Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs | Lex Fridman Podcast #422
- The person who controls the algorithm controls the world, right? And if you are committed
to one specific platform as your singular source of information or affiliated platforms, then whoever controls the
algorithm or the programming there controls you. (air whooshes) (logo sizzles) - The following is a
conversation with Mark Cuban, a multi-billionaire businessman, an investor and star of
the series "Shark Tank," longtime principal owner
of the Dallas Mavericks, and is someone who is unafraid to get into frequent battles on X. Most recently over topics of DEI, wokeism, gender, and identity politics with the likes of Elon
Musk and Jordan Peterson. This is the Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please
check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Mark Cuban. You've started many businesses,
invested in many businesses, heard a lot of pitches
privately and on "Shark Tank." So you're the perfect person to ask, what makes a great entrepreneur? - Somebody who's curious,
they wanna keep on learning, 'cause business is
ever-changing, it's never static. Somebody who's agile. Because as you learn new things and the environment around you changes, you have to be able to
adapt and make the changes, and somebody who can sell, because no business has
ever survived without sales. And as an entrepreneur
who's creating a company, whatever your product or service is, if that's not the most important thing and you're just dying and
excited to tell people about it, then you're not gonna succeed. - But it's also a skill
thing. How do you sell? What do you mean by selling? - Selling is just helping. I've always looked at
it about putting myself in the shoes of another person and asking a simple question,
can I help this person? Can my product help them? From the time I was 12 years old, selling garbage bags door to door and just asking a simple question, "Do you use garbage bags?
Do you need garbage bags? Well, let me save you some time. I'll bring them to your
house and drop them off." To, you know, streaming. Why do we need streaming
when we have TV and radio? Well, you can't get access
to your TV and radio everywhere you go. So we kind of break down
geographic and physical barriers. And, you know, Cost Plus Drugs. You know, what's the product
that we actually sell? We sell trust. In a simplistic approach,
we buy drugs to sell drugs, but we add transparency to it. And bringing transparency to an industry is a differentiation, and it helps people. - Trust in an industry that's
highly lacking in trust. - Exactly. - Okay, so what's the trick
to selling garbage bags? Let's go back there.
At 12 years old, what? I mean, is it just your natural charisma? I guess a good question to ask, are you born with it
or can you develop it? - Oh, you can definitely develop it. Yeah, I mean, because selling
garbage bags door to door was easy, right? It was like (bangs knuckles)
12-year-old Mark going, "Hi, my name is Mark, do
you use garbage bags?" You know what the answer's
going to be, right? "Can I just drop them off for you? You know, once a week,
whenever you need them, you just call, and I'll bring them down." "Sure." So that was easy. - But I'm sure you've been rejected. - Oh yeah, of course.
Not everybody says yes. - What was your percentage? - I don't remember, but
it's pretty close to 100%. - Oh, okay, never mind. So
that's why you don't remember. - Yeah, right. 'Cause who's gonna say
no to a 12-year-old kid who's gonna save him time and money? But you know, typically my career where
I've started companies, it's to do something that
other people aren't doing. Whether it was connecting PCs
and to local area networks and at MicroSolutions. And you know, the salesmanship
was walking into a company and just saying, "Look, talk to me and I can help you
improve your productivity and your profitability,
is that important to you?" And the answer is obviously always yes. And then the question is, can I do the job and can I do it cost effectively? And so you didn't have
to be a born salesperson to be able to ask those questions, but you have to be able to
be willing to put in the time to learn that business. And that's the hardest part. - I'm sure there's a
skill thing to it too, in like how you solve the puzzle of communicating with a
person and convincing them. - Yeah, I mean, there's
skill from the perspective that I read like a maniac. Then like now you can give me an example
of any type of business and it'll take me two
seconds to figure out how they make money and how I
can make them more productive. And I think that's
probably my biggest skill, being able to just drill down to what the actual need is, if any. And then, you know, from
there, being able to say, well, if this is what this company does, and this is what their goal is, how can I introduce something new that they haven't seen before? And is that a business that I can create and make money from? - So figure out how this kind of business makes money in the present. And then figure out, is there a way to make
more money in the future by introducing a totally
new kind of thing. - Correct. - And you can just do that with anything. - [Mark] Pretty much, yeah. - And you think you're born with that? - No, I worked at it because, you know, going back to what I said
earlier about curiosity, you have to be insanely curious because the world is always changing. My dad used to say, we don't live in the world
we were born into, you know? Which is absolutely true. If you're not a voracious
consumer of information, then you're not gonna be able to keep up. And no matter what your
sales skills or ability are, they're gonna be useless. - What'd you learn about
life from your dad? You mentioned your dad. - My dad did upholstery
on cars, you know, got up, went to work every
morning at seven o'clock, came back five or six,
seven o'clock, exhausted. And I learned to be nice. I learned to be caring, I
learned to be accepting. Just, you know, qualities that I think he really tried to pass on to myself and my two younger brothers were just be a good human, you know? And I think, you know, he
didn't have business experience. So as I got into business,
he would just, you know, say, sorry, Mark, I can't help you. You know, I don't understand
what you're doing. He never went, neither one of my parents
had gone to college. You've gotta figure it out for yourself. But he was also very
insistent that, you know, he worked at a company
called Regency Products where they did upholstery on cars. And he would bring me
there to sweep the floors, not because he wanted me
to learn that business, because he wanted me to learn how backbreaking that work was. I mean, he lost an eye
in an accident at work, a staple broke. And the only thing he
wanted for my brothers and I was for us to never
have to work like that, to go to college, to figure it out. - You said to be nice. That said, you also said that you when you were first starting a business, you were a bit more of an asshole than you wish you would've been. - Absolutely, yeah, yeah,
because I was more of a yeller. I was, you know, I didn't have. - No really, Mark Cuban? - You know, what you see
on the sidelines, you know, with me at a Mavs game,
maybe a little bit. But I also didn't have
any patience for somebody I thought wasn't using my
kind of common sense, right? Because I was always on
the go, go, go, go, go. Particularly when I was younger, just trying to be successful, trying to get to the point
where I had independence. And I would tell this to people, you know, either you're speeding up
and getting on the train, or you know, we'll stop and drop you off at the next station, but let's go where you go. - Did you have trouble with
the hire fast fire fast part of running a business? - Yeah, always, 'cause
I hated firing people. 'Cause it meant, one, it was an admission of a mistake in the hiring. And two, the salesperson in me always wanted to come out ahead. And I was always horrible at firing. But I always partnered with people who had no problem with it. So I always delegated that. - Well, that's the tricky thing when you're working with somebody and they're not quite there,
and you have to decide, are they going to step up
and grow into the person that's the right, or they're not. And in that gray area is
probably where you have to fire. - Well, it's hard. Yeah, for sure. Because, you know, there is obviously a failure
somewhere in the process, you know, what did we do wrong? And when I would interview
people for jobs, I mean, 99% of the people I've ever
interviewed I've wanted to hire, because in my mind, it was like, okay, I can figure out how
to make this person work. Right, and then they wouldn't, and then, you know, people
at the company'd be like, Mark, you suck at this. You know? And so I always
delegated the hiring. - Yeah, I mean, I'm the same.
I see the potential in people. I see the beauty in people, and which is a great way to live life. But when you're running a
company, it's a different thing. - It's different. And you gotta know what you're good at and what you're bad at, right? I was good at, you know, I
was a ready, fire, aim guy, and I always partnered with people who were very anal and perfectionist because where I could just
go, go, go, go, go, go. They would keep me inside the baselines. - They would do the due
diligence, I suppose. - Yeah, or just, yeah, the detail work, the dot the i's and the cross the t's. - What does it take to
take that first leap into starting a business? - That's the hardest part. It really depends on your
personal circumstances. Like, I got fired. I mean, I was sleeping on the floor with six guys in a
three bedroom apartment, so I couldn't go any lower. So there was no downside.
