Erik Torenberg is joined by Mark Cuban, entrepreneur, Dallas Mavericks co-owner, and founder of Cost Plus Drugs.
Topics include fiery group chats and how dissent sharpens thinking, the sales playbook of modern politics, and concrete fixes for U.S. healthcare like ending PBM opacity, publishing real prices, and government-backed patient financing. Mark also explains how AI is pushing media from “social” to algorithmic, why he expects millions of models, and why ESOPs are an underrated wealth engine. He shares what he’d build today and weighs in on NBA economics under the new collective bargaining agreement.
Timecodes:
00:00:19 - Group chats & Mark’s politics
00:03:18 - Social media & political parties
00:33:53 - Mark’s business philosophy
00:56:22 - Advice to Silicon Valley
Transcript:
Mark Cuban: I look at business as a sport and I just love to compete. I just like to be intellectually challenged. I'm an independent, I don't care about parties. I could care less. I want to be where different viewpoints are. An intellectual response rather than just a “you suck” response that you get on social media.
Erik Torenberg: Mark, thanks for coming to the podcast.
Mark Cuban: Thanks for having me on. Excited to be here.
00:00:19 - Group chats & Mark’s politics
Erik Torenberg: So we’ve spent a lot of time the last couple years or so, most of that time digitally, and on group chats. And one question that I often get in the group chat sphere is “How do these billionaires have so much time to be on group chats?”
To which I say, “Oh, that's actually the highest form, you know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Once you really make it, then you wanna argue with your friends and have interesting conversations.” What say you? What's your reflection on what you get out of these, or why you spend time on them?
Mark Cuban: You want to learn, you want to challenge yourself. You want to see what other people think and why. Because you know, in a world that's changing the way it is, you know, I want to be where different viewpoints are and have it be, you know, an intellectual response rather than just a “you suck” response that you get on social media.
Erik Torenberg: Yeah. And one of the things I appreciate most about one of our group chats is that you're one of the, the lone dissenters. Originally it was on the election, and, you know, it had more of a right-leaning crowd. And, you were one of the, you know, most prominent…
Mark Cuban: I was the dissenter. I'm not even the Democrat. I was just the dissenter.
Erik Torenberg: Yeah. And willing to sort of be independent. What did you get out of that? Did you just get sharper, get your arguments smarter?
Mark Cuban: It wasn't even so much that. To me there were a lot of things that didn't make sense. And to them it didn't make sense where I stood. And I wanted to get to the root of why people came to those conclusions. And you know, typically it just came down to trust. But you don't know that that's going to be the underpinning logic until you ask the questions. And so I think, you know, a lot of people presume, in any type of group chat, right, that you know where everybody stands and you think you understand why.
But it's until you start kind of challenging them. And then on top of it makes me, you know, reconfirm why I feel how I feel. And that's a win for me as well.
Erik Torenberg: Totally.
Mark Cuban: I'm an independent, I don't care about parties.
I could care less, you know.
Erik Torenberg: Have you ever supported a Republican?
Mark Cuban: Oh, yeah, yeah. I don't care. I've voted for Republicans. I just don't care, right. I try to look at each individual issue. I actually voted for George Bush. You know, we can argue about the quality, but it's about the alternatives, right?
And then like the first time I ever—well, I don't wanna go back that far. But in terms of the comparisons to Trump, you know, we're both salespeople. And I think that is a strength for me to understand him. Because at his heart, he just knows how to do PR and sales. That's who he is. And that's how I've grown my businesses.
You know, people always hear me talk about “Sales cures all,” and you have to understand your market and context, and he's brilliant at it. You know, he understands how to sell, he understands how to use PR, he understands where leverage comes and when it doesn't exist, and how to zig and zag when it doesn't work.
And you know, I think those are actual skills of people who have built businesses. Those are entrepreneurial skills. Now when you actually run the business, you have to do all the work behind it. And as a politician, that's not always the case.
00:03:18 - Social media & political parties
Erik Torenberg: When did you realize that businesspeople would have platforms that would give them kind of distribution advantages in reaching customers?
Mark Cuban: Just when social media came out.
Erik Torenberg: Because you were early to this. You were very early, like you and Trump, like one of the early people.
Mark Cuban: Yeah I mean, right when Twitter started. Not 2006, but 2009 and South by Southwest, when they were all pumping it up. When it was all about just “Where's the party at?” I mean, social media obviously, it's like, why are people following me? And it's just aspirational at some levels. And I own the Mavs, so it was informational. And then just with the technology background, it was informational there as well, so I could reach into different domains and interact with people. And that creates a platform. And each platform has its own look and feel, and you just learn how to, you know, deal with it accordingly.
It's gonna be really interesting because of AI. AI, as you know, has multidimensional impact. And how you create content, how that content is absorbed. Effectively, we all have our own feed. No two people have the exact same feed. And you know what Trump has done well is learn how to flood the zone. So that no matter what that algorithm finds for you, he's gonna find a way to you, whether it's a positive or negative. And then you look at Kamala and Brat Summer and, you know, fell off a coconut tree. Brilliant. She had everything going for her. But the Democrats didn't have anybody who knew how to sell.
And so going back to your question, it's not so much reality stars or, you know, businesspeople with followings. It's people who know how to use algorithms and understand how they work. And now as AI is evolving very quickly, knowing how to use AI and what's the impact on social media?
Because if it takes two seconds to generate on Veo, and then pretty soon that becomes agentic, and pretty soon it's, okay, just videotape everything that I do and just create videos and just flood every single account that we create. And then all of a sudden do people find themselves saying, “I'm gonna use social media less because it's all AI-generated and I don't know what's real, there's nothing social about it”?
Or do they think, you know, talking babies and gorillas as videos is the way to communicate.
And so it's gonna be fascinating over the next three years because we don't know that part. And so we may find ourselves in a scenario where we diverge from the traditional sales person putting it out there, like Trump, and find our way to, “Okay, let's understand how we do this.”
It's just like polling. Polling is useless now. You're always behind. And any one social media comment can change how everybody feels in a nanosecond. And so, you know, how do people start integrating surveys?
You know, I'm just continuously surveying with all those questions we get online and what direction does that take us? How do I integrate that into video creation? I mean what's the limit?
Erik Torenberg: Yeah. So you experimented with a social network a few years ago, “Dust,” it was called.
When you look out, you know, 5 years from now, 10 years from now, do you think there's a new platform that emerges? Or do you think it's kind of this like fragmented ecosystem that we have now? What is your prediction for the future of social?
Mark Cuban: Well, I mean, look at Bluesky.
They, you know, had been around for a little while, but then all of a sudden when Trump got elected, their usage just boomed.
