoma city thunder where you trade for picks. So what do you think? I think the
0:40:26 thunder methodology is better now with the new CBA. Right. Um, every new CBA creates transitional
0:40:32 issues where your, your decisions were made in a legacy environment and they just changed all the
0:40:40 rules. Yeah. And now it’s even more difficult with the second apron because the, the problems of being
0:40:45 over the second apron are far more draconian than anything we’ve ever seen. Right. And so I think the
0:40:52 patience approach that San, that San Antonio and OKC have taken is going to, to lead the way.
0:40:57 Yeah. Um, whereas with me, I was never patient. Right. And that worked against me a lot too.
0:41:01 You know, I wanted to win now, win now, we have dirt, let’s get there, win now. Um. What’s
0:41:06 something you would have done differently? We kept Steve Nash. Um, but. Drafted Giannis. Drafted Giannis.
0:41:14 Yeah. Um, I, I think I just would have been more patient and waited guys out to see how they turn
0:41:18 out. Yeah. Rather than, okay, I’m going to throw in a draft because at the time you could say if you
0:41:25 didn’t have a pick from 15, uh, below 15, the odds of them being a player. Yeah. Was minimal. Right. And
0:41:30 so if I was getting somebody that I could already evaluate, that worked in my favor. Yeah. But now
0:41:34 draft picks have become so much more valuable. Yeah. And so that’s changed the, um, valuation
0:41:38 approach. Right. I heard one argument that was somewhat sympathetic to, which is, hey, the, the,
0:41:42 the argument for how you could understand the Luka trade is, you know, obviously legendary iconic
0:41:47 player, but so expensive. And with the way that the contracts were structured is if you gave, you know,
0:41:50 kept giving him the super max, how much room do you have to build it? It’s kind of like the Trey Young
0:41:53 probably like some of these players are so expensive, but are you really going to win a championship if you
0:41:57 don’t have? Yeah. It’s not, it’s like, can you have two max players? Yeah. And that’s
0:42:02 the challenge. Right. You know, in the past you could reward somebody with a max contract. Yeah.
0:42:06 Knowing you had some wiggle room. Right. And more importantly, you can always find a way to get
0:42:13 off that contract. Yeah. Not anymore. That, if you have your one generational player, you pay him
0:42:17 whatever it takes. Right. Because, because of the, the max contracts, they by definition are
0:42:22 undervalued. Yeah. So the, the generational player, you always pay whatever it takes. It’s the next
0:42:27 person. If they’re not a generational player, how do you deal with that? Yeah. That’s the
0:42:31 hard part. And when you see, like you saw with certain players, that teams couldn’t get off
0:42:36 of them. Yeah. Either because of age or, you know, they were max player by the rules of the
0:42:40 game eight years ago. Yeah. Four years ago, but they’re not any longer. That’s where the
0:42:44 challenges happen. Right. If you were making decisions for the Mavs now, given where everything
0:42:48 is, what would you be thinking about? What are the big questions or? Develop Cooper. Yeah.
0:42:53 First and foremost, you know, no, we’ve got AD, we’ve got Anthony Davis, we’ve got Kyrie who’ll
0:42:58 be coming back, but just, and Clay, just having those Hall of Famers there. Yeah. You couldn’t
0:43:02 ask for anything better in terms of development support. Yeah. And so I think we, we have to
0:43:07 focus on staying healthy. Yeah. Getting Kyrie back. It’s interesting with two timelines, you
0:43:11 know, the Warriors tried to do it, but they couldn’t exactly pull it off. Although they’ve done
0:43:14 great. But these sort of, you know, older players and then, you know, Cooper. It’s hard,
0:43:18 like where the Warriors are now. Yeah. You know, father time is undefeated and you’re
0:43:24 trying to stay committed to the guy who’s got you there. Yeah. You know? And he’s, the players
0:43:28 aren’t dumb. Right. You know? So they know they only have, you know, a finite number of
0:43:31 years left. Yeah. And so they’re trying to maximize their earnings in that point, in that, during
0:43:38 that period. It’s just hard. And so, you know, the whole second apron restrictions really
0:43:44 just kicked in last year. Yeah. And so now teams are having to deal with it. And so you’re
0:43:50 seeing players get stretched, you know, not just way, but stretched. Right. And I think
0:43:55 the strategy is changing right in front of our eyes. I think there’ll be fewer max players.