- That's the bottom. - Yeah, there was no downside
for me starting a business. And it was just like, you know, I was 25 when we started MicroSolutions, and, you know, I'd just gotten fired and it was like, look,
I'm a lousy employee. I'm gonna just start going
to some of my prospects that I had at my job, and asked them to front
the money that I needed to install some software, and found this company,
Architectural Lighting, who put up $500 for me that
allowed me to buy software and have 50% margins. And, you know, that's
how I started my company. - But like, by way of
advice, would you say? I mean, it's a terrifying thing. - Yeah, I mean, you've
gotta be in a position where you're confident. You know, I get emails and approached by people all the time, you know, what kind of
business should I start? That tells me you're not ready
to start a business, right? Either you're prepared and
you know it, or you don't. You know, in the United States,
with the American dream, everybody kind of always
looks at themselves and say, okay, you know,
I have this idea, right? And then you go through
this process of saying, okay, you know, you talk
to your friends or family, what do you think? And they almost always, oh,
it's a great idea, tight? Then you go on Google
and you say, oh my God, no one else is doing it,
without thinking, you know, 10 companies had gone outta
business trying the same thing, but okay, it's on Google,
and then people stop, right? Because that next step means, okay, I have to change
what I'm doing in my life. And that's not easy for 99% of the people. Some people look at that as an opportunity and get excited about it. Some people get terrified, because it's okay, maybe I'm comfortable, maybe I have responsibilities. And so whatever your circumstances are, if you want to take that next step, you have to be able to
deal with the consequences of changing your circumstances. And that's the first thing. You know, do you save money? So you know so you have,
you know, if you have a job, but you have a mortgage,
do you have a family? You've gotta save money. You
can't just walk, you know? I mean, they've gotta eat and
they've gotta have shelter. But on the other side of the
coin, if you've got nothing, it's the perfect time to start a business. - Yeah, desperation is a good catalyst for starting a business,
but in many cases, the decision as you're talking about, you're gonna have to
make, is to leave a job that's providing some
degree of comfort already. So I suppose when you're
sleeping on the floor and there's six guys,
it's a little bit easier. - It's really easy, right? Particularly when you get fired and you don't have a job, you know, and you're looking at bartending at night to try to pay the bills. And so it wasn't hard for me, but to your point, it really
comes down to preparation. You know, if it's important enough to you, you'll save the money,
you'll give up, you know, whatever it is you need to
give up to put the money aside. If you have obligations,
you'll put in the work to learn as much as you
can about that industry so that when you start your
business, you're prepared. And you can always, you
know, at night, on weekends, whenever you find time,
lunch, start making the calls to find out if people will
write you a check, you know, or transfer you the money to buy whatever it is you're selling. And by doing those things, you can put yourself in
a position to succeed. It's where people just think,
okay, you know, Geronimo, I'm leaping off the edge of a cliff and I'm starting a business, that's tough. - But sometimes that's like
the way you do it, though. - There's always examples of
any situation or scenario. Right, but I mean. - [Lex] Anecdotal evidence for everything. - Yeah, but if you're
going into a new business, you're gonna have competition unless you're really, really,
really, really, really lucky. And that competition is
not gonna just say, okay, let Lex or Mark just kick our ass. And so you've gotta be prepared on how you're gonna deal
with that competition. - What do you think that is about America that has so many people
who have that dream and act on that dream
of starting a business? - You know, I think
we've just got a culture of consumption and more, you know, and to get more, you've got to, you know, creating a business gives you
the greatest potential upside and the greatest leverage on your time, but it also creates the most risk. - So that capitalist machine,
there's a lot of elements, by contrast, the respect for the law. Like an entrepreneur can trust
that if they pull it off, the law will protect them,
there won't be a government. - Hopefully that's still the case, yeah. - [Lex] Well, yeah,
there's always something. - Yeah, us versus other
countries, you're right, right. So us versus other countries, like Joe Biden of all people said to me, it was at an entrepreneurship conference that when he was vice
president, he had put together, and we had gone up there, a
bunch of us from "Shark Tank" to talk to young entrepreneurs
from around the world. And he said to me, "Mark, you know, the one thing that separate, I've been to every
country around the world, and the one thing that separates
us is entrepreneurship. We're the most entrepreneurial
country in the world, and there's no one else who's even close." And when you look at the
origin of our big, you know, the biggest companies in the
world, for the most part, there's an American origin
story somewhere behind there. And I think, you know, that
just gets perpetuated on itself. We see those Horatio Alger stories, we see examples of the
Jeff Bezos of the world, the Steve Jobs in the world, and those are the types
of people we want to copy. - Yeah, we wanna be really careful and try to really figure out what that is, because we don't wanna lose that. - [Mark] For sure. - We wanna protect the whatever, you know, and that's a lot of the discussions about what's the right way to do government, big government, small government,
what's the right policies? But also culture, like who we celebrate. One of the things that troubles me is that we don't enough
celebrate the entrepreneurs that take risks and the
entrepreneurs that succeed. It seems like success, especially
when it comes with wealth, is immediately matched with distrust and criticism and all that kind of stuff. - Yeah, it's changing for sure, because, you know, you can
go back just 12 years, right? Traditional media dominated,
let's just say through 2012, you know, that was the
peak of linear television. You know, newspapers weren't as strong, but they still had some
breadth and depth to them. And then social media comes along, and everybody gets to
play in their own sandbox and share opinions with people
who think just like them. And it also gives them the opportunity to amplify those feelings. And I think that's where
celebrating entrepreneurs really started to subside some. There were always people
who were progressive that were like, billionaires are bad, or millionaires are bad,
depending on the time period. But you didn't really see it
on an ongoing basis, right? It wasn't gonna be on the evening news. It wasn't going to be in the
front page of the newspaper. It was going to be, if you read a book and someone talked about
it, or you read a magazine and there was an article
talking about, you know, this progressive movement or
that progressive movement, whatever it may be, you
know, or political parties. But now all of that is front
and center on social media. - Yeah, we're trying to
figure it out how we deal with the mobs of people
and the virality of it all. And I think we'll find our footing and start celebrating greatness again. - Well, I mean, that's the
whole reason I do "Shark Tank." - That's true. That show
celebrates the entrepreneur. That's true. - It's the only place
where every single minute of every single episode, you know, we celebrate the American dream. And the reason I do it is
we tell the entire country, and it's shown around the world even. You know, we're amazing
advertising for the American dream in I don't even know how many countries. But every time somebody
walks onto that carpet from Dubuque, Iowa or
Ketchum, Idaho, you know, that sends a message to
every kid who's watching, seven, eight, nine, 10, 12-year-old kid that if they can do it from
Ketchum, Idaho, you can do it. If they can have this idea and get a deal, or even present to the Sharks and have all of America
see it, you can do it. And that, I mean, I'm proud of that. The 15 years of that, is
just, it's just been insane. You know, now kids walk
up to me and go, yeah, I started watching you
when I was five or 10, and I started a business 'cause I learned about
it from "Shark Tank." And so, you know, I think, you know, it celebrates it and we convey it. And I don't think it's going away, but there are different
battles we have to fight to support it. - Yeah, I love even when the business idea's obviously horrible, just the guts to step up. - [Mark] To be there. - And to believe in
yourself, to really reach, I mean, that's what matters. I mean, 'cause like some
of the best business ideas are probably, maybe even you
and "Shark Tank" will laugh at. - Oh, for sure. You know, without question, the good ones, we're not gonna recognize every good one. And then sometimes we'll
just motivate people to work even harder to get it done 'cause of what we say to
them, and that's fine too. You know, there's been
great success stories that we said no to. - What stands out as
like a memorable business you've been pitched on "Shark Tank"? What's the best one that
stands out on in memory? - There's no best one,
right? They're all different. They're all best in
their own way, I guess. The stupid ones. And you know, we haven't
had any, you know, world changing earth
shattering ones, right? Because those aren't gonna
apply to "Shark Tank." They don't need us, right. You know, so we typically get businesses that need some help at
some level or another. But there's ones I've passed
that I wish, like Spikeball. Do you know what Spikeball is? So it's this rebounding net
that you can put on the beach and you have these yellow balls and you play a game of, you know, it's just a competitive
game, but they're killing it. So if you go to beaches in New York or LA, you'll see kids playing it all the time. And it was a fun game that I
wish I had done a deal with. And there's been others. - [Lex] And you passed. - And I passed. They were getting some traction, and they wanted to create
leagues, Spikeball leagues, and they wanted me to be the commissioner. And I didn't want to be a commissioner of a new Spikeball league. - So you have to kinda
have this gut feeling of will this scale, will
this click with people? - Of course. Yeah, can it be protected?
Is it differentiated? Is it something that
makes me think, you know, why didn't I think of that? Or is it just a good solid business that's gonna pay a return to the founder and may not be enough of a business to return to an investor? - Yeah, I mean, and I guess the question you're trying to see, will this scale, there's promise, will the promise materialize
into a big thing? - Well, see, I don't even care if it's gonna be a big thing, right? 'Cause it's all relative
to the entrepreneur. We had a 19-year-old
from Pittsburgh, Laney, who came on with a simple sugar scrub. And there was nothing
outrageously special about it. I didn't see it becoming a
hundred million dollar business. I thought it could become a
two, three, $5 million business that paid the bills for her. And that was good enough. And, you know, six months
after the show aired, she called me up, she goes, Mark, I've got a million dollars in the bank. What am I gonna do? I'm like, enjoy it. Put aside money for your
taxes, and go back to work. You know, and so it doesn't
have to be a huge business. It's just gotta be one that
makes the entrepreneur happy. - But then there's the
valuation piece, I mean. Do a lot of the entrepreneurs overvalue? - [Mark] Yeah, of course. - The business? - Yeah, I mean, that's
the nature of it, right? I mean, and that's really where the biggest conflicts
in "Shark Tank" happened. That's in evaluation. They, you know, they think
this is the best business ever. You know, there we had one
lady couple that came on and they had this scraper
for cat's tongues, right. - [Lex] Nice. - It was bizarre. The
most bizarre pitch ever. - [Lex] I love it. - You know, and they had
this insane valuation, and it was on because
it was corny and fun TV, not because it was a good business. - Oh really? Okay, yeah, you
didn't see the potential. - [Mark] None. Yeah, none. - There's a lot of cats in
the world, Mark, come on. - Yes, there are. And they'll
go do very well without me. - So how do you determine
the value of a business, whether it's on "Shark
Tank" or just in general? - It's actually really easy, right? So if you take, just to use an example, a business that's valued at $1 million, and I want to buy 10% of
that company for $100,000, then in order for me to get my money back, they've gotta be able to generate $100,000 in after tax cash flow that
they're able to distribute. Can they do it or can they not, right? And if it's $2 million,
whatever the valuation is, that's how much cash, after
tax cash they have to generate to return that money to investors. Or the other option is, do they, you know, do I see this as business
potentially having an exit? Right, do they have some unique technology or do they have something
specific about them that some other company
would want to acquire? Then the cash flow isn't as, I don't wanna say important, but isn't going to guide the valuation. - And how do you know if a
company's gonna be acquired? So it's the technology, like the patents, but also the team, is it? - Yeah, it could be any
of the above, right? It could be, it could be
a super products company that I think is gonna take off. - And how do you know if
they can generate the money? What's the, you made it
sound easy, you know? - Yeah, I mean, can the person sell? You know, and if not them, can I do it, or someone on my team do it for them? - So you're looking at the person. - Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Barbara Corcoran's the best. She can look at a person and
hear them talk for 20 minutes and know can that person
do the job and do the work? - Can you tell if they're
full of shit or not? So one of the things with entrepreneurs, they're kind of like we said overvaluing, so they're maybe overselling themselves, but also they might be full of shit in terms of their
understanding of the market, or also like, or exaggerating
what their thing can do, all that kind of stuff,
can you see through that? - Yeah, for sure. Just by
asking questions, you know. So if they are delusional at some level or misleading at another level,
I'm gonna call them on it, you know, so you get people trying to sell supplements
that come on there and it's a cure for cancer
or whatever it may be. Or there's this latest fad that, you know, increases your core strength
without doing any exercises. You know, shit like that,
I'm just gonna bounce, I'm gonna pound on them, right. - See, I still love that. I still love the trying, just trying. - No, you know, give them credit, right? Because they know all of
America's gonna see it, and they're deluded themselves to believe this story so strongly. - I mean, there's a delusional aspect to entrepreneurship, right, like you just. - See, that's a great question. Do you have to be
ambitious, and, you know, set aside reality at some level to think that you can create a company that could be worth 10, 100,