Erik Torenberg: I call it “the fragmentation” of like, you know, people didn't like Elon now. It’s not just that but…
Mark Cuban: But yeah, so they moved, right. But now it became its own silo. And so I think it won't be social media, but there'll be media. You know, it depends on how much you believe in AI and where you think it'll go. I always look at it as creative people, they'll be able to amplify their creativity and iterate incessantly.
And that will create some amazing, incredible things. Are you just gonna put it on X? Are you gonna put it on LinkedIn? Are you gonna put it on Bluesky? Are you gonna put it on TikTok? You don't have control of the algorithm. You know, and so I think there'll be something new. And I think how people connect to that content will be the foundation of it. Because I think we're tired of rage bait.
And we're tired of the fact that, you know, the algorithm presents what you seek, effectively. I think instead we are going to get unique offerings that don't seem to make sense right now. And I think part two to that is, you know, like if you go on X and you use Grok, it almost always, unless it's something that Elon is individually interested in, it comes up with a legitimate answer. And you get people who say, “Well, you know, hey Grok, tell me…” and it doesn't give them what they expect, you know? And I think that's a huge positive.
And it's the same on other platforms as well, where you can just go to ChatGPT, Perplexity, whatever you use, or all of them, and ask questions. So you'll see a reduction of misinformation, I hope. And with the reduction of misinformation, you're gonna have less rage bait.
And with less rage bait. What's the connection? And hopefully it's better quality content. Hopefully it's, you know, I don't know, it's just like if we were sitting, just gonna brainstorm, and just say, you know, “Can we create our own new network,” right? What would it include and what would the parameters be?
Erik Torenberg: And when you did it, maybe 5 years ago, maybe more, was that like a Snap competitor? I'm trying to remember.
Mark Cuban: It was 10 years ago, 12 years ago. And it was more because of what happened with the SEC, where I got charged by the SEC for insider trading, and they basically just took anything and everything I said out of context. So I gave them everything I had, and I got cleared in like 15 minutes. But the point was I wanted something that was truly private.
And so, and it still exists today. But I just use it for mostly internal communications with our employees.
Erik Torenberg: Yeah, that makes sense.
Let's go back to the messaging on Democrats, Republicans. If you were in charge of the DNC, the Democratic Party and could control both the platform and the messaging, what would you advise?
Mark Cuban: Well, first you gotta have people that know how to sell.
And second, you have to know what people wanna buy. And people wanna buy, quote unquote, just a better life.
You know, what the Democrats do is they project, they extrapolate. “Trump did this, so it's the end of the world. “
The Republicans are just like, “What's the price of tea in China?” right? “Because I drink tea from China.” And they do deal directly with what's happening with you today. And 99% of people in this country, that's what they care about first. And so I would go to the Democrats and say, “Look at the price of beef.” And I think that's what the Democrats miss.
They're so intent on the “T” word, right? Everything is just a trigger word because they want people yelling and screaming at rallies, and that's great. Just like Trump did, if you have 10,000, 15,000 people with Bernie and AOC and you wanna get them all riled up, it's a pep rally, right. Say what you gotta say for the pep rally.
But if you want to get people to pay attention, I'll give you an example. I was in Indiana. I have a company, a Shark Tank company, Guardian Bikes, and we moved 80% of their manufacturing to Seymour, Indiana. So they invited me in, and we celebrated. And they've grown from, you know $200,000 at Shark Tank, they'll do $120 million now. And so we got into a little bit, and then we had a question and answer and somebody stood up, “I saw on the news,” and they started getting to the question, and I just blurted out, “I don't watch the news.” And the place went nuts. It just erupted, right? Like, of all the things we talked about for an hour and a half, that by far got a 10x response.
That said volumes to me in terms of where people's heads are at. They don't wanna deal with all that shit anymore. They don't want to hear about the end of democracy. They don't want to hear that Trump is an ultimate cancer.
Put aside whether or not you believe it's true. That's not the goal. The Democrats always lose track of the goal. They lose sight of what the end game is. If you want to replace Trump, if you want to win the midterms, it's not about ripping on Trump. That's been said for the last 10 years. But how are you changing people's lives?
And then I got into it with somebody else on the Democrat side via email, and it was about, you know, “Oligarchs and billionaires. Go get 'em.” I'm like, “Fine, I'll pay more taxes. I don't care.” Right. But, do you think, other than the 942 billionaires in this country, right, other than getting people riled up, how are you changing anybody's life? Right? People wanna know that you're impacting their life.
They want to know that things are gonna be better. We hear about housing, we hear about, you know, should they go to college or not, the threat of AI in their mind. All these different things that they truly worry about and talk about at the dinner table. How often do the Democrats talk about it? And then it's like, “Well, let's go get the billionaires.” And I'm like, okay, “What's the goal? Do you want to reduce income inequality?” Then go to the billionaires and give them incentives, which really made them mad, right. Companies’ incentives, not the individual 942 to, you know, your taxes will go instead of 27%, let's say, you'll stay at 21% if everybody gets equity in the company.
And it's on a, “pari passu” is not the right word, but it's on an equal percentage of take home pay, that you get relative to the CEO down to whoever, right? Now you have appreciable assets. Yeah. Yeah. When people have appreciable assets, you know, beyond just a home, A, if it appreciates they can buy a home, and B, the wealth gap doesn't increase. You know, and it gets closed down. You know, if you do a little research, because I was just curious about all this, and I went to Perplexity and I'm like, “What's the earnings of people who are in ESOPs, employee stock ownership plans, versus everybody else?” It's dramatically higher. It's not even close. They make more than union employees. And there's less turnover.
And so there's a lot of good reasons, and you don't have to be in power as a Democrat to do those things, to go to the local employer and say, you know, “We're gonna protest you unless you create an ESOP plan that everybody gets to participate in at the same level as a percentage of earnings as the CEO.”
Erik Torenberg: I think that's the best form of UBI, which is instead of free money, just upside in our S&P 500, upside in the economy.
Mark Cuban: And there's places for UBI too, right? So if you're a caretaker, you're taking care of your parents, I got no problem if we do that. Because you're paying for it one way or the other, you know, through Medicare, through Medicaid, some way. But to your point, right, appreciable assets change your life.
And if you don't have any, there's no way you can keep up. You know? Because the stock market is going up.
Erik Torenberg: Yeah. It seems like the Mamdani, sort of like socially progressive, economically populist, sort of combination, AOC in a different way, you know, Bernie, he was the proto-version. Is that the future of the Democratic party?
Mark Cuban: He learned from Trump. He's the progressive Trump. Just lie.
You know, “Day one groceries are going to be cheaper. I'll open the grocery store because I’ll sound more progressive that way.” Right? “Day one, buses are free.”