0:44:00 Right. Coming up. Interesting. And it used to be this thing where in order to win a championship,
0:44:03 you had to have one of the best players in the league. You know, the Pistons were an exception
0:44:07 to that. You know, I’m wondering, I’m a Knicks fan. I wonder if the Knicks have a, you know,
0:44:10 possibility to question that. But if you’re playing for a championship, do you think that
0:44:13 you have to have, you know, one of the five best players in the league or? Sure helps. Yeah.
0:44:23 It depends on the skill set. So what’s changed a lot in just six years, seven years, certainly,
0:44:28 you know, last 10 years is you used, there used to always be one guy on the court who couldn’t
0:44:32 shoot. Yeah. That couldn’t get a bucket. They were there for defensive purposes or they
0:44:39 protected the rim. Yeah. Now they all can score offensively at some level. And so, you know,
0:44:44 whether it’s the Knicks or anybody else, if you have enough guys who can put pressure on the defense,
0:44:49 and that’s why, you know, the Knicks made the deals that they did. Right. But if there’s one guy that
0:44:53 you’re playing against, that’s always the best player on the floor. Yeah. And you’re, you don’t
0:44:58 have that player. Right. It’s going to be tough. Totally. Well, I think what the Knicks are asking,
0:45:01 I guess Boston’s attitude is like, can offense win championships? Like if you just stack the.
0:45:07 Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, the Knicks have got some defenders. Yeah. You know. But Brunson and
0:45:12 Cat are weak defenders. It’s going to be tough. Yeah. Yeah. It makes it tough because, you know,
0:45:16 once you get to, like, even against Indiana. Yeah. You know, Indiana didn’t have, you know,
0:45:23 Hallie, we tried to get Hallie so hard, right? Yeah. Hallie is not a top five NBA player. Right.
0:45:29 He’s good. Yeah. Maybe top 15. Yeah. But he was better. Right. In that moment, because,
0:45:35 because you can do matchups over and over and over again, of course, across the, up to seven games,
0:45:40 you can play certain players off the court. Yeah. So you saw Cat. Right. Not even being out there
0:45:43 in certain times. Totally. Yeah. And if Pacers won the championship, that would have really questioned,
0:45:48 you know. And they took him to seven games. Yeah. Isn’t. I know. And their best player gets hurt.
0:45:54 You know, and we, the Mavs, injured and all without Luka, beat OKC three out of four games. Yeah.
0:45:59 Wow. But Dallas is one of the deepest teams right now, too. Oh, really deep. Stay healthy. Yeah. Yeah.
0:46:05 But yeah, there’s so many teams like the Raptors, the Bulls, the Kings, kind of like in perpetual,
0:46:10 what I would call mediocrity, and they’re expensive and they’re old. And I’m like, you just got to
0:46:14 rebuild, just admit they’re rebuilding. And there’s a number of teams like that. Yeah. And part of the
0:46:20 problem is that there’s a salary cap floor. Yeah. Right. You have to spend up to a certain
0:46:23 amount. Because they’re trying to get competitive, I guess. Right. Well, it’s just, that’s the deal
0:46:29 we do with the players. They want more money spent. Okay. And so 90% of the salary cap is a lot of
0:46:37 money. Right. So it’s like $153 million. Yeah. Right. Yeah. 170, give or take, times nine. And so
0:46:43 spending up to $153 million, that’s 10 million average. Yeah. So that means you’re overpaying a lot
0:46:48 of people. Yeah. You know? And so, I might have the cap never run. But in any event, you’re paying
0:46:53 a lot of people a lot of money. But if you keep them short contracts, you’ll get guys wanting to
0:47:00 come just to get overpaid. Yeah. You know? And you almost have to tank. And you just. I have a theory
0:47:04 that there’s these guys like, you know, maybe I’m being unfair, but Kuzma, RJ Barrett, Brandon Ingram,
0:47:10 who are sort of like built for losing, for getting a lot of money and a lot of points on a losing team.