a billion dollars, right? Yeah, at some level. 'Cause you don't know,
it's all uncertainty. But I think if you're delusional,
that works against you, because everything's grounded in reality. You've got to execute, you've
got to produce, you know, you can have a vision, right? And you can say, this is
where I want to get to, and that's my mission, or
this is my driving principle, but you still gotta execute
on the business plan. And that's where most people fail. - Yeah, you have to be kind
of two brained, I guess. You have to be able to dip into reality when you're thinking about like, the specifics of the product,
how to design things, like the, you know, the first principles, the basics of how to build the thing, how much it's gonna cost, all of that. - Yeah, I mean, 'cause if
you can't do the basics, you're not gonna be able
to do the bigger things. And at the same time,
you've gotta be able, one of the things that entrepreneurs do that I always try to remind
any that I work with on, is we all tend to lie to ourselves. Our product is bigger,
faster, cheaper, this or that. As if that is a finite situation, that's never going to change, right. And there's always somebody, I call them leapfrog businesses. Whoever's competing against you, you know, if you do A, B, or C, they're
gonna try to do C, D, and E. Right, and you better be
prepared for that to come, because otherwise they're
out of business too. So you're never in a vacuum. You're always competing against sometimes an unlimited
number of entrepreneurs that you don't even know exist who are trying to kick your ass. - And the tricky part of all this too is you might need to frequently pivot, especially in the beginning. - Hopefully not. - So you think like in the
beginning, the product you have should be the thing that
carries you a long time. - Yeah, because I mean that's your riskiest point in time, right? And so if you've done your homework, which includes going out there and testing product market
fit, you should have confidence that you're gonna be able to sell it. Now if you didn't do your homework and you go out there and
you sell whatever it is, and you've raised money or
whatever, just to pivot, you've already shown that you haven't been
able to read the market. And so it's not that pivots can't work and always don't work, they can, but more often than not, they don't. You pivot for a reason. That's because you made a huge mistake. - Well, I also mean like the micro pivots, which is like iterative
development of a thing. - Oh yeah, oh, that's not,
yeah, just iterations, yeah. You know, entrepreneurship
having any business is just continuous iteration, continuous, your product, your sales
pitch, your advertising, you know, introducing new technology. How do you use AI or not
use AI, where do you use it? What person's the right person? There's just a million
touch points, you know, that you're always
reevaluating in real time that you have to be agile
and adapt and change. - But especially in software, it feels like business model
can evolve really quickly too. Like how are you gonna make money on this? - Software for sure. Because you know, anything digital, because it can change in a millisecond. - Speaking of which, how did
you make your first billion? - So my partner Todd Wagner and I would get together for lunches, and we were at California Pizza Kitchen in Preston Hollow in Dallas. And he was talking about how we could use this new
thing called the internet. This is late '94, early '95, to be able to listen to Indiana
University basketball games. 'Cause that's where we went to school. And he was like, look, when
we would listen to games, we would have somebody
in Bloomington, Indiana have a speakerphone next to a radio. And then we would have a
speakerphone in Dallas, and you know, six pack or 12 pack of beer. And we'd sit around listening to the game because there was no
other way to listen to it. So I was like, okay, my first
company, MicroSolutions, you know, I'd written software,
done network integration. And so I was comfortable digging into it. And so I'm like, okay,
let's give it a try. So we started this
company called AudioNet, and effectively became the first streaming content
company on the internet. And we're like, okay, we're not sure how we're
gonna make this work, but we were able to make it work. And we started going to radio
stations and TV stations and you know, music labels and everything. And evolved audionet.com, which was only audio at the beginning, to broadcast.com in 1998,
which was audio and video, and became the largest
multimedia site on the internet. Took it public in July of 1998. It had the largest first day jump in the history of the
stock market at the time. And then a year later we sold it to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in Yahoo stock. And I owned, you know, right
around 30% of the company, give or take. And so after taxes,
that's what got me there. - Well, there's a lot of questions there. So the technical challenge of that, you're making it sound
easy, but you wrote code, but still in the early
days of the internet, how do you figure out how to
create this kind of product of just audio at first
and then video at first? - A lot of iterations,
right? Like you talked about. We started in the second
bedroom of my house, set up a server. I got an ISDN line, which was 128K line, and set up, downloaded Netscape server, and then started using
different file formats that were progressive loading and allowing people to
connect to the server and do a progressive
download so that the audio, you can listen to the audio while it was downloading onto your PC. - Yeah, and was it super choppy? So you're trying to
figure out how to do it. - Oh yeah, for sure, for
sure. It would buffer. It was, yeah, it wasn't
good, but it was a start. - But still was good enough,
'cause it's the first, kind of. - Yeah, because there was
no other competition, right? There was nobody else doing it. And so it was like, okay, I can get access to this, this, or this. And then there were some third
party software companies, Zing and Progressive Networks and others that took it
a little bit further. So we partnered with them, and I started going to
local radio stations where literally we would set
up a server right next to it. I had a $49 radio, the highest
FM radio that I could find. And we'd take the output of
the audio signal from the radio with these two analog cables,
plug it into the server, encode it, and make it
available from audionet.com. Then I would go on UUNET bulletin boards. I would go on CompuServe,
I would go on Prodigy, I would go on AOL, I'd go
wherever I could find bodies. And I'd say, okay, we've
got this radio station, KLIF in Dallas, it's got Dallas Sports and Dallas news and politics. And if you're in an office
or you're outside of Dallas, connect to audionet.com, and now you can listen to
these things on demand. And that's how we started. And it started with one radio station and then it was five, then it was 10, then it was video content, then the laws were different then. So we could literally go out
and buy CDs and host them and just let people
listen to whatever music. And we went from, you know,
10 users a day to 100 to 1,000 to hundreds of thousands to a million over those next four years. - How did you find the
users? Is it word of mouth? - Word of mouth. - [Lex] Just word of mouth. - Didn't spend a penny on advertising. - So the thing you were focusing on is getting the radio
stations and all that. - Oh, radio and TV,
anything, any content at all. - Did you pick up the phone?
What'd you, how'd you? - Wherever I could, like
everything that was public domain, I'd go out and buy a video or a cassette, whatever it was, you know. And this was before the DMs, the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act of '97, whenever it kicked in. So literally anything that was audio we would put online so
people could listen to it. And if you think about somebody at work, they didn't have a radio most likely. And if you did, you
couldn't get reception. Definitely didn't have
a TV, but you had a PC, and you had bandwidth available to you. And the companies weren't up on firewalls or anything at that point in time. So our in-office listening,
you know, during the day, just exploded, because
whoever's sitting next to you, what are you listening to, right? And that was the start of it. And then, you know, in early
'98 we started adding video and just other things. And we had ended up with
thousands of servers. You know, there was no cloud back then. And just pulling together all
those pieces to make it work. But where we really made our money was by taking that
network that we had built and then going to corporations and saying, look, you know, in it's 1996, '97, '98, and to communicate with
your worldwide employees, what they would do is they
would go to an auditorium that had a satellite uplink, and then they would have
people go to like theaters or ballrooms and hotels that
had satellite downlinks, and they would broadcast, you know, their product introductions, whatever. And so we said to them, look, you're paying millions of dollars to reach all your employees,
when you can do it. Pay us a half a million dollars, and we'll do it just on their PCs at work. So we did, you know, when
Intel announced the P90 PC, we, you know, charged them
$2 million or whatever to do that. When Motorola announced a
new phone or a new product, we would charge them. And so we used the consumer side to do a proof of concept for the network. And then we would take that
knowledge and go to corporations and that's how we made our revenue. - And there's some selling
there with the corporations. - Yeah, a lot of selling there. But we were saving them so much money. And they were technology companies they wanted to be perceived
as being leading edge. And so it was win-win. - How much technical savvy was required? You said a bunch of servers. Like at which point do
you get more engineers? How much did you understand,
could do yourself? And then also, once you
can't do it all yourself, how much technical savvy is required to understand enough to
hire the right people to keep building this and innovation? - I did all the technology, and then we hired engineer
after engineer after engineer to implement it. And so, yeah. From putting together a
multicast network, to software, to just all these different things. - Was this like a scary thing? Like is. - It's terrifying, right. Because as we were growing,
trying to keep up with the scale and literally we're
buying off the shelf PCs, and then, you know, server cards
as the technology advanced, and hard drives, and things would fail. And we would have to, you know, we didn't have machine learning back then to do an analysis of, you know, how to distribute server,
you know, resources. So, you know, like there was a time when Bill Clinton and all the
Monica Lewinsky stuff happened. They released the audio
of their interviews of him or something like that, right. And we literally, I knew
at that point in time when that was released, everybody at work was gonna
wanna listen to it, right? So we had to take down servers that were doing Chicago
Cubs baseball, right. You know, and just make all
these on the fly decisions because there was no, we didn't
have the tools to analyze or be predictive. But yeah, it was all technology
driven and marketing. - The acquisition by Yahoo,
can you tell the story of that? But also in the broader context
of this internet bubble. This is a fascinating part of human history, yeah.
- Sure, it was crazy. So on the acquisition side, we were the largest media
site on the internet. And it wasn't close.
There was nobody close. We were YouTube, and relatively speaking,
we would be 10X YouTube relative to the competition
'cause there was nobody there. And so it became obvious
to Yahoo, AOL, and others that they needed a multimedia component. And we had the infrastructure,
the sales, all that stuff. And so Yahoo, when we went public in '98, or right before, I think it was, they made an investment
of like $2 million, which gave us a connection to them. And then after we went public, they decided they needed
to have multimedia. And so in April of '99, we made a deal. And then July of 2000's when it closed. - And can you explain to me the trickiness of what you did after that? Which is the? - On the collar. - [Lex] Yeah. - Okay, so when we sold to Yahoo, we sold it for $5.7
billion in stock, not cash. And so I looked at, you know, after MicroSolutions, when I
sold that, I took that money and initially I told my broker I wanted to invest like a 60-year-old man 'cause I wanted to protect it. But then he started asking
me all kinds of questions about all these technologies
that I understood. Like networks I had installed. We had become one of
the top 20, let's say, systems integrators in the country. At one point in time we're the largest IBM token
ring installer in the country. It was crazy, right? Banyan, that name, blast from
the past, I mean, so anyway, so these Wall Street
bankers, or analysts rather, that were the big analysts
of the time would call me up. 'Cause they would ask my broker, what does he know about
this product, this product? And I knew them all, what was working and not working, right. And so the ones that worked,
you know, I say that's working. And I'd see the stock, they say something, the stock would go up 20 bucks, right. So I'm like, well, and my
broker's like, you need to, you know this better than
they do, you need to invest. So I started buying and selling stocks. And this was in 1990,
and was just killing it. I was making 80, 90, 100% a
year over those next four years to the point where guy came in and asked to use my trading history to start a hedge fund, which we did. And I sold within nine
months. It was great, right? But the point being, as it goes forward, so when we sold to Yahoo, I already had a lot of
experience trading stocks, and I had seen different
bubbles come and go. The bubble for PC manufacturers, a bubble for networking manufacturers, they went up, up, up, up, up. And then they came straight
down after the hype, or somebody just leapfrogged them. And so when we sold to Yahoo, I was like, I've gotta B next to my name. That's all I need, or all I
want. I don't want to be greedy. And I'd seen this story before where stocks get really
frothy and go straight down. And I knew that because all
of what I had was in stock. I needed to find a way to
collar it and protect it. So understanding stocks and trading and options and all that. My broker and I, we went
and shorted an index that had Yahoo in it. And so the law at the time was you couldn't short any indexes that had more than 5% of
that stock in it, right. Of any one of the Yahoo stock. And so I took pretty much
20 some million dollars, everything I had at the time,
and I shorted the index. - This is fascinating by the way. 'Cause it's based on your
estimation that this is a bubble - Or just my not wanting to be greedy. - Sure, so the foundation
of this kind of thing is you don't wanna be greedy. - Yeah, I mean, how much
money do I need, right? You know, where other people were saying, oh, I think it can go up
higher, higher, higher. I was like, I went on CNBC,
and I told them what I had done and they were like, and Yahoo Stock had gone up significantly from the time I had collared. And one of the guy, Joe
Kernen was on there. "Don't you feel stupid now
that Yahoo stock has gone up, you know, X percent more?" I'm like, "Yeah, I feel real
stupid sitting on my jet." - But I mean, there is
some fundamental way in which bubbles are based on this greed. Just greed.