And then everything else, he kind of mealy-mouthed back to the middle, you know, and kind of gives a little bit on the edge for the progressive to be happy. But he's smart. Starts saying, “I'm reducing grocery prices. Trump is increasing, I'm reducing them day one,” right. “When we have the House back, we are going to reduce grocery prices.” “How’re you gonna do it?” “We're going to do it. Trust me.” Because that's the bifurcation between Trump fans and Trump haters.
Erik Torenberg: But in terms of substance, do you think the future Democratic party is more like a Bernie Sanders economic populism? Or do you think it's more…
Mark Cuban: I don't know. I think whatever gets results. I give Bernie credit because he was the first to talking about a living wage. And it took him decades. But we've gotten there. And he kept on pushing through. So he deserves a lot of credit. But it more plays to his base than anything else. And you know Elizabeth Warren had the CFPB right? That's okay, right? You can argue both sides, but she got something done. I don't know what the Democrats are doing that's getting shit done. And that's the change in their focus, and that's what's going to guide what type of candidate. Because you gotta be able to sell, gotta understand technology, and gotta be able to implement technology. And I said this to Jason Calacanis 15 years ago, maybe. I'm like, “Look, if we can improve efficiency and reduce the cost of government, you can increase the money you give to people. Take half the savings, here's a bigger check.” That's what the Democrats could be doing. We wanna give you more money.
That's what the Republicans do great. “We're making a promise.” Democrats, “We're gonna use AI and if we need to give it UBI, if we need to tax robots, we're gonna tax robots.” You know the whole Bill Gates thing. You know, a quarter dollar an hour, whatever. “And then we're gonna take the benefit of that and write you a check. That's gonna be your UBI or your tax credit or whatever.” They just don't think like that.
They don't think, “Where is the solution? How do I get there? How do I sell it in a form that's easy to digest so people understand it?” They don't get, AI is like going to change everything. You know, how can we not use this in government to be more effective?
I mean, that's the whole point, isn't it?
Erik Torenberg: Let's go deeper there because I know AI is one of the things you wanted to chat about, something you spend a lot of time thinking about. When you look out at the next few years, what do you think is underappreciated or under-realized about how AI is going to change a specific category or a specific way of life?
Mark Cuban: I think it democratizes a lot of things, particularly education, while I understand the fear, and the first pass is never the way it ends up.
You know, I got two kids in college now and one in high school. Hell yeah, they cheat with it. You know, they do. But then I started talking to this teacher from Pennsylvania, I forget which town in Pennsylvania. She just emailed me, and she was like, “What can I do to integrate AI into my classroom where it's not just them giving me answers to questions.” And I said, “Well, you know, make it more like Jeopardy.” And then she's like, “Use ChatGPT to find the four causes of the American Revolution. And write up what this says. And then we're gonna discuss in class, and you pick, which one do you think is the most impactful?” And then we'll discuss that in class. Just changing the paradigm of how they would do things.
And so, but back to your question, I think democratization of education is key because a kid with a cell phone and internet access can go to, you know, any large language model and ask anything.
And ask it, you know, “Hey, I'm eight years old and I wanna learn to speak Polish because my grandmother's from Poland. Would you put together a class for me and teach me how to speak Polish?”
It will. How else are they gonna do that? You know, sign up for Duolingo? Right? You know, “I'm really curious about baseball. Who are the best baseball players and why? And teach me about the statistics behind it.”
00:18:45 - Healthcare & AI
Erik Torenberg: Yeah. And always-on tutor. Yeah, absolutely. How about in healthcare? It's an area you've spent a ton of time in, with Cost Plus Drugs. Right now, you know, healthcare is like 20% or something of the economy. In the future, is that number going higher? Is that number going lower? You know, talk about what's gonna happen there.
Mark Cuban: It'll go higher, but because we're gonna get some amazing treatments.
Erik Torenberg: Oh, interesting. So the product will get better, the service will get better.
Mark Cuban: Right. Because now you get, you know, single treatment cures that might cost $3 million. That jacks up the total cost.
But in terms of how we do healthcare, everything I do, I put into a ChatGPT project first, you know, and share it with the doctor. And then I ask my doctor, “Do you use this stuff or OpenEvidence?” Like, “Hell yeah, we do it.” So I think healthcare will get better qualitatively. I think we'll benchmark ourselves a lot more and that'll make us healthier in a lot of ways. I think where the challenge and the hard part is, other than the obvious, you know, optimization and processes and hospitals and all that, the challenge is how we value IP.
Because if I'm MD Anderson, if I'm Stanford, any research hospital, any scientist in healthcare, you're an idiot if you publish it. You're an idiot if you patent it because it's immediately going to get absorbed into a large language model.
And you've lost control of it. And you've lost ownership of it. And I think what's going to happen is, you know, and I've said this as I've talked to CEOs of research, hospitals, etc, you need to silo your stuff. And you need to take what you've siloed and either do your own model or put it out to bid. And let the foundational models compete because they're in a death war.
Erik Torenberg: And they need specialized data.
Mark Cuban: They need all the data they can get, specialized or general. Because everything that's accessible on the internet, they're getting or got.
And so the people who are creating new things, whether healthcare or anything for that matter, are gonna start siloing it and putting it out to bid. And I think even within the government, right? So we see all these research grants getting pulled.
I told somebody I know, you know, in the administration, I'm like. “No, keep on doing it, but put it out to bid for the models to get access to it.” Back to your question again, it will change because there'll be millions of models as opposed to just singular foundational models.
I've talked to folks at Microsoft, Meta, and other places, I think they disagree with that. You know, that they think all this information is going to be available so that the hospital system or the university system, whatever it is, or the grantors will just say, “Go ahead and take it.” Hell no.
Erik Torenberg: So you think there'll be a flourishing of startups that will have kind of access to specialized data and either put it to bid or…
Mark Cuban: Or just like MD Anderson will have their own large language model. And you'll just have to know where to go. And just like right now, you know, ChatGPT is not gonna give you the same answer as Perplexity, as Claude, etc.
You're gonna go and use multiple of them, then you'll say, “Here's the input, the output I got here, here, here.” And you'll put it in somewhere else to assemble it. But I think there'll be millions of models. And there'll be front ends for those models that can't go out and do a million of them but that help curate what's best for what you're trying to accomplish.
Erik Torenberg: If you could wave a wand and change anything about how we do healthcare in this country or where we can learn from other countries, what would you change?
Mark Cuban: You'd get rid of the insurance companies and the PBMs because they do all they can to not take risk. And they do all they can to introduce opacity to the system. Particularly on the drug side, if you look at all the other countries who’re trying to do MFNs to mesh their pricing, they don't have PBMs. You know, when you look at the internals, the biggest PBMs cause all the problems.