0:47:14 Yeah. I mean. And we’re seeing more of that. Yeah. They’re free or on a losing team. Yeah.
0:47:20 And they do it to get paid more money. Yeah. Right. But teams are smarter than that. Yeah. But at the
0:47:26 same time, there are teams that need scoring. Right. And, you know, if you fall into that category. Yeah.
0:47:30 You’re going to go after those guys if you have the space for it. But I think what’s happening
0:47:38 actually now, you’re, we’re seeing all the salaries kind of can revolving around the mid-level exception,
0:47:44 which is $14 million, give or take. Right. And so that, if you’re, guys now realize with the second apron,
0:47:49 things have changed. Yeah. So if you get paid more than the mid-level. Right. You’re a good player. Yeah.
0:47:55 If you get paid at the mid-level, you’re a decent player. If you get paid below, you’re, you’re roster piece.
0:47:59 Yeah. Unless you’re young and you’re on your way up. For advice for me as a future owner,
0:48:03 what’s the big, what are the biggest ways an owner can influence winning? Is it sort of a personnel
0:48:07 selection on coaching GM? Like, are you? Always looking for an edge. Yeah. Always looking for the
0:48:14 edge. Um, you know, personnel selection is hard. Yeah. It’s more than science. Right. You don’t,
0:48:19 you know, like I told Jason when I did, um, Jalen Brooks when I did his podcast, he was just some
0:48:25 chubby guy. Right. You know, I’m sorry that we took it from you. No, I was not happy about that.
0:48:33 Right. Yeah. Um, but you know, we picked him 33rd. Right. 32, you know, chances to draft him and
0:48:39 they didn’t. And we liked just his pedigree of winning at Villanova. Um, but it’s his effort. Right.
0:48:45 Like when he was with us, his go-to move was either a spin or a move to the left and he’d fall away
0:48:50 doing a layup. Yeah. And he never got the foul because he was always falling away. Right. Now his
0:48:54 mid-range jumper is money. Yeah. But he worked on that. Totally. And that’s what you don’t know when you
0:48:59 draft somebody. Right. What mental capacity do they have? You know their athletic ability. Right. But
0:49:05 will they work hard to improve their skills? Will they work hard to improve their basketball IQ? Yeah.
0:49:11 If the answer is yes, and they have the, you know, the athletic side of it, you’ve got a chance,
0:49:15 but you don’t really know that to you because no one comes in and works out. Yeah. And says, okay,
0:49:20 I’m an idiot. I suck. Right. And shows you they suck. You know, they’ve all been trained on how to work
0:49:25 work out. You know, and they’re in college maybe one year. Yeah. So, you know, and then if you’re
0:49:29 going to a college and they’re getting paid now, right, it may be that they’re just doing what the
0:49:33 coach needs them to do there. Yeah. Which may not match what they need to do in the NBA. Right. You’ve
0:49:38 got the hardest part for players that aren’t superstars coming right in is you’ve got to learn how to fit
0:49:41 in. Yeah. Even with Luka, we didn’t know he was going to be a superstar. Yeah. We thought he was going
0:49:46 to be really, really good. Yeah. Right. And we thought he had superstar mentality. Yeah. But I was
0:49:51 terrified because I made a trade, right? I gave up a pick, you know, to Atlanta. And I remember we played
0:49:57 in China the first game of preseason and I had Sean Marion that was an ambassador of the NBA. I’m like,
0:50:01 Trix, what do you think? Trix, what do you think? What do you think? Like, I’m terrified. I’m terrified.