- Oh, for sure, for sure. Yeah. And I'd seen it before,
right, like I just said. And so what I did was
we put together a collar where I sold calls and bought
puts, and as it turned out, when the market just
cratered, I was protected. And, you know, over the
next two, three years, whatever it was, it converted to cash, paid my taxes, et cetera. But it protected me. And as it turns out, it was called one of the
top 10 trades of all time. And what was even more
interesting out of that period, my broker at that time
was at Goldman Sachs. And I had asked him to
see if there was a way to trade the VIX, right,
the volatility index. And there wasn't, right. And so one of the people that Goldman that we were working with
to try to create this actually left Goldman and created indexes that
allowed you to trade the VIX. - Well, it's not trivial to
understand that it's a bubble. I mean, you're kind of lessening
your insight into all this by saying you just didn't wanna be greedy. But you still had to
see that it's a bubble. - Yeah, I mean, yeah, obviously if I thought it
was gonna keep on going up, and there was intrinsic value there, I would've stayed in it. But it wasn't so much Yahoo, it was just the entire industry. Back then, you know, like we're
looking at the magic seven or whatever it is stocks now. And people were asking, is it in a bubble? And when I would get into cabs and people would just start
talking about internet stocks, there were people creating
companies with just a website and going public. You know, that's a bubble, right? Where there's no intrinsic value at all. And people aren't even trying
to make operating cap profits. They're just trying to
leverage the frothiness of the stock market. That's a bubble. You
don't see that right now. There's not companies,
you don't see hardly, you don't see any IPOs
right now for that matter. So, you know, I don't think
we're in a bubble now, but back then, yes, I
thought we were in a bubble, but that wasn't really
the motivating factor. - Do you think it's possible we're in a bit of an AI bubble right now? - No, because we're not seeing funky AI companies just go public. If all of a sudden we
see a rush of companies who are skins on other people's models, or just creating models to create models that are going public, then yeah, that's probably the start of a bubble. But that said, my 14-year-old was bragging about
buying Nvidia, you know, with me in his Robinhood account. He tells me the order, I placed it, and he was like, oh yeah,
it's going up, up, up. You know, and I'm like, yeah,
we're not quite there yet. But that's, you know, that's
one thing to pay attention to. - Yeah, we're flirting with it. You said that becoming a
billionaire requires luck. Can you explain? - Yeah, I mean there's no business plan where you can just start it and say, yeah, I'm definitely gonna be a billionaire. You know, if I had to start all over, could I start a company
that made me a millionaire? Yeah, 'cause I know how to
sell and I know technology and I've learned enough
over the years to do that. Could I make 10 million? Probably. 100 million? I hope so. But a billion, just something
good has got to happen. You know. - The timing. - Timing, you know, internet stock market was going
nuts right when we started, you know, and that certainly
I couldn't predict or control, you know, it's like AI right now, AI's been around a long,
long, long, long time. And the Nvidia processors, or GPUs rather, you couldn't predict that now's the time that they were gonna get
to that cost effectiveness where, you know, you could create models and train them and although it's expensive,
it's still doable. You know, we didn't really
even, we had Asics, right, for custom applications and we had CPUs that were leading the way, but GPUs were more for
gaming and then cryptomining, and then all of a sudden they were the foundation for AI models. - So I think luck being essential
to becoming a billionaire is a beautiful way to see life in general. First of all, I personally think that everything good that's ever happened to me is because of luck. I think that's just a good way of being. It's like you're grateful. That said, there's some examples
of people that you're like, they seem to have done a lot of, they seem to have gotten lucky a lot. You know, we mentioned Jeff Bezos. It seems like he did a
lot of really interesting, powerful decisions for
many years with Amazon to make it successful. - But he was really able
to raise money, right? A lot of money. And people were really dismissive of him because they weren't profitable. And we were in an environment where it was possible to raise that money. - It was possible to raise that money. I mean, what about somebody you get sometimes feisty with on the internet? Elon, who couldn't even look at Zuck and Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. - Sure, look, Zuck was just
trying to get laid, right. And it took off, and he
wrote some good stuff. - Aren't we all? Is that a foundation
of human civilization. - Right, at some level, right. But yeah. So more power to him, right. You can't take anything away from him. But yeah, Snapchat, same thing, took off. Apps didn't take off in 2007
when the iPhone came out. Apps took off in 2011, 2012. And if you were there with the
right app at the right time, and even Facebook, you know,
in 2004 the bubble had burst, and you know, the price for
computers had fallen enough and kids in school all
needed computers or laptops. If he had tried to do
something like that, you know, five years earlier, I
mean, he was too young. But, you know, five years
earlier or five years later, you know, or Friendster
might've been the ultimate, or MySpace. - Friendster, I remember Friendster. - Or MySpace, I had a MySpace account, and that was before Facebook. - Yeah, the timing's important, but there's like the details
of how the product is built, the fundamentals of
the product, like what? - Well, so, but that's what gets you, when the opportunity is there, right? That's what allows you to take
advantage of that opportunity and the kismet of it all, right? You've gotta be, 'cause it wasn't like any
of the people I mentioned, there weren't others trying
the same thing, right. You had to be able to see it, you had to be able to visualize it and put together a plan of some sort, or at least have a path, and
then you had to execute on it. And do all those things at the same time, and have the money available to you. Because it wasn't like, whether
it was Google or Facebook, you know, they raised a shitload of money. It wasn't bootstrapping
it that got them there. - And raising money is
not just about sales, it's about the general
feeling of the people with money at that time. - [Mark] And proximity. - Oh yeah, sure. - If Zuck wasn't at Harvard, and he was at Miami of Ohio University, or he was at Richland
Community College, same idea, same person, same execution, and nothing. - I believe in the power of
individuals to find their, to realize their potential no
matter where they come from. - I agree, I agree 100% with that, right. - [Lex] But luck is required. - Yeah, I mean, scale is, the
only delta is scale, right. You know, we're not all blessed
with the access to the tools that you need to hit that grand slam. - But then also, billion is not the only
measure of success, right. - Absolutely not, right. Everybody defines their
success in their own way. - How do you define success, Mark Cuban? - Waking up every day with a
smile, excited about the day. You know, I was, you know,
people always say, well, when you get that kind of
money, does it make you happy? And my answer always is, if you were happy when you were broke, you're gonna be really,
really, really happy when you're rich. - But you gotta work on being
happy when you're broke, I guess. - Well, you're just being happy, right? If you were miserable, you
know, in your job before, there's a good chance you're
still gonna be miserable if that's just who you are. - That's a pretty good definition
of success, by the way. - [Mark] Thank you. - How do you reach that success
by way of advice to people? - You know, we talked
about my dad, my parents. I never looked at my dad and said, okay, you're not successful. He busted his ass. And when he came home, you know, we enjoyed our time together, right? There was nothing at any point in time where I felt like, oh, this
is miserable, we're awful. You know, we don't have
this, we don't have that. You know, we celebrated
the things we did have, and never knew about the things
we didn't have, you know? And so I think, you know, you have to be able to find your way to whatever it is that puts a
smile on your face every day. And some people can do
it and some people can't. - It's not always about the smile or the smile on the outside. It could be a smile on the inside. - Yeah. Whatever it is, right,
whatever makes you feel good. - Yeah, the struggle, even the
struggle, like with your dad, the really, really hard work
can be a fulfilling experience because the struggle leading up to then seeing your kids and. - Exactly right, right. Because that was my dad's grand slam. Right, seeing three kids go
to college, be successful, you know, be able to spend time with him. And that was the other thing, you know, he really made me realize is the most valuable asset
isn't the money, it's your time. That's why, you know, from a
young age, I wanted to retire because I wanted to experience everything that I possibly
could in this life. And, you know, he got joy from
us. I get joy from my kids. And that's the most special
thing you ever can have. - Beautifully said. You have made some mistakes in your life. - [Mark] Yeah, a lot of them. - One of the bigger ones
on the financial side we could say is Uber. - Yeah, we call that not
doing something, yeah. It wasn't a mistake, it was
just, I mean, it was a mistake. (both laughing) - But I like how you tried to. - Yeah, yeah, I always
try to look at mistakes that things you did that didn't turn out as opposed to things you did
do, you know, the negative but. - What can you tell the story of that? And maybe it's just interesting,
'cause it is illustrative, like how to know when a thing
is going to be big and not, and what are the fundamentals of it and how to take the risk and not, and all this kind of stuff. - Right, so the backstory of
that is Bill Gurley came to me and said, Mark, there's this guy Travis that has this company Red Swoosh, which is a peer-to-peer networking company that I think you can help. And so I invested and would
spend a lot of time with Travis and it is funny 'cause back
then that was like 2006, I was an investor at
box.net with Aaron Levy and, oh, there was one other company, but there were three of them where there'd be emails between, you know, where I'd introduce them, and we'd all talk in these emails and they'd all gone to have
astronomical success, right. But so Red Swoosh had its issues. You know, 'cause I always
look at peer-to-peer as kind of stealing bandwidth
from the internet providers when bandwidth was a scarce commodity. And so, you know, what Travis did with
that though was great. You know, he convinced gaming companies who wanted to do downloads of
the clients for those games to use his peer-to-peer in Red Swoosh. And you know, he busted his ass, and I think he sold it for
$18 million, so he did well. And so it was natural
for him to come to me. And I still have the emails, you know, and asked me about Uber Cab, and I thought, okay, this is a great idea. I really, really like it. I said, you're gonna, and
he showed me his budgets, and I think they were raising money at 10 or $15 million or whatever. And I'm like, your biggest
challenge is gonna be, you're gonna have to fight all the incumbent taxi commissions. They're gonna want to
put you outta business. That's gonna be a challenge. And I think you don't have enough money designated for marketing
to get all that done. And I said I'd invest, but
not quite at that valuation. Right, never came back to me. - Yeah, I mean there's some lessons there connected to what you're doing
now, we'll talk about it. Cost Plus Drugs is like
looking at an industry that seems like there's a
lot of complexity involved, but it's like hungry for revolution. And the cabs are that. - Yeah, for sure, right. They they were dominated
by an insulated few. They were not very transparent. You didn't know the intricacies. They were very, very politically driven, and old boy incestuous network. And to Trav, you know, and
like I told him, Travis, the best thing about you is you'll run through walls
and break down barriers. The bad thing about you is
you'll run through walls even if you don't have to, you know? - Yeah, and there you kind of have to see, is it possible to raise enough money? Is it possible to do this? Is it possible? Is it possible to break through? And it's kind of a fascinating
success story with Uber is. - I think he tried to go too big. He had too big an ambition,
which cost him in the end, not financially and
personally, but just, you know, in terms of being able to
stick it out with them. But, you know, that's what