Like literally, we get emails all the time, people who are on Medicare Part D for drugs come to Cost Plus Drugs because we're cheaper than their copays. That makes no sense. But it's the federal government that approves those plans. And those plans in Medicare Part D are run by individual insurance companies.
Then if you look on a bigger platform just for healthcare in general, you know, think about how healthcare works here, at a16z. Do you have an insurance company? Do you guys self-insure? Do you know?
Erik Torenberg: I just joined so I'm…
Mark Cuban: Oh yeah. Okay. So, you know, let's just pretend you self-insure, you’re one of the bigger companies. So an insurance company comes to you knowing you self-insure. And they put together a list of plans.
And then those plans, no one ever asked, “Why were those plans defined the way they were?” They just assume, “We just get our choice of plans and we pick them.” Well, there's an inverse relationship between premium and deductible.
They never do credit checks on the deductibles, do they? And younger people, they're taking the higher deductibles because they presume they're gonna be healthier. But the people who are making the determination that they're using the higher deductible plan, half of them don't have enough money for the deductible, right? So we've got an insurance system driven by these insurance companies, even if the risk is absorbed by companies or partially by the taxpayers, right, that are designing plans that they know the people who are buying the plans can't afford to utilize.
And what happens then? That turns the hospital into a subprime lender. Because now they go in either through the emergency room or they show up not knowing what their deductible is, and then the hospital will loan them money because they want them to be able to pay the deductible. So then, they can then charge the insurance company or the employer if they're self-insured. But wait, there's more, right? So then let's just say someone went in and gets a hip replacement, pays their $5,000 deductible, and they owe them $10,000, right? The insurance company, even though they have a contract that says it's $15,000 between the provider and the payer, the insurance company, they don't just write the check for $10,000, right?
They say, “We'll give you 7,000. You don't like it, come and get us.” And so when you talk to a hospital CFO, they're like, “We lose 3-5%. We can lose as much as 50% on the subprime lending.” You know, and so they have to invent all these costs to compensate for what's happening on the other side, on the payment process.
Then of course you have the pre-authorizations, and most of the pre-authorizations get approved after everything is said and done. But they get the time value of the money of the premium and not having to pay it. And they've eaten up all these doctors' time, and the doctors are the ones getting underpaid.
So you're going in for a heart transplant, and you know, the doctor might make $10,000 unless it's a big name surgeon. I want my doctor making a shit ton of money, to make sure that you know… So you have this connectivity between all the pieces that really hasn't been thought out.
And those insurance companies either own the PBMs or are owned by the PBMs. And what they do, because they're together and they also are vertically integrated to own clinics and other providers. So they have all these intercompany transfers that allow them to gain the system.
So with the ACA, you, depending on the circumstances, the insurer has to pay out 80 to 85%. called the medical loss ratio. And so you would think that's just straightforward. But if you're vertically integrated, you can put some over here, put all the profits into your PBM and show that you've spent all this money because you wrote that check to the PBM. And so that's what happens. One of the biggest insurance companies had $161 billion off intercompany transfers. Intercompany transfers! That's 0.3% of our GDP.
Erik Torenberg: Wow. Just moving money around to make more money.
Mark Cuban: Just moving money around to make more money.
Erik Torenberg: So if you'd get rid of them, who should take the risk? Would you replace anything?
Mark Cuban: So it's a great question, right? So healthcare is easy, right? Presuming, you know, if you get the right doctor and everything, you go to the doctor and they tell you what's right or wrong, right?
Go home. Wrong? Okay, what do I need? Then once you know what you need, there's only two questions, whether it's medication, surgery, whatever it is: how much does it cost and how do you pay for it? Costplusdrugs.com is still the only pharmacy company that publishes an entire price list. The only one, and we've been in business three and a half years.
That in and of itself is crazy. But then once you get into the system, right, and you don't know what anything costs, then they can charge you whatever. And then in terms of how do you pay for it, that's the who takes the risk, right? And so deductibles are going up, no matter whether it's Medicare Part D, even Medicare Part A and B have higher deductibles.
Medicare Advantage, they shrink the network and create networks. So out of pocket is going up. So patients are the first line of defense that the insurance companies are trying to push the risk on.
But better in my mind is to combine kind of a market where you get rid of the insurance companies, there's no premiums, get rid of the big PBMs, there's no, you know, manipulation, if you will, of the funds, with intercompany transfers. You create tools that allow patients or their employers working with them to go out there and find the best solution for them and to shop. And hopefully you've saved a lot of money from not paying premiums and you can pay for what you need, but what you can’t pay, the government will loan you that money if it stays within the price parameters that have been set. So it's negotiating without negotiating. And they've done that to a certain extent, reference-based pricing with Medicare, you know, and Medicaid, for Medicaid patients. And so now if you or I can pay for it, we just pay for it, but we've saved all that money and not paying premiums.
And slowly but surely we're getting more and more reinsurance options for individuals. So for catastrophic insurance. So, you know, in case, God forbid the worst thing happens, you have an option. So that's one place of risk. But if you're not paying premiums to an insurance company, you can pay for your reinsurance.
And then if your hip replacement is 15,000 and you have 3000, you can use financing, but it's guaranteed by the government. Kind of like we do with college. You know, you can use the financing the school has, but it's guaranteed by the government, kind of like we do with houses. You can use the mortgage plan, but it's guaranteed by the government.
The most important thing that we have available to us, our healthcare, the government is like, “Whatever.” So if you take the risk and allocate it within a price control—“price control” is the wrong word. But if you're a patient, you're shopping for care, and it stays within the benchmarks that are set, then go for it. If you wanna spend more, you think the doctor doesn't participate, and you want to get better, go for it. But then all of a sudden you've got all this money that's not being paid in premiums that's available to people to use to save, whatever. That's how I would look at it.
Erik Torenberg:
So you've built Cost Plus Drugs partially because you care about it, obviously. You have this distribution advantage, you have the capital advantage to get it started. Let's imagine if you were a young entrepreneur, you know, a mid-20-something Mark Cuban in 2025 and trying to, you know, be immensely successful like you've been, how would you think about that? Or what would you pursue?
Mark Cuban: For Cost Plus Drugs or in general?
Erik Torenberg: No, just you as an entrepreneur.
Mark Cuban: Oh, like if I was just getting outta college right now? Oh, I'd be all AI every day because I think the disconnect, I think employment for computer science graduates, and I said this 10 years ago, I got crushed, 2017 actually.
I said, you know, “AI is gonna put programmers outta business,” beginning stage programmers. And people said, “Oh, you're an idiot.” But now big companies are gonna find ways to use AI. So they're gonna reduce, you saw Salesforce or whoever laid off people. Small companies have no clue. You know, and there are only 22,000 companies, I remember this from the Kamala campaign, 22,000 companies with 500 or more employees.