0:50:07 Yeah. You know, but we know how that turned out. Yeah. And by the way, it’s so funny, just the
0:50:11 basketball gods. Lakers made all the wrong moves for so many years and we’re in such a tough spot. You talk
0:50:15 about Warriors, they were in a tougher spot going forward, trading all their picks, being so old. And then Luka
0:50:19 falls into the lap just to keep it, keep it interesting. I think we’ve done enough of this.
0:50:26 Yeah, exactly. Mav’s got Coop and don’t trade him and you’ll be good. The, um, zooming out,
0:50:32 Greg’s just closing here. The, um, how have you thought about how you want to spend time? Like,
0:50:36 um, you, for example, can have your own ASIC and Z big venture firm doing all these investments,
0:50:41 all this staff. You seem to run kind of a lean operation or flexible. How have you thought about
0:50:46 the efforts that you want to get involved with, not want to get involved with, how thin to spread
0:50:47 yourself, so to speak?
0:50:48 Well, I mean, I got out of Shark Tank.
0:50:49 Yeah.
0:50:52 I got out of the Mavs so I could spend more time with my kids.
0:50:52 Yeah.
0:50:57 You know, that, that’s number one because they’re 16, 19 and about to turn 22.
0:50:57 Yeah.
0:50:58 They’re heading out on their own.
0:50:59 Yeah.
0:51:04 So I just want to spend that time that I can with them. But I think the difference is for
0:51:07 me versus everybody, I’m not looking, my goal is not to make as much money as I can.
0:51:07 Yeah.
0:51:10 Like I do investing.
0:51:10 Yeah.
0:51:13 But honestly, it’s just shit. People email me.
0:51:14 Yeah.
0:51:19 I mean, like I saw a list of who has the most unicorns and I, I was like, I had like 11.
0:51:19 Yeah.
0:51:22 And all of them were just from email. Somebody emailed me saying, check this out, check this
0:51:27 out, check this out. Like Synthesia, you know, I was their first investor, you know, gave them
0:51:32 a million dollars. And now, you know, so I can get 20, 25% of a company, sometimes more,
0:51:35 and then help them grow. That’s what I like.
0:51:41 Right. Taking, you know, long shot tries as opposed to, okay, let’s raise a fund. Let’s
0:51:45 get a team together. We’ll put in 10 to 25 million. And then, you know, if they’re doing
0:51:50 well, we’ll put in more and do follow-ups and, you know, we’ll have these big scores.
0:51:50 Yeah.
0:51:54 I like it better when, you know, it’s dude wipes.
0:51:54 Yeah.
0:51:55 Right. Comes on Shark Tank.
0:51:56 Yeah.
0:51:59 I give them 200 grand for 15%. Now they’re worth a billion dollars easy.
0:52:00 Right.
0:52:03 You know, they’re a primary brand and they never had to raise another cent.
0:52:03 Yeah.
0:52:06 You know, helping a company never have to raise more money.
0:52:06 Yeah.
0:52:07 And making them profitable.
0:52:08 Right.
0:52:09 So that they’re insanely profitable.
0:52:10 Yeah.
0:52:15 I had this company, Alyssa’s Cookies. Guy Doug was living in his car with his family and
0:52:16 he sent me these cookies.
0:52:16 Wow.
0:52:20 They were this big. They were the best cookies I’ve ever. Because I always do like the nutrition
0:52:26 thing first. What’s on the back? No added sugar, lots of fiber, et cetera. Low net carbs.
0:52:32 But when I took it out of the plastic, it all fell apart. So I said, I’m going to give you
0:52:35 money. Right. And I got like a third of the company, but I’m going to guide you through
0:52:39 what it takes. So we changed it and I told him to make them into bites instead of cookies
0:52:44 and put them in a plastic container and go to stores and we’ll sell them. I’ll do a tasting,
0:52:50 you know, where, you know, I’ll go to a grocery store one time and hand out. Now, no more money
0:52:53 in. Right. We’ll do 25 million this year.
0:52:53 Wow.