makes him a great entrepreneur. - Well, it's a fascinating success story. You have like certain
companies like Airbnb, just kind of go into this thing that we take completely for granted. - [Mark] And change it all. - Just change it all. - Yeah, Belinda Johnson, who
worked as our general counsel at broadcast.com was, you know, was Brian's GC and
Chief Operating Officer. So yeah, they had a smart,
smart, smart, smart team. - And they believed in it. And they, I mean, it's just,
it's a beautiful story. 'Cause you're like, all right, all the things that annoy
you about this world, like they're inefficient, and they just seem like a pain in the ass. - And see, I probably would've said no, like a lot of people did to
Airbnb, because I'm like. - [Lex] That's not gonna work. - I don't want people sleeping in my bed. - I would've too, I was
like, this is not gonna work. I've done like couch surfing and stuff. And it was always, it didn't seem right. It didn't seem like you could
do this at a large scale. - To monetize it. Yeah, but
he did, more power to him. - In 2000, I think January,
you purchased a majority stake in the NBA team Dallas
Mavericks for 285 million. So at this point, maybe
you can correct me, but it was one of the
worst-performing teams in franchise history. - It's true. - How did you help turn it around? - I had this big tall
guy named Dirk Nowitzki, and I let him be Dirk Nowitzki, right. And I got out of the way, but I think more than anything else, there was the turnaround
on the business side. And then there was the turnaround
on the basketball side. And on the basketball side, I just went in there immediately, said, whatever it takes to win,
that's what we're going to do. You know, back then they
had three or four coaches that were responsible for everything. And I was like, okay, we spend more money training
people on PC software than we do developing the most important assets of the business. So I made the decision to go out there and hire like 15 different
development coaches, one for each player. And everybody thought I was just insane. But, you know, it sent the message that we were going to do
whatever it took to win. And once the guys believed that, you know, winning was the goal as
opposed to just making money, attitudes changed, effort went up. And you know, the rest is history. - So the assets of the
business here are the players. - The players. Yeah, for sure. And then on the business side, the first question I asked myself is, what business are we in? And I really didn't know
the answer immediately, but within the first few
months, it was obvious that, you know, the entire NBA thought we were in the
business of basketball. We were not, we were in
the experience business. When you think about sporting
events that you've been to, you don't remember the score. You don't remember the
home runs or the dunks. You remember who you were with, and you remember why you
went, oh, it was my first date with the girl who's now my wife. Or I went with my buddies, and he threw up on the
person in front of us. You know, my dad took me,
my aunt, my uncle took me. Those are the experiences you remember. And once I conveyed to our people that this is what we were selling, that what happened in
the arena off the court was just as important as
what happened on the court, if not more so. Because if you know mom or dad
are bringing the 10-year-old, you have to keep them occupied because they have short attention spans. And so, you know, I would
get into fights with the NBA, you know, put aside the refs, but getting in fights in the NBA, I would say NBA, nothing
but attorneys, right? Because they had no
marketing skills whatsoever. And to their credit, you know, they realized that was a
problem and started bringing in better and better and
better marketing people. - So part of the selling
is you're selling the team, selling the sport, selling the people, the idea, the all of it, like just the. - Well, yeah. The experience. So have you ever been to an NBA game? - Yeah, the Miami Heat. - Do you remember walking into the arena? And you feel the energy, right. That's what makes it special. - Yeah, the energy is everything,
especially playoff games. - Right, for sure, right. And even a regular season game, right. Even against the worst team, you know, that's where we get, you
know, because the tickets tend to be a little bit
cheaper on the resale market. That's where parents
will bring their kids. And so you hear kids
screaming the entire game, and the parents are
thrilled to death, right? They got to do something with their kids. The kids are thrilled to death because they got to see
basketball, an NBA game, and scream at the top of their lungs. And, you know, if it turns
out to be a close game and that ball's in the air, and if it goes in, you know, everybody's hugging and high fiving people you've never seen before in your life. And if it misses you're commiserating with
people you've never seen before, that's such a unique experience
that's unique to sports. And we never sold that. And that's exactly what
we started selling. - I have to say, like,
just going to that game turned me around on basketball 'cause I'm more of a football guy. So basketball wasn't like the main sport. I was like, oh, wow, okay. - It's fun, 'cause it's different, right? - [Lex] Energy was just like. - Yeah, the energy in a
stadium is completely different than the energy in an arena. You know, you can, you
know, in the stadium, particularly if it doesn't have a roof, it's hard to bottle that energy. You feel it, and you see,
like, I'm from Pittsburgh, so there's the terrible towels
and people screaming defense and everything at Steelers games. But in an arena, the energy
level is just indescribable. - So how much of it is the
selling the tickets in person, but also versus what you see on TV? So when you're owning a team, do you get any of the cut
for the what's shown on TV? - Yeah, yeah, we, yeah. So there's a TV deal that's done with either
a local TV broadcaster and we get all of that. Or a network broadcaster like
ABC, ESPN, TNT, whatever. And then we get 1/30th of that. - So what role does the TV play in like, turning a team around? - It keeps fans connected. Look, when the team is doing
really well, it's easy, right? There's more viewers,
everybody's more excited. And when you're not, you know, there's still gonna be
hardcore fans and, you know, general fans and kids that
like to watch the game. - What about like, the personality that people in the stands, like I mean clearly you're
part of the legend of the team because you're literally there going wild. - Yeah, screaming, yeah,
the whole game, right? Yeah, it's funny, you
know, the way I am here is how I am, you know, 24 hours a day unless there's a Mavs game. You know, and for whatever reason, that's where I let out all
that stress and frustration. But yeah, I mean, it's
not so much the fans, you know, the sixth man, right? We need fans to bring that
energy, and, you know, amplifying that as much
as we can is important. - You've had a beef
recently on Twitter, on X, with Elon over DEI programs. What to you is the essence
of the disagreement there? - I wouldn't call it a
beef, right? It's just. - [Lex] It's a bit of fun? - Yeah, and it's fun for me, right? I just, you know, it's his platform. He gets to run it any way he
please, he pays for that right. And so I have total respect
for whatever choices he makes, even if I don't agree with him. But because it's his platform, people are less likely
to disagree with him. Particularly somebody who's
got a platform themselves. And so when we start talking about DEI, and it's just de facto
racist and this stuff, stuff that I just think is nonsense, I have no problem, you
know, sharing my opinion. And, you know, if he disagrees, okay, he can disagree, I don't care. You know, and it's fun to engage, but he doesn't really engage, you know, he just comes back with snark comments, which is, you know, his choice. - Yeah, in your comments, well, you do a bit of snark too, but. - Yeah, a little bit now and then. - But you're pretty, let's
say, rigorous in your response. So there is some exchange of
ideas, there's some snark, there's some fun, all that kind of stuff. And you do voice the opinion that represents a large number of people. And it's great. I mean,
that's really beautiful. But just lingering on the topic, what to you is the good and
the bad of DEI programs? - Really simple, right? D is diversity. And that means you just expand your pool of potential applicants to people who you might not
otherwise have access to. You know, to look where
you didn't look before, to look where other people aren't looking for quality employees. That's simple. And the E in equity means
when you hire somebody, you put them in a position to succeed. The I in inclusion is
when you've hired somebody and they may not be
typical, if you will, right? You show them some love and
give them the support they need so they can do their job as best they can and feel comfortable and
confident going to work. It's that simple. - So that's a beautiful
ideal when it's implemented. Implemented poorly, perhaps, or in a way that doesn't reach that ideal. Do you see maybe when it's quota based, do you see that it can result in essentially racism towards Asian people and white people, for example? - There's a lot to unpack there, right? So first, you can't do quotas. They're illegal unless you're, and I'm not the lawyer on this subject, but unless you're trying
to repair something that's happened in the past, like some discrimination
that's happened in the past. So it's not quota based. And I think that's really
just kind of a straw man that people put out there. Now does that mean that
there aren't DEI programs that are implemented
poorly, of course not. There are everything
that's implemented poorly in one company to another, right? Sales, marketing, human resources. You can pick any element of business and find companies that
implement it poorly. But that's the beauty of
capitalism in a free market or mostly free market, where
if you make these choices, and they are the wrong choices, you're gonna lose your best people. You're not gonna be able
to hire the best people. You're not gonna execute
on your business plans in the way that we discussed, regardless of the size of the company. And it also, I think, depends on where you're
having the discussion. So when I'm in a different
group of people off of X, the feedback's completely
different, right? But to your question of reverse
racism, yes, it happens. I mean, 'cause people are people. There's no, you know,
there's no human being that is a hundred percent objective. And it's also, there's
very, very, very few jobs that can be determined on a purely quantitative basis, right? How do you tell one good
janitor from the other, who's the best, right? How do you tell one sales
person that you're hiring versus another you're hiring? 'Cause they haven't sold your product yet. So you don't know, we talked
earlier about firing people 'cause you made mistakes. And you know, yes, there's
discrimination against any group, white, Asian, Black, green,
orange, whatever it may be. But I truly believe that there's far more discrimination
against people of color than there are people who are white. And I think it's become a straw man that reverse discrimination because of DEI is prevalent or near ubiquitous. - Well, much of American history was defined by intense
radical racism and sexism. But in the recent years,
there was a correction. And I think the nature of the criticism is that there's an overcorrection where DEI programs at
universities and companies are often, when they're
not doing their job well, are often hard to criticize. Because when you criticize them
within the company or so on, they have a very strong immune system where if you criticize a DEI program, it seems like it's very
easy to be called racist. And if you're called racist or sexist, that's a sticky label for some reason. - So you're getting into the culture of organizations, right? And leadership within organizations, and accepting any type of
criticism, put aside DEI. When I criticized the referees in the MBA, I got fined, right? That was their option. I knew what I was getting into, right? Not that they're completely analogous, but it's cause and effect. If I'm in a major company
and I'm publicly criticizing or even internally criticizing
a sales plan or a product, our product sucks, right? Where like, there was a Google engineer that got fired for saying, you
know, Google had AGI, right? And nobody believed they did. And they knew that created problems. It wasn't DEI related, but it was, you know,
saying something publicly that was in the CEO's eyes to the detriment of the company, right? So I think those are all analogous. If you're trying to accomplish something
within an organization because you think there's a problem, and there's people speaking out saying, look, we're getting it wrong. I think I'm a victim of all
this and the company's, right? Then, you know, leadership
has gotta make a decision. Do they agree or not agree?