30 million right, now, a lot of them are single entrepreneurs, but, you know, 5 million have 500 or less. That's where you want to go try to get a job. Because if you're AI-native because you've been using it through your four years of college, or two years from now having had four years experience, they need you.
You know, maybe they have one person who's picked it up, two people.
But if you have a business background, which you can learn in school and you've become an AI native, you can walk into a small company and say, “I can help you. I can create agents for you that'll go out and look for things.” One of my Shark Tank companies is Rebel Cheese, and they added a direct-to-consumer business. And they created an agent that compares the weight that comes off the scale or the box type and what they were invoiced by UPS or FedEx.
And compared to the price list, always got overcharged. Always. This little company is saving, you know, thousands of dollars a week just by using an agent, you know, and it's not anything difficult or you know, advanced. So being able to walk into a company and say, “I can do this, I can do this, I can do this.” It's no different than what systems integrators have done for decades. You know, that's what I did in my first company, MicroSolutions. “You don't understand PCs, you're a small company. I do. I know networks. I can program, I'm gonna write you an application that emulates what you're doing, but faster.” Now it's no longer about emulation. Those days are gone. It's about how do we change the process by removing pieces to make you more efficient, more productive, more profitable.
Erik Torenberg: Yeah. So you wrote the PC wave then you wrote the internet wave with broadband, you know, had a big outcome there.
If you were starting a company today, would you try to build a foundation model company, or vertical application or?
Mark Cuban: No, neither.
Erik Torenberg: Yeah, what would you do?
Mark Cuban: Because they're all gonna be customized. I literally would hone my business skills as much as possible. Domain novel knowledge combined with understanding of AI is the win.
Erik Torenberg: Right. So you would go to some sector that hasn't yet been digitized by AI and…
Mark Cuban: Or just small companies, you know, regardless of sector.
Erik Torenberg: Yeah. But if you wanted to start something that could be big one day.
Mark Cuban: Right because if I work with one shoe company, and I analyze what they do, then I say, “Okay, I'm gonna charge you X per transaction. And I'm gonna do the agent for you, and I'm gonna monitor the agents.” It's SaaS at one level. But it's customized SaaS. And as AI advances the model advances, and the agent advances. And so, you know, factories, you know, talking now, like at Cost Plus Drugs, we have a robotics factory, and we use AI agents to monitor everything. And our cost to run the factory is a fraction of pretty much everybody other than India and China. And we'll catch up to them. And so understanding how business works, having that domain knowledge, and then being able to apply it, and then being able to scale it by taking it to all those companies in similar circumstances, or creating agents that modify the agents based off of the information you're getting from all your customer companies. That's the new SaaS, potentially.
00:33:53 - Mark’s business philosophy
Erik Torenberg: Yeah. Totally. I want to zoom out and talk just general business success and advice. The internet lists your net worth, I believe, at over 8 billion, or something to that effect. Typically when people become super wealthy, it's because of like one big thing.
But it seems like you've sort of compounded wealth in decades. And I think the biggest liquidity events, maybe I'm wrong, are the company you sold and then the Mavericks. And then there've been other efforts. What do you think is the thread, the through line when you look at your career and the ways in which you've made money that others can learn from?
Mark Cuban: I look at business as a sport, right? And I just love to compete. You know, and that keeps me going. Just, you know, there's always something new and always something changing. And it's almost like the forums, right? I just like to be intellectually challenged.
When I first started, I was always the youngest guy walking in the room. Now I'm the oldest guy walking in the room. And I like kicking everybody's ass where I can, right? You got your CS degree from Harvard? Fuck you, I don't care, right? Sounds like Glengarry Glen Ross. But I like that challenge. And I understand patterns and I understand being able to create new things and I think that’s served me really well. It's like Cost Plus Drugs. You know, we launched in January of 2022, we're serving millions of customers. We're changing people's lives. And everybody thought I was an idiot, you know? And we're working outside the system. Amazon, everybody else, “Okay. We're gonna work with the big PBMs because that's where the money is.” And I'm like, “No, they're the problem. You don't work with the problem.” You know, it's the innovator's dilemma. You know, we're gonna take what they can't do and you know, when you run with the elephants, there's the quick and the dead. We gotta be quick and aggressive. And so I think that's a big part of my skillset. You know, whether it's starting Audionet, which was the first streaming company, HDNet, the first all high-def network, you know, Cost Plus Drugs, what I do with the Mavs in terms of bringing in technology, it was always about, you know, Steve Jobs said it best. Everything's a remix.
You know, it's about taking what I know and just learning whatever's coming up and what new technologies and remixing it to apply to something different.
Erik Torenberg: When you bought the Mavs, did you have a sense that 20 years later it could be, you know, worth the order of magnitude more?
Mark Cuban: No.
Erik Torenberg: It wasn’t a business decision?
00:36:03 - NBA
Mark Cuban: No, no, no. In fact, like I paid 285 million for the Mavs in 2000. And 2010, the NBA couldn't even sell the New Orleans franchise. There were no buyers. And the valuation had gone down. Not up.
Erik Torenberg: So you thought it was a bad purchase from a financial perspective?
Mark Cuban: From a financial perspective, it was awful, right? Plus I was losing money every year, so it had nothing to do with money. But I loved it, right? That was the key part.
Erik Torenberg: And I think it elevated your profile in a way that probably helped your other business.
Mark Cuban: Oh, for sure. And then that got me to Shark Tank, and the rest is history. But you know, I just, the way I looked at it back then is I'm having fun. I'm blessed, right? I'm gonna make the use of my time, so I enjoy every minute of it. But what changed the economics of the NBA was, you know, linear media being competitive. You know, and that goes back, you know, things I look for, I always look for death wars, where you've got competitors, that one's gonna win and one's gonna lose. And they have to go all in.
Just like with AI right now, they're spending tens of billions of dollars a year. They're making obscene amount of cash flow and they're spending it all. They're paying a billion dollars to people to come over. What does that tell you? That anything you can sell to them that really differentiates them, they're going to buy. And so, but you know, with the Mavs, I didn't see it as an investment, but it wasn't until the death wars hit linear television and then all the TV deals skyrocketed.
Erik Torenberg: So that's what made the difference between 2025 and 2020 and 2010 in terms of why the NBA teams have gotten some much value, more valuable is TV.