0:52:57 But that’s not the important number because we don’t spend money on advertising or anything.
0:52:57 Right.
0:52:58 Probably.
0:53:01 Makes 12 to 14 million a year.
0:53:06 And we just added Whole Foods. We just added Costco. We’re adding more and more, you know,
0:53:11 outlets. He can get to 100 million and make 50 million a year.
0:53:12 Wow.
0:53:13 That stuff’s fun.
0:53:13 Yeah.
0:53:14 Right.
0:53:18 So if you could clone yourself a few times or when you look into the future, are there
0:53:20 other businesses like cost plus drugs that you want to start or incubate?
0:53:25 Yeah. Education. If I can do what I want to do with healthcare, which I’m saying a lot,
0:53:25 right?
0:53:27 Yeah. Totally. That’s a big effort.
0:53:30 Yeah. But it would be education just because…
0:53:33 Like AI first, K through 12 or what kind of…
0:53:39 Yeah. I mean, more secondary education, right? Simply because the cost structure is all fucked
0:53:42 up, right? And it’s all built on accreditation.
0:53:42 Yeah.
0:53:47 And that’s kind of a mafia. And when I see a mafia like that, I just ignore the accreditation
0:53:51 and just go do it anyways. And if you get the results or guarantee your results, you’ll
0:53:52 get plenty of…
0:53:55 We talked about your healthcare platform. We talked about your messaging. Are there
0:53:59 any other policies that if you could, you know, be in charge of the Democrat Party or sort
0:54:03 of running America that you would be most excited about in terms of it’s transformative potential?
0:54:06 Yeah. You know what I would say? I would say a focus on entrepreneurship.
0:54:06 Yeah.
0:54:13 You know, that right now, whoever the candidate is, particularly if it’s for president, takes
0:54:13 credit for everything.
0:54:14 Yeah.
0:54:15 And that’s ridiculous.
0:54:22 They do less to impact the startups and the building of businesses than anybody, you
0:54:30 know? And so I think what’s missing, definitely missing with Biden, maybe less so with Obama
0:54:34 and definitely missing with Trump. Like when you hear Trump talk about tariffs, he never talks
0:54:39 about small businesses. It’s always, hey, I’ve got this company investing $500 billion, $600
0:54:43 billion when, you know, you’ve got all these Shark Tank companies that are getting crushed.
0:54:43 Yeah.
0:54:49 You know, you increase, you know, from a 2.5% average tariff to a 15% tariff, that’s the profit
0:54:51 margin and it’s gone. So I would put a focus on that.
0:54:59 I would put a focus on recognizing and encouraging and rewarding people starting businesses and
0:55:06 using AI, you know, kind of as government as a service, where you simplify all the friction
0:55:12 that’s involved in starting a business. You know, from the paperwork to get all the requirements,
0:55:17 the incorporation, et cetera, to a bank account, all of it, just simplify all of it. So entrepreneurs
0:55:24 can be entrepreneurs. Because I think that is what, Joe Biden told this to me of all people,
0:55:31 when during the Obama administration, they invited us from Shark Tank to go do a thing for entrepreneurship
0:55:38 at the White House. And he said, he gave a little speech and what he said was, you know, I’ve traveled
0:55:46 around the world and there’s no Chinese dream, there’s no French dream, there’s no UK dream,
0:55:52 there’s only the American dream. And people come here to live it and experience it. That’s what makes
0:55:52 us unique.
0:55:57 Yeah. And on that note, what advice, in closing, what advice do you have for us in Silicon Valley
0:56:02 or just tech more broadly, who are building with AI on how to make it more popular so that we don’t have
0:56:03 this big backlash?
0:56:14 Um, you have to get with either party and communicate to people the upside.
0:56:17 Yeah. Because they see the doubt, they see, hey, maybe my job is being taken away.
0:56:22 Yeah. And that’s, that’s, you know, going back to what I said earlier, there will be disintermediation,
0:56:28 but I don’t think the net number of jobs is going to decrease. I think everything gets reinvented
0:56:30 because AI right now is not smart. Right.