Are they right are they wrong? Is it to the positive? Is it positive or negative to the company? And you decide, so, you know, this conversation that conservatives are being silenced in organizations now. I just, I haven't seen it. You know, I've talked to, and then the other side
of your question I think, unpacking it, is what's driving all this? Put aside universities for one minute. In corporate America, when I talk to people in
corporate America about DEI, they always start talking
about ideology, right? And like, I've talked to Bill Ackman, who you've had on, right? And when I asked him, "Well, Bill, you run your own companies,
who's telling you what to do?" "They are." "Who's they?" "Well, it's the universities, you know, the people who have this ideology of DEI." I'm like, "Did they force
you? Did they coerce you? Did you lose control of your company?" "No, it's not me. It
happens to other people." Then I talk to other people, same thing. So I get, you know, try
not to go one-on-one and Twitter conversations on this topic. So in the DMs I'll talk to people who
are really conservative, and I'll ask the same
question and I'll be like, "Well, who's forcing you to do this?" "Well, it's the ideology
that's everywhere, you see it." Didn't you see the
Harvard thing, you know, in University of North Carolina. I'm like, I've never had anybody try to push me in this
direction to do this. This was my business choice. I'm not trying to tell other
people you have to do this. You make your own business choices. And so where companies that
made their business choices, and if somebody doesn't feel confident or comfortable with it, they may feel they're being
discriminated against. There was something I just read
in "The Wall Street Journal" where "The Wall Street Journal" had a company interviewed
2 million people, right? And the difficulty in firing, and how people, when they were fired, 40% of the people who were
fired felt like it was wrong, that they were doing a great job. Yet then it talked about the HR person going through the hassle of
trying to explain to this person through performance reviews that they weren't doing a good job, yet the people still thought
they were doing a great job despite being told they're
not doing a good job, right? So I see that as being
an analogous to all this, you know, this huffing and puffing about reverse discriminations, and conservatives not
being able to speak up because if 40% of people
who have been fired don't believe they should have been fired. There's a disconnect somewhere in how you think you're doing your job. And if you just feel like I
can't speak up because of it, because you're white, and that doesn't comport
well with DEI programs, a lot of things are
going to happen, right? Either that's gonna come up
in your performance review, HR or your boss is going to
have to address it in some way. It's gonna get to HR at some level, and then decisions are
going to have to be mad, and you can't just fire somebody because they spoke up, right. Somebody's gonna have
to communicate with you. And so I think a lot of, I just, I just don't trust the supposed volume that people say it's happening at versus everything I've read and seen. And when I talk to people in positions of authority
within organizations, and ask them who's forcing them, you know, to implement these
ideologies, nobody says, nobody says yes, that there is somebody. But on Twitter, it sounds great. - It is true for
conservatives, but in general, you can sell books, you can get likes when you talk about this ideology, and then there's a degree to which is this woke ideology in
the room with us right now? Meaning like it's this boogie monster that we are all kind of. - Or is it a positive? - I guess another way to say
that is they don't highlight a lot of the positive
progress that's been made in the positive version of the word woke in terms of correcting some of
the wrongs done in the past. So, but that said, you know,
if you ask people in Russia, a lot of them will say,
there's no propaganda here. There's no sense of sharing
and all that kind of stuff. It's sometimes hard to
see when you're in it that this kind of stuff is happening. It does seem difficult to
criticize DEI programs. Not horribly difficult, terrible. They're this monster that
infiltrates everything. But it is difficult, and it
requires great leadership. - So where have you criticized
it and been condemned? Academic or? - Academic. Yeah. - Okay, academic, two different worlds. - Companies and academic, yeah. - [Mark] Two different worlds. - But I also think it's not, I really wanna point my finger
at the failure of leadership of basically firing mediocre people, like people that are
not good at their job. The problem to me is
DEI's defense mechanism, like immune system is so strong that the shitty people don't get fired. So the vision, the ideal of
DEI is a beautiful ideal. It's just like. - Well, maybe it's 'cause
I'm an entrepreneur, when I see an ideal that, you know, you try to implement it and support it and get to that point. But universities and companies are night and day different, right? I can see an argument for
the ideology in a university. I can see, you know, you look at the amount
of money spent on it. And so while the goal is right, the way they implement it in universities, the way they implement most
things in universities is wrong. Right, there's a reason why
tuition has gone up, you know, a multitude of, or a
multiple of inflation. They're not well-run
organizations across the board. So I'm not gonna argue with that at all. So when you've seen me argue with DEI, I haven't waded into DEI
in universities at all. - So it's mostly focused on companies. - A hundred percent, right?
Because that's where I exist. But at the same time, like I
read Christopher Rufo's book where he talks about kinda
the genealogy of wokeism and ideology, but then
he gets to the point, and I hope I'm remembering this right, where he says that the response to it is decentralized activism, if you will. That's not the word he used,
to try to counter that DEI. And that seems to me to be counter to the whole conservative
movement right now, right? Other than school boards, right. Where it's centralized and, you know, the Republican candidate is all about centralized power in him. And you know, to me that's just a conflict in a lot of the underpinning
of the whole DEI conversation. That a lot of, and a lot
of which goes through Christopher Rufo right now. - Let's continue on a theme of fun exchanges on the internet. So Elon tweeted, "The
fundamental axiomatic flaw of the woke mind virus is that the weaker party is
always right," in parentheses, "even if they want you to die." And you responded at length. But the beginning is, "The
fundamental axiomatic flaw of the anti-woke mind is that it allows groups
with historical power to play the victim by
taking anecdotal examples and packaging them into
conjured conspiratorial ideology that threatens to upend
the power structures they have been depending on," so. - It says it all, right? - Well, there's a tension there. So yes, but both can be abused, right? Both positions of power can be abused. There's power in DEI, and there's shitty people
that can crave power and hold onto power and
sacrifice their ideals. - Okay, put aside universities, okay. - Dammit, yeah, I mean. - Because I'm not gonna argue that universities
implement DEI well, right? And I'm not gonna tell you that, you know, they need to be spending 20
some million dollars a year on DEI positions, to me, that's insane. Do I look at the Harvard
and North Carolina decision and say it was a great decision? No, because, you know, I think
having a diverse student body helps make for kids who are better
prepared for the real world. But I'm not running a university,
so it's not my choice. Maybe at some point in the
future I will, but not now. And in terms of the corporate side of it, who's telling anybody what to do? - Well, maybe you can give me some help. - Sure. I'm here to help you, Lex. - There's an example in the AI world of a system called Gemini 1.5. - Yeah, I mean, everybody was Black or
whatever, people of color. - [Lex] George Washington
was Black. Nazis were Black. - So why is it when that came
out, it was a big uproar. But when somebody, so who, oh, who was it? One of the people who were
trying to fuck with me? I forget which one. - There's so many people. - Yeah, but he pointed out to
Elon, that Grok, Elon's AI, was woke when it answered
certain questions. And other people have pointed
out other things to Elon about Grok, Grok, Grok,
however it's pronounced, that was leaning left or woke, right? And Elon's response was, oh, it'll change. It's a mistake. We're fixing it. When it happens to Gemini and Google, it's the end of the world. Look how woke they are. And it's a reflection
of all their culture. Now Google comes out
and says it's a mistake. And then they doxx the guy
who's the product manager or whatever of AI, of that product, and then they go back and
look at his old tweets, right? And show that he's very left-leaning and very, you know, DEI supportive. And that's the end of the world. - It's not the end of the world. But Google is so much dependent on trust. That trust a Google search has as objective as possible a channel into the world of information. And so that brand is
really important for us. - Yeah, see, you're over, you're
giving them too much power. And maybe I'm not
recognizing the power, right? So I'll tell you a personal experience. Up until a month ago, maybe,
if you put in keto gummies, "Shark Tank" keto gummies into Google, it would show up with scammy
ads, scam ad after scam ad. And I would get emails
up until a month ago from elderly people asking me why the gummies weren't working, and why the companies were charging all this money on a month by month basis when they tried to cancel. And they said it was the number one deal on "Shark Tank" of all
time, right, on all Shark. It was a mistake. - Well, there's fraud, there's
mistakes, but the mistakes. - No, but why didn't Google fix it, right? The just didn't happen once over one week, over two weeks, right. And because it was hard to fix. As it turns out, I was working with them
to try to find a fix, and we would both look at the same page. And if you were inside of Google within the google.com domain,
it would show one page. If you were outside of
Google, it would show another. And it took us looking
at it at the same time for anybody to realize it. Meaning that there's a
lot of technology problems that are hard to fix. - They're super complex. And we could talk about it
forever with social media, the criticism towards Google,
towards other companies, when they're based in Silicon Valley, there could be an ideological drift into a ideological bubble outta which the technology is created. And they could be blind
to the obvious bias that's becomes inherent to. - Yeah, but they got billions of customers who are not gonna, so
what you're saying is the free market stops with
artificial intelligence, that people don't pay
attention and respond. That Google doesn't
listen to the responses, that people inside of Google will ignore their own
best financial interest and even their own best
personal interests. 'Cause they know they're
gonna get doxxed now by Elon and others. And so I just don't see that. And Elon's not allowed to
make those same mistakes, but. - [Lex] No, no, no. - He is allowed to make those
mistakes, but Google isn't. - Oh no, Elon is 100% should be criticized for the ridiculousness of
overstatements that he makes about various products. He's having a bit of
fun, like you are, also. And I also believe in the free market, but it's not always efficient. You know, there's like a delay. - It just takes time. Yeah, it's fine. - So, which is why Elon is
important when calling out, I think overstating the
criticism of Gemini, but Elon and others are just. - Gemini wasn't even a fully
available public product yet. - It's still a bias that
resonates with people. - That's the way neural
networks work though, right? That's why there'll be millions of models because weights and
biases putting together, you know, a neural network. - But, well, no, so like
the Black George Washington is a correction on top
of the foundation model, to keep it quote unquote sort of safe. One of the big criticisms of
all of the models, frankly, probably even Grok a little bit less so, is they're like trying
to be really conservative in the sense of trying to be
careful not to say crazy shit. - [Mark] Of course. - Because we don't know how the thing. - It's brand new, and we
know what happens, right? And they do it on the
front end with prompts, and they try to do it on the back end with the neural networks that
are underneath them, right? And it doesn't always work. And that's why there's
gonna be millions of models rather than just, you know,
four foundational models or five that everybody uses. - Well, I guess the main criticism is you want to have some transparency of all the teams that are
involved, and that this kind of, to the degree there's
a left-leaning ideology within the companies, it