Mark Cuban: 100%. Yeah. A little bit of real estate. So you can build around. You know, but, it's 100 percent streaming/TV. The question becomes, you know, how long does this sustain? You know, so like Major League baseball didn't get a deal done with ESPN and saw their rights start to decline. But it was right around the time, I think it was Peacock who bought just one NFL playoff game and got like a hundred thousand new subscribers or a hundred million new subscribers, something ridiculous, right? That all of a sudden set a benchmark. So this season, right, starting with the NBA season, how well that does in terms of driving subscriptions and reducing churn, that's gonna make or break everything that comes forward for all sports.
Erik Torenberg: Yeah. I also wonder if, you know, one thesis I have is that value capture will reflect value creation when the market gets more efficient. And NBA players, it seems like, don't have equity in the league. And I wonder if, in the future, they're gonna band together and just say…
Mark Cuban: I don't think you can, right, because Father Time's undefeated. You know, so at what point do you stop? And the price of the franchises now are so high. I mean, how much can you give them? I'm not gonna say it's never going to happen. But, you know, I think it could be a question. But the other point is that there's only like two players that fill an arena: Steph and LeBron. Like when Luka played for the Mavs—and I had nothing to do with the trade—when Luka played for the Mavs, we didn’t play to sold-out buildings. He would draw fans, don't get me wrong. But not every building was sold out. When Giannis would come to Dallas didn't necessarily mean we were gonna sell out. But the whole concept of what drives attendance has changed dramatically and what drives viewership on television in particular. Because now, fans are fans of the players more than they are the teams. Like when we grew up, it was like you were, I grew up in Pittsburgh. So you're a Steelers fan. You're a Pirates fan.
Erik Torenberg: That's why I wonder if they're gonna team up and say, “Hey, you know,” Wembanyama, the new generation, you know, “We could start a new league and get…” Cooper Flagg.
Mark Cuban: Cooper Flagg.
Erik Torenberg: Yeah, exactly.
Mark Cuban: It's expensive, to start a new league.
Erik Torenberg: There's a lot of infrastructure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. NBA is its own…
Mark Cuban: And even with Caitlin Clark, I don't know all the WNBA numbers now, but most of them aren't making money. Even in the NBA, most teams aren't making money before revenue share.
Erik Torenberg: Right. I know that you were dismayed at the Luka trade. We were sort of in the group chat when it happened. But I just wanna reflect. I was so devastated by that it seemed so unfair for the Mavs not to get picks back, or Austin Reaves or whatever, I don’t want to relay it. I was complaining to my girlfriend at the time, you know, like many people were. And I even remember reading this conspiracy theory that it was on purpose to tank the value of the franchise to then move to, you know, Las Vegas. And I was like, “Oh, this is the only way it can make sense.” How did we not get more for Luka in this trade?
Mark Cuban: I wish I knew. I wish I knew.
Erik Torenberg: But, then the Cooper Flagg thing, I mean…
Mark Cuban: The basketball gods were looking kindly upon us.
Erik Torenberg: Yeah. The world works in mysterious ways.
So I have a dream to be a part owner someday as well. And I've wondered if the strategy is either to compete for a championship or do the Oklahoma City Thunder where you trade for picks. What do you think?
Mark Cuban: So, I think the Thunder methodology is better now, with the new CBA. Every new CBA creates transitional issues, where your decisions were made in a legacy environment, and they just changed all the rules. And now it’s even more difficult with the second apron because the problems of being over the second apron are far more draconian than anything we've ever seen. And so I think the patience approach that San Antonio and OKC have taken is going to lead the way. Whereas with me, I was never patient. And that worked against me a lot too. You know, I wanted to win now, win now. We have Dirk. Let's get there. Right.
Erik Torenberg: What’s something you would've done differently?
Mark Cuban: Kept Steve Nash.
Erik Torenberg: Drafted Giannis.
Mark Cuban: Drafted Giannis, yeah. I think I just would've been more patient and waited guys out to see how they turn out rather than, “Okay, I'm gonna throw in a draft.” Because at the time you could say, if you didn't have a pick from below 15, the odds of them being a player was minimal. And so if I was getting somebody I could already evaluate, that worked in my favor. But now draft picks have become so much more valuable. And so that's changed the valuation approach.
Erik Torenberg: I heard one argument that I was somewhat sympathetic too, which is, the argument for how you can understand the Luka trade is, you know, obviously legendary, iconic player, but so expensive. And with the way that the contracts were structured is, if you gave, you know, kept giving him the supermax, how much room do you have to build a team? It's kinda like the Trae Young problem, like some of these players are so expensive, but are you really gonna win a championship if you don't have…
Mark Cuban: It's like, can you have two max players? And that's the challenge. You know, in the past, you could reward somebody with a max contract knowing you had some wiggle room. And more importantly, you can always find a way to get off that contract.
Mark Cuban: Not anymore. If you have your one generational player, you pay 'em whatever it takes. Because of the max contracts, they by definition are undervalued.
So, the generational player, you always pay whatever it takes. It's the next person. If they're not a generational player, how do you deal with that? That's the hard part. And when you see, like you saw with certain players, that teams couldn't get off of them. Either because of age or, you know, they were max players by the rules of the game 8 years ago, 4 years ago. But they're not any longer. That's where the challenges happen.
Erik Torenberg: Right. If you were making decisions for the Mavs now, given where everything is what would you be thinking about? What are the big questions?
Mark Cuban: Develop Cooper, first and foremost. You know, we’ve got Anthony Davis, we've got Kyrie who will be coming back, Klay, just having those Hall of Famers there.You couldn't ask for anything better in terms of development support. And so I think we have to focus on staying healthy, getting Kyrie back.
Erik Torenberg: It's an interesting thing with two timelines, you know? The Warriors tried to do it, but they couldn't exactly pull it off, although they've done great, but these sort of, you know, older players and then the Coopers.
Mark Cuban: Like where the Warriors are now. You know, Father Time is undefeated, and you're trying to stay committed to the guy who's got you there, you know. And the players aren't dumb. So they know they only have, you know, a finite number of years left. And so they're trying to maximize their earnings during that period. It's just hard. And so, you know, the whole second apron restrictions really just kicked in last year. And so now teams are having to deal with it. And so you’re seeing players get stretched, you know, not just waived but stretched. And I think the strategy is changing right in front of our eyes. I think there'll be fewer max players coming up
Erik Torenberg: Interesting. And it used to be this thing where in order to win a championship, you had to have one of the best players in the league. You know, the Pistons were an exception to that. I'm a Knicks fan. I wonder if the Knicks have a, you know, possibility to question that. But if you're playing for a championship, do you think that you have to have, you know, one of the five best players in the league or?
Mark Cuban: Sure helps. It depends on the skillset. So what's changed a lot in just 6 years, 7 years, certainly, you know, the last 10 years, is there used to always be one guy on the court who couldn't shoot. That couldn't get a bucket. They were there for defensive purposes or they protected the rim.