0:56:35 You know, it’s statistical in a lot of respects. Robotics, on the other hand, is getting smart.
0:56:41 You know, robotics, if you, you know, clean my bedroom, it has to know, you know, to pick up
0:56:47 the sheets and all this stuff. But I think the combination, the two will create unique opportunities
0:56:55 for jobs. Yeah. Um, I think domain expertise is always going to be necessary, um, to train
0:57:05 models. But I think bigger picture, when like we look at a house, everything’s designed for
0:57:10 the human form. And right now robotics is trying to emulate the human form because that’s what
0:57:11 we’ve always done with software. Yeah.
0:57:16 We just emulated what we already did and try to optimize it. You don’t just, if you can create
0:57:22 devices, robots that can look like anything and you want them to be domestic in some way,
0:57:30 you don’t build houses the way we do now. Yeah. And I think there’s going to be a lot of jobs that go
0:57:37 in different directions. And I think Silicon Valley has got to do a much better job demonstrating those
0:57:44 jobs, hiring people for those jobs, um, supporting people that are concerned about their jobs. Um,
0:57:50 even teachers, you know, now when we look at AI tools, you can read papers faster. That’s not going
0:57:57 to change anything. You’re just doing it the same way, you know, but if a teacher can use AI to, um,
0:58:03 customize responses to kids to help them learn, like you said, um, AI tutors, right. But in a classroom,
0:58:08 you’re going to keep your job longer. Yeah. We, we need more teachers, not fewer teachers.
0:58:13 Right. Um, but AI doesn’t, I mean, Silicon Valley doesn’t communicate that at all. Yeah. Because when
0:58:17 you’re raising money, it’s about what you’re going to change. Right. Not what you’re going to sustain.
0:58:22 Yeah. But there’s so many unique opportunities. Yeah. I mean, I’m, I’m old enough. Like I would walk in
0:58:28 selling PCs and I saw you’re out of work, you’re out of work, you’re out of work. But as it’s all turned
0:58:35 out, the economy just keeps on growing. Yeah. And, and I think the same thing is going to happen here.
0:58:44 And I think the other side of it is going to, you know, inner cities. Like I have this thing called
0:58:50 the Mark Cuban AI bootcamp. And all we do is go into, you know, underprivileged schools, you know,
0:58:55 and encourage kids to sign up for the bootcamp. And it used to be just machine learning,
0:59:00 right. Where we taught you that now it’s, you know, learning how to use AI the way with models
0:59:05 and everything and agents for 15, 16, 17 year old kids. Yeah. And it’s great. Right. Cause they’re
0:59:10 going back and they’re coming up with new ideas. Right. The Valley needs to go out there and engage
0:59:18 more in middle America. So people see totally where the upside is. Yeah. You know, you’re getting this
0:59:23 rejuvenation of San Francisco and all the spending is pointing there. Yeah. How is anybody else going to
0:59:28 understand that or see that? Right. You just, they don’t at all. Yeah. When in reality,
0:59:33 if it’s open to them, and that’s why I did the bootcamp, more things are going to happen. People
0:59:39 don’t realize like when the internet first hit, we used to think kids who can do HTML coding were
0:59:42 geniuses. Yeah. Right. And when they moved up to JavaScript, they were even smarter, right? Cause
0:59:47 they were building all these websites that were getting ready to go public. Um, and AI is kind of the
0:59:51 same thing. It’s not hard to build agents. Right. And it’s getting easier, but knowing an
0:59:57 application that you can use to start something, improve something, everybody can do that. Every
1:00:02 kid, every mom, every dad, but Silicon Valley is making it sound like, you know, this is the Jetsons
1:00:07 and we have no chance. Yeah. And I think that has to change. That’s a great note of, uh, advice and
1:00:11 optimism to, to end. Mark Cuban, thanks so much for coming to the podcast. It was a lot of fun. Thank
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