doesn't affect the product. - But that's the beauty of. - The free market. - Yeah, that's where the
market corrects it, right? And not only from the outside, because everybody you
know is going to test it. Like when YouTube first came
out, or not first came out, when after Google bought
them, you used to be able, there used to be different commands you could give it, right? There were line prompt commands
that you could give it, and you could find all the
nasty porn that got loaded before they kicked it off, right. And it was just the nastiest shit ever. And even now to this day, if there's some horrific, tragic event, somebody's loading it up, right? Now I know that's not direct to your point of internal influence
to the output, right? But people on the outside are gonna check for that now, right? It's almost like the
new bug contest, right? To try to find bugs in software. And then on the inside,
if it's all left-leaning, and all you have is
left-leaning employees, because you know, most conservatives
won't wanna work there, then again, that's
self-correcting as well. - That's the hope. But it can self-correct in
different kinds of ways. You can have a different
company that competes and becomes more conservative. I mean, my worry is that
it's kind of becomes like two different worlds
where there's like. - Already is. - No, come on. Don't give up. - Oh, I'm not giving up. So where does this go
is the question, right. What happens next? And I mean, going back, I mean, I've been in so many PC
revolutions, right, or evolutions. Where porn was the big issue, right. Now we don't even talk
about porn being an issue, even though, you know, if
every post on Twitter now has, you know, LinkedIn bio
for a porn post, right? We don't even think
that's a negative anymore. That's just an accepted thing. And now it's become very, where are your politics on Twitter? But again, as you extend
that and things grow, as AI models become more
efficient and trainable on less, for a lot less money, or even
locally on a PC or a phone, we're all gonna have our own models, and there's gonna be millions and millions and millions of models, and
not just foundational models. Now maybe they're built
some on open source, maybe, you know, it'll be copypasta where you can just cut and
paste and create your own model and train it yourself. Maybe it'll be mixture of
experts where, you know, maybe it'll be a meta front end. Like we're working on a project where we take 30 different AI models, and there's just a meta search engine where it searches all of them, and you can compare all the outputs and see what you think is the best, kinda like a search engine, right? Because you might get is DEI good, right? You know, is the COVID
vaccine good, right? You're gonna get a variety of outputs, and you have to make
that decision yourself. That's what I think is gonna
happen with AI as well, because I think brands,
there's no way the Mayo Clinic and the Harvard Medical School are just going to contribute all their IP to ChatGPT or Gemini or whatever, it's gonna have to be licensed or they're gonna do their own. - Yeah, I mean, that's
a very hopeful message. But that said, you know, human history doesn't always autocorrect really quickly, self-correct really quickly. Sometimes you get into
this very painful things. You have Stalin, you have Hitler, you can get to places very quickly where the ideological thing
just builds on itself. And like you, but. - Twitter is not real world,
you know, there's 20 that. - Twitter's not real
world. That's true, yes. But you could still have a
nation captured by an ideology. I think America has been really good at having these two blue and red always at tension with each
other, dividing the populace. And in the process of doing
that, figuring stuff out, like, almost like
playing devil's advocate, but like, in real life. - And, you know, and that's
fair and that's right. You know, as opposed to Pravda telling you everything
you want to know, right. And everybody believing it 'cause there's control
of everything, right? And so going back to
what you said earlier, people in Russia don't think
it, you know, invading Ukraine, you know, a lot of them see
it as a positive, right? I'm sure you have relatives and
friends who think, you know, it's the best thing that
ever happened, right? Because they believe in Putin and. - They're denazifying Ukraine, they're removing the Nazis from Ukraine. - Right, because that's
exactly what Putin said. And you know, we don't have
one uniform media outlet. That's the difference. Even though people like to
talk about mainstream media as being the source of
a lot of the friction, there is no such thing as
mainstream media anymore. You know, Fox is the
biggest cable news channel with the biggest audience, and they call everybody
else mainstream media. You know, it's insane
the things that we accept from our sources of information. To me, that's the bigger problem. The bigger problem is trying to figure out what is free speech and what is the line of
tolerance for free speech, and at what point does hateful free speech crowd out other people, right? Putin's the master of that. You're going to jail
or you're gonna be dead if you disagree, right? No, God, help us if we ever
get to that point here. But the person who controls the algorithm controls the world, right? And if you are committed
to one specific platform as your singular source of information, or affiliated platforms, then whoever controls the
algorithm or the programming there controls you in a lot of respects. And I think that's where our
biggest problem has been. We get people attached to specific platforms and
apps and media outlets, and they become part of that team, and they identify as such. And either you're part of
the team or you're not. And that to me is the fundamental problem. It's not woke ideology, because I never felt any
pressure to make the choices that I've chosen in, you know, including diversity,
equity, and inclusion. And I've never forced anybody
or told anybody to do it. I've just said, here's my experiences. Whenever I've talked to people who talk about the woke
ideology, no one ever got forced. I mean, if you look at
Dylan McDermott, right? If there was a way to gauge the number of impressions
that she had, right? And where they sourced from, I'd be willing to bet any amount of money that 90% plus of the impressions and discussions of Dylan McDermott were on right-leaning media. - Several things actually,
well let's even go there. You gotten a bit of a
beef with, again, fun, with Jordan Peterson about this. - That's the guy whose name
I couldn't think of, yeah. - So the topic there was
the gender transition and Dylan Mulvaney, can you explain the nature of the beef? I mean it's an interesting
claim you're making that most of the people who are concerned about
this are conservatives. - Yeah, just the point is that
if you looked at impressions, like when you run an ad, you're curious about impressions
and who sees them, right? But if you look at the impressions related to Dylan McDermott,
I would, like I just said, I bet 90% or more were
in conservative media, and you know, I don't know
how many followers she had, 250,000 followers or whatever when the Bud Light ad came out. And if it weren't for Kid
Rock shooting, you know, gun shooting at Dylan
McDermott Bud Light cans, she'd be long forgotten. - Yeah, but most of the people
that care about censorship are gonna be free speech advocates. So like most people that care
about Putin suppressing speech or anybody else suppressing speech are going to be like libertarian. So I get there's probably
an explanation of that. The criticism that Jordan
Peterson could provide, I guess he said that
Dylan Mulvaney popularized the kind of mutilation, right,
in his view, that can affect, there's a very serious
life changing process that a person goes through. And when that's applied to a child, it can do a lot of harm to a person if. - But my point still holds. I don't know how many kids were following. And you can look at the followers list, it's not like it's hidden, right. Back then, if they had 250,000 followers, and now we're on TikTok, you know, where he might get 50 some
thousand views or likes, right? I don't know how many views but likes. I've never seen any evidence that Dylan McDermott influenced the people to transition their gender. As he transitioned to her, it was documented on TikTok
over the course of a year. And again, when you go back and look at the views on those
TikToks, it was, you know, it wasn't like enormous. - Yeah, but the trends start, right? It could be what worries
people is for young kids, there to be a trend of, especially when you feel like an outsider, you feel not yourself, less than yourself, all this kind of stuff
that kids feel like, that if it's because popular
enough it is a trend, you would gender transition
without meaning to do that. It's just part of a trend.
That's the worry they have. - Yeah. But that is a big stretch, right? To think that all the
things that have to happen before you transition gender, right. And I'm not saying kids
might identify, you know, find it cool or, you know,
in the moment expedient, if you will, to dress
up as the other gender. Great. Who cares, right? But to go through the
actual physical transition, like I don't remember what
the numbers were that I read, but I do remember that the
latest numbers that came out in terms of transitioning
were from "JAMA," which is a medical association that said from 2021 to 2022, the numbers went down. But the bigger point is
there are no numbers for 2023 when post-Dylan McDermott. So there's no way to know
if the assertion is true, even marginally true. Now you can easily suggest it, right? But you can say that about any social media influencer, right? You know, kids are dying
because, you know, I mean, it's just like when
people like accuse Trump of potentially influencing
people to, you know, inject bleach into their
veins, you can't, you know, that's a big old leap to say that because you know, Trump says it that people are gonna
start, you know, injecting, and then they find
somebody who actually did, and it's like, oh, it must be true. You know, this is a trend now. I just, I'm just not buying it that there aren't enough
roadblocks in the way. Now I'm not saying it
never happens, right? And for me, to me, you should
have to wait until you're 18 to actually have any
surgery to transition. And if your parents approve it earlier, then you can have a
conversation with your doctor. But you're suggesting that
everybody in that process to go to transition a minor, is corrupt. That the doctor, the
sociologist, the psychologist, all the people involved, the hospital where the
surgery is happening, the insurance company
that's paying for it, they all have been
corrupted by this trend. I just don't see that. - Well, not corrupted,
but you know, people, it's back to the DEI thing,
there could be pressure, and we are. - Pressure to operate. So think about all the people
who have to be complicit. To do an operation. - It's not complicit like
evil complicit, it's more. - No, it is evil complicit, right? Because somebody, in hospitals right now, they won't perform abortions
because of state law. In Alabama, they stopped
IVF treatment immediately after that ruling by that
judge, right, the Qanon judge. To think that they're
not gonna pay attention to the possible consequences of being the hospital
that does transgender, that gives doctors operating rights there, and not be aware of the
risks associated with it and double check? To me, that's just insane. They're risking their entire
business and livelihood and personal relationships for not checking that this
14-year-old, you know, boy who wants to be a girl or vice versa, is there waiting for surgery,
that I just don't see that. - In America, yes. But if we look at humans in
general, and Jordan Peterson, I think unjustly, incorrectly,
brought up Auschwitz. - Yeah, that was ridiculous. - But if we look, to me, World War II is a very interesting time. It does reveal a lot about human nature, and that humans are able
to commit atrocities without really speaking up. The point I wanna make is that
when you're in this situation where everybody is around you,
is committing an atrocity, you can be sort of the good German and. - [Mark] Yeah, but. - I mean, human nature is such that you can do all these things. - But that is in a time of war. - Yeah, but it's still human nature. It's interesting to a remember that's. - It's a time of war. When you feel like there's
nationalism, patriotism, everything that comes up. Russia, right. You know. The moms of the kids sent to be, you know, sent to Ukraine who didn't
come back, in Russia, feel certainly different than the everyday Russian who's
just taking, you know, whatever information that's available from a unified controlled media. - Yeah, but, you know, we
should remember human nature. It's interesting. - I'm not dismissing human nature at all, but there's a difference,
I think that human nature, self-preservation
influences those decisions. There's nothing about