Now they all can score offensively at some level. And so, you know, whether it's the Knicks or anybody else, if you have enough guys who can put pressure on the defense. And that's why, you know, the Knicks made the deals that they did. But if there's one guy that you're playing against that's always the best player on the floor, and you don't have that player. It's going to be tough.
Erik Torenberg: Totally. Well, I think what the Knicks are asking, I guess Boston's asking too, is like, “Can offense championship?” Like if you just stack the…
Mark Cuban: Well, yeah. I mean the Knicks have got some defenders.
Erik Torenberg: But Brunson and KAT are weak defenders.
Mark Cuban: It's gonna be tough. It makes it tough because, once you get to, like even against Indiana, you know, Indiana didn't have—Hali, we tried to get Hali so hard, right. Hali is not a top 5 NBA player, right? He's good. Maybe top 15. Yeah. But he was better right in that moment because you can do matchups over and over and over again across the up to seven games. You can play certain players off the court. So you saw KAT, not even being out there at certain times.
Erik Torenberg: Totally. Yeah no, if the Pacers won the championship, that would've really questioned, you know…
Mark Cuban: And they took them to 7 games. I know. And their best player gets hurt, you know, and we the Mavs, injured and all without Luka beat OKC 3 out of 4 games.
Erik Torenberg: By the way, Dallas is one of the deepest teams right now too.
Mark Cuban: Oh, we're really deep if we can stay healthy.
Erik Torenberg: But yeah, there's so many teams like the Raptors, the Bulls, the Kings, kind of like in perpetual, what I would call mediocrity. And they're expensive, and they're old, and I'm like, you just gotta rebuild. Just admit that you’re rebuilding. And there's a number of teams like that.
Mark Cuban: Yeah. And part of the problem is that there's a salary cap floor. You have to spend up to a certain amount. That's like, because they're trying to keep
Erik Torenberg: Because they’re trying to keep it competitive, I guess.
Mark Cuban: Well, it's just, that's the deal we do with the players. They want more money spent. And so 90% of the salary cap is a lot of money. Right, so it's like $153 million, right? 170 give or take times 9. And so, spending up to $153 million, that's 10 million average. So that means you're overpaying a lot of people. I might have the cap number wrong, but in any event, you're paying a lot of people a lot of money. But if you keep them short contracts Right. You'll get guys wanting to come just to get overpaid. You know, and you almost have to tank and you just…
Erik Torenberg: I have a theory that there's these guys, like, you know, maybe I'm being unfair, but Kuzma, RJ Barrett, Brandon Ingram, who are sort of like built for losing, for getting a lot of money and a lot of points on a losing team. And we're seeing more of that.
Mark Cuban: They're freer on a losing team. And they do it to get paid more money. But teams are smarter than that. But at the same time, there are teams that need scoring. And, you know, if you fall into that category, you're gonna go after those guys if you have the space for it.
But I think what's happening actually now, we're seeing all the salaries kind of revolving around the mid-level exception, which is $14 million, give or take. And so if your guys now realize with the second apron things have changed, so if you get paid more than mid-level, you're a good player. If you get paid at the mid-level, you're a decent player. If you get paid below, you're roster piece, unless you're young and you're on your way up.
Erik Torenberg: For advice, for me as a future owner, what are the biggest ways an owner can influence winning? Is it sort of personnel selection on coaching GM?
Mark Cuban: Always looking for an edge. Yeah, always looking for the edge. You know, personnel selection is hard. It's more art than science. You know, like I told Jalen Brunson when I did his podcast, he was just some chubby guy, right?
Erik Torenberg: I’m sorry we took him from you. Or, you gave him away.
Mark Cuban: I was not happy about that. But, you know, we picked him 33rd. 32, you know, chances to draft him, and they didn't. And we liked just his pedigree of winning at Villanova. But it's his effort. 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 doing a layup. And he never got to foul because he was always falling away. Now his mid-range jumper is money. But he worked on that. And that's what you don't know when you draft somebody. What mental capacity do they have? You know their athletic ability. But will they work hard to improve their skills? Will they work hard to improve their basketball IQ? If the answer is “yes,” and they have the athletic side of it, you've got a chance, but you don't really know that. Because no one comes in and works out and says, “Okay, I'm an idiot. I suck,” right, and shows you they suck. You know, they've all been trained on how to work out. And they're in college maybe one year.
So, you know, and then if you're going to a college, and they're getting paid now, right, it might be that they're just doing what the coach needs them to do there which may not match what they need to do in the NBA. The hardest part for players that aren't superstars coming right in is you've gotta learn how to fit in. Even with Luka, we didn't know he was gonna be a superstar. We thought he was gonna be really, really good. And we thought he had superstar mentality. But I was terrified because I made a trade. I gave up a pick, you know, to Atlanta. And I remember we played in China the first game, preseason, and I had Shawn Marion that was an ambassador of the NBA. I'm like, “Trix, what do you think? Trix, what do you think? What do you think?” Like “I'm terrified. I'm terrified.” You know, but we know how that turned out.
Erik Torenberg: And by the way, it’s so funny, just the basketball gods, the Lakers made all the wrong moves for so many years, and were in such a tough spot. We talked about the Warriors, they were in a tougher spot, going forward, trading all their picks, being so old, and then Luka falls into their lap just to keep it interesting.
Mark Cuban: I think we’ve done enough of this.
Erik Torenberg: But the Mavs got Coop and, don't trade him, and you'll be good. Zooming out, closing here, how have you thought about how you want to spend time? Like you, for example, could have your own a16z, big venture firm doing all these investments, all this staff.
You seem to run kind of a lean operation, more flexible. How have you thought about the efforts that you wanna get involved with, not wanna get involved with? How thin to spread yourself, so to speak?
Mark Cuban: Well, I mean, I got outta Shark Tank. I got out of the Mavs so I can spend more time with my kids. You know that's number one. Because they're 16, 19, and about to turn 22. They're heading out on their own. So I just wanna spend that time that I can with them. But I think the difference is for me versus everybody. My goal is not to make as much money as I can. Like, I do investing. But honestly, it's just, people email me. I mean, like, I saw a list of who has the most unicorns, I had like 11. And all of them were just from email, somebody emailing me saying, “Check this out, check this out, check this out.” Like Synthesia, you know, I was their first investor. You know, gave them a million dollars and now, so I can get 20, 25% of a company sometimes more and then help them grow. That’s what I like. Taking, you know, longshot tries as opposed to, “Okay, let's raise a fund. Let's get a team together. We'll put in 10 to 25 million.” And then, you know, if they're doing well, we'll put in more and do follow ups. And, you know, we'll have these big scores. I like it better when, you know, Dude Wipes comes on Shark Tank. I gave them 200 grand for 15%. Now they're worth a billion dollars easy. You know, they're a primary brand and they never had to raise another cent.
You know, helping a company never have to raise more money. And making them profitable so that they're insanely profitable. I had this company, Alyssa’s Cookies. The guy, Doug, was living in his car with his family, and he sent me these cookies. They were this big, they were the best cookies I've ever—'cause I always do like the nutrition thing first. What's on the back? No added sugar, lots of fiber, etc. Low net carbs. But when I took it out of the plastic, it all fell apart. So I said, “I'm gonna give you money.” And I got like a third of the company. But I'm gonna guide you through what it takes. So we changed it and I told them to make them into bites instead of cookies and put them in a plastic container. And go to stores and we'll sell them. I'll do a tasting, you know, where I'll go to a grocery store one time and hand out…. Now, no more money in. We'll do 25 million this year. But that's not the important number because we don't spend money on advertising or anything. Makes 12 to 14 million a year. That's absurd. And we just added Whole Foods. We just added Costco. We're adding more and more, you know, outlets. If he can get to a hundred million and make 50 million a year. That stuff's fun.
00:53:43 - Education
Erik Torenberg: So if you could clone yourself a few times, or when you look into the future, are there other businesses like Cost Plus Drugs that you wanna start or incubate or…
Mark Cuban: Yeah, education. If I can do what I want to do with healthcare, which, saying a lot, right? But it would be education just because…
Erik Torenberg: Like AI-first K-12, or what kind of?
Mark Cuban: Yeah, I mean more secondary education, right simply because the cost structure is all fucked up. And it's all built on accreditation. And that's kind of a mafia. And when I see a mafia like that, I just ignore the accreditation and just go do it anyways. And if you get the results or guarantee your results, you’ll get plenty of…
Erik Torenberg: We talked about your healthcare platform, we talked about your messaging. Are there any other policies that if you could, you know, be in charge of the Democratic party or sort of running America that you would be most excited about in terms of its transformative potential?
Mark Cuban: You know what I would say, I would say a focus on entrepreneurship. You know, that, right now, whoever the candidate is, particularly if it's for President, takes credit for everything. And that's ridiculous. They do less to impact the startups and to start the building of businesses than anybody, you know. And so I think what's missing, definitely missing with Biden, maybe less so with Obama, then definitely missing with Trump. Like when you hear Trump talk about tariffs, he never talks about small businesses. It's always, “Hey, I've got this company investing $500 billion, 600 billion.” When you know you've got all these Shark Tank companies that are getting crushed. You know, you increase, you know, from a 2.5% average tariff to a 15% tariff. That's their profit margin, and it's gone. So I would put a focus on recognizing and encouraging and rewarding people starting businesses and using AI, you know, kind of as government as a service, where you simplify all the friction that's involved in starting a business, you know, from the paperwork to get all the requirements, the incorporation, etc, to a bank account, to all of it. Just simplify all of it so entrepreneurs can be entrepreneurs because I think that is what…Joe Biden told this to me of all people. During the Obama administration, they invited us, from Shark Tank to go do a thing for entrepreneurship at the White House. And he sat, and he gave a little speech and what he said was, you know, “I've traveled around the world, and there's no Chinese dream, there's no French dream, there's no UK dream, there's only the American dream. And people come here to live it and experience it. That's what makes us unique.”
00:56:22 - Advice to Silicon Valley
Erik Torenberg: Yeah. And on that note, in closing, what advice do you have for us in Silicon Valley or just tech more broadly who are building with AI on how to make it more popular so that we don't have this big backlash?
Mark Cuban: You have to get with either party and communicate to people the upside.
Erik Torenberg: Because they see the downside. They see, “They, maybe my job is being taken away.”
Mark Cuban: Yeah. And going back to what I said earlier, there will be disintermediation, but I don't think the net number of jobs is going to decrease. I think everything gets reinvented because AI right now is not smart. You know, it's statistical, in a lot of respects. Robotics on the other hand is getting smart. Robotics, if you clean my bedroom, it has to know, you know, to pick up the sheets and all this stuff. But I think the combination of the two will create unique opportunities for jobs.
I think domain expertise is always going to be necessary to train models. But I think, bigger picture, when like we look at a house, everything's designed for the human form. And right now robotics is trying to emulate the human form because that's what we've always done with software. We just emulated what we already did and tried to optimize it. If you can create devices, robots that can look like anything, and you want them to be domestic in some way, you don't build houses the way we do now.
And I think there's going to be a lot of jobs that go in different directions. And I think Silicon Valley has gotta do a much better job demonstrating those jobs, hiring people for those jobs, supporting people that are concerned about their jobs. Even teachers, you know, now when we look at AI tools, you can read papers faster. That's not gonna change anything. You're just doing it the same way. You know, but if a teacher can use AI to customize responses to kids to help them learn. Like you said, AI tutors, but in a classroom, you're gonna keep your job longer. We need more teachers, not fewer teachers. But Silicon Valley doesn't communicate that at all because when you're raising money, it's about what you're gonna change, not what you're gonna sustain. But there's so many unique opportunities.
I mean, I’m old enough, like I would walk in selling PCs and I saw you're outta work, you're outta work, you're outta work. But as it's all turned out, the economy just keeps on growing. And I think the same thing is going to happen here. And I think the other side of it is going to, you know, inner cities. Like I have this thing called the Mark Cuban AI Bootcamp. And all we do is go into, you know, underprivileged schools and encourage kids to sign up for the bootcamp. And it used to be just machine learning, where we taught you that. Now it's, you know, learning how to use models and everything and agents for 15, 16, 17-year-old kids. And it's great, right, because they're going back, and they're coming up with new ideas.
The valley needs to go out there and engage more in middle America so people see totally where the upside is. You know, you're getting this rejuvenation of San Francisco, and all the spending is pointing there. How is anybody else gonna understand that or see that? They don't at all. When in reality, if it's open to them, and that's why I did the bootcamp, more things are going to happen.
People don't realize, like, when the internet first hit, we used to think kids who can do HTML coding were geniuses. And when they moved up to JavaScript, they were even smarter, right? Because they were building all these websites that were getting ready to go public. And AI is kinda the same thing. It's not hard to build agents. And it's getting easier. But knowing an application that you can use to start something and improve something, everybody can do that. Every kid, every mom, every dad. But Silicon Valley is making it sound like, you know, this is the Jetsons and we have no chance.
And I think that has to change.
Erik Torenberg: That's a great note of advice and optimism to end. Mark Cuban, thanks so much for coming on the podcast.
Mark Cuban: It was a lot of fun, thank you. Appreciate it
This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.
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