self-preservation involved in DEI, wokeness, you know, transgenderism, to compare it to a
Auschwitz, that's insane. - Yeah, tell that
comparison is almost always, probably always is insane. Comparison between
anything and the Holocaust. - [Mark] I agree. - I think there's a name for that rule, but once you bring up Hitler,
the conversation ends. - [Mark] Goes away. - I do appreciate you bringing up Trump and bleach as an example. So continuing on fun exchanges
between you and Elon, you said, "If they were
having Biden's last wake and it was him versus Trump, and he was being given last rites, I would still vote for Biden." To which Elon replied caricaturing you. "If Biden were a flesh eating zombie with five seconds to live,
or upon being reelected, Earth would plunge into a
1,000 years of darkness, I would still vote for him." That's basically quoting
you but a caricature. And you responded "While
I have your attention. Wanted to say thank you. Your consultants at Tesla followed up about using Cost Plus Drugs," but which we'll talk about,
"to save the company money. Truly appreciate it." And in parentheses, "My limit
is 300 years of darkness." Very well done, Mark. What's your intuition if we just stick on Biden
and Trump for a sec? What's your intuition why Biden would make a better president than Trump? - Look at it at the basics, right? If you look at the people he's hired, there hasn't been any turnover
in his cabinet at all. If you look at the people he's hired over the course of his career, or while he was vice
president in particular, there's nobody who's turned on him and came out and written books
and made public statements about how he's bad for the country. Now, compare that to Trump. The people closest to him,
almost all of them turn, unless there's a financial
relationship involved. And to me that says everything. - The dynamics of the team
is important to you when you. - If you're gonna be the most
powerful person in the world, you better know how to
manage and lead, right. And that's not to say Biden
hasn't made a a lot of mistakes. I mean, immigration, the
border is a horrific mistake. And hopefully he recognizes that. And I don't like the fact that
he doesn't admit his mistakes and just say, okay, I gotta fix it. Or I made a mistake in
Afghanistan, whatever it may be. Right, the position of Commander
in Chief and President, you're gonna make mistakes. Then I look at the other
guy, never admits a mistake. And the list is long. - What do you think about
the immigration situation? A lot of conservatives
are using that sort of, the theory is that the
reason it's happening is because they would be
able to illegally vote. - That's insane. - [Lex] For Biden. - Yeah, you can't be an
illegal immigrant and vote. And now in a lot of states,
because of the conservatives, they've passed laws saying you
have to show identification. When I voted in Texas, you had to show, you know, state identification. They can't vote, you can't
register as an illegal alien that I'm aware of to vote. - Yeah, but of course that
story really worries me. Enables or serves as a catalyst for questioning the
legitimacy of an election. - But I remember going to the
debate with Trump in 2016, and he was debating Clinton,
and one of the things he said was, we don't even know if this
election will be legitimate if I lose. This was in 2016 before
he was even elected. And that was where he was
going. That's just what he does. He's never admitted a mistake. The guy's failed a zillion times. Most people say, okay,
I learned from them. You know, I read a book about Roy Cohn, and, you know, Roy Cohn was
the ultimate deny, deny, deny. And that was one of Trump's mentors. And you can see almost
everything of Roy Cohn ever did in the same way that Donald
Trump approaches things. - But given how drastic the
immigration situation is, that story becomes more believable. - Yeah, of course it does, right? But the facts are still the facts, right. And in red states, they're
gonna be checking every ID, they're gonna be making
sure that it's not the case. And you know, you can
also make the argument, well, in a blue state, it doesn't matter. In the swing states, they're
still gonna be checking 'cause they know Trump is
gonna sue the shit out of them when he loses. You know, and so again,
that's where, you know, people will take those
self preservation steps to keep their job and do the right thing. There's still enough people who
will believe in this country in how amazing it is
to do the right thing. And a lot of the premise of what some conservatives
are saying and doing, the underpinning of it is that their fellow citizens
will not do anything, not some things, anything, if that serves the best
interests of this country. And to me, that's just wrong. You know, that is just
misleading and wrong. - I just worry about, I don't
care about Trump or Biden, I care about democracy. And I just worry, I worry about
the viral nature of the idea of this illegal immigrants. - But it's just, it's
very functional, right? Either they get across, there's
a thousand different ways, an unlimited number of ways to enter the United States
of America undetected, right. And the south border, where
it's the easiest and the worst. And Biden needs to take
steps to reduce that. Remember when Biden was vice president and Obama was president, they called Obama the deporter in chief. He had no problem deporting people. And I think if I had to guess,
and this is just a guess, that when they looked at the initial statistics for
immigration when Biden took over, they thought there was
room for more immigrants, not because they would
vote, but, you know, you can make an a fiscal argument that in a world where the birth
rate is flat to declining, we need immigrants, right. And immigrants typically don't, you know, don't have a higher crime rate
or anything than, you know, indigenous American citizens, indigenous isn't the right
word, but American citizens. And so they made a calculated mistake, they made a decision that was wrong, and now they have to fix it, or it's gonna hurt them severely. But I don't buy, you know,
like what Elon's pushing that the whole reason is they are voters and will become voters. - And we should say the obvious, you're a descendant of immigrants. - [Mark] Yeah, for sure. - And the immigrants is what
makes this country great and many parts of the
diversity of this nation. And we should probably keep the people that are like already been
in this country for a while and are killing it, like
PhD students and all this. It's like we're just. - That's not what Donald
Trump wants though. He wants to ship them all out, right. There's just a whole lot of hyperbole when it comes to talking to all, about talking about all of these
things we're talking about, when it's right versus left. My team versus your team.
My tribe versus your tribe. The only way to stand out is hyperbole. The hard part, and why I
like this conversation is, how do you distinguish
hyperbole versus reality? And I get where you're
going, Lex, where it's like, what the smallest spark sometimes can cause people to change, and then that spark becomes bigger and it becomes more widespread, and then all of a sudden
your country has changed. It's not what you thought it was. I get that completely, right. And yes, you always have to be
on top of that to make sure, but a lot of that comes from
lack of leadership, right. And lack of trust, because
there's nobody who's saying, all right, Republicans, that's all hyperbole, and
you're wrong for that. Democrats, you fucked up
on immigration, right? You fucked up in Afghanistan, right? Here's where you made
these mistakes. Own it. There's nobody who says, right, we're not gonna just bring in Republicans if the Republicans win. And then, you know, and then nobody says, we're not gonna just bring in Democrats. We're gonna bring in a mix, right. We're gonna try to get
balance on the Supreme Court. There's just, there's no
leadership that's doing it. That's the fundamental problem. It's not about the ideology of woke, it's not the, no leadership. - Yeah, leadership and
yeah, there's, it's just, whatever systems we've created, it's really frustrating that
if you don't like Trump, it really is Trump Derangement Syndrome. Like he's definitely Hitler. And if you don't like Biden,
he's senile lizard person. That's just. (laughs) - Right, everybody gets labeled, right. And because that works on social media. Look, if Elon changed the algorithm just by taking himself out of it. Seriously, I'm not
saying don't post, right, post all you want, but you know, if you
look at his followers, they're almost all right-leaning. If you look at the people
he engages with positively, they're almost all right-leaning. And if you look at the people he engages with negatively like me, right? I consider myself an an independent, but I lean left on the DEI topic, right? That influences the algorithm. And so you see what you see
because of what he says. - Yeah, well, I mean, for sure. But there could be a lot of
influential people on Twitter that influence the algorithm
and all that kind of stuff. I do feel it's not even about
ideology where you lean, it's about like the algorithm,
not prioritizing drama be like the attention grabbing thing, or the lower lizard version of that, where like people just want the drama, they want it to fight it out. - When I last read through all
the stuff on their algorithm, right, maybe it's changed,
whoever has the biggest account and gets engagement on that account influences what people see the most. - Yeah, I mean that's interesting. I don't know if that's,
to the degree that's true. - [Mark] Pretty sure it's still the case. - Pretty rigorous description of the way the algorithm works. It's actually kind of fascinating. There's that clustering of
people based on interests. - Right, but I think they
called the nearest neighbor, right, approach, and I
think that's what they do. And so whoever has the biggest account, has the most neighbors, who
in turn have their neighbors who in turn have their neighbors. And that's how they
discern what comes next. - But there's a clustering still. So like, if you don't
give a shit about Elon. - And you're not gonna not following them. Yeah, you're not following. - You're not gonna have an influence. He's not gonna have an influence. - When you get a break, just create a burner account on Twitter, and see who they recommend to you. - [Lex] Elon. - And not just Elon, I mean
the people that Elon likes. And I'm saying that's not
Elon saying add this person, add this person, and suggest this person, this person, and this person. I'm saying that's what the algorithm is. - Yeah, there should be
transparency around that for sure. - [Mark] There is. - That's the key. - There is, and that's
the whole point, right? He knows there's transparency,
and he knows the impact. That's why when I say take yourself outta the algorithm, right? Don't include his account, that changes, I think, the
output of the algorithm. - Well, when he wasn't owning Twitter, he was one of the biggest accounts, if not the biggest account already. - It wasn't, but still,
like, even like the Kim, well, the Kim Kardashian
accounts, whatever, right? It wasn't open source, to
Elon's credit, it is now. So I couldn't see it to know, right. So I didn't get the sense
one way or the other of one element being
dominant over the other. But obviously conservatives
felt that left-leaning was more dominant back then. - Yeah. I would love to
see numbers on all of this. - [Mark] Yeah, you be stoked. - DEI, everything like this, sometimes anecdotal data
really frustrates me. It frustrates me primarily
because of how sexy it is. Like people just love. - That's a great way to describe it. - Love a story. And I'm like, God dammit, this
is not science. This is this. - It's not even common sense, you know? - Well, no, I think anecdotal stories often have a wisdom in them like. - No doubt, right? There's something to be
gained from seeing them. - There's a signal there, but like how representative is that signal of the broader thing. - Right, there's a whole
lot more noise than signal more often than not. - All right, so as I
mentioned, Cost Plus Drugs, there's so many questions I can ask here, but what's the big question? What's broken about our healthcare system? - There's no transparency. And the lack of transparency
leads to lack of trust, and when you can't trust
the healthcare system other than maybe your doctor,
that's a broken system. - So what aspect of the system that Cost Plus Drugs is trying to solve? - So the thing we're trying
to solve for is trust. And the way we feel we get there is through complete transparency. So when you go to costplusdrugs.com and you put in the name of the medication, if it's one of the 2,500
and growing that we carry, we will first show you our costs, what we actually pay for it. Then we'll show you our 15% markup. Then we'll show the pharmacy
fill fee and shipping. And that's your total price. And that alone, that transparency alone, is completely revolutionizing how drugs are priced in America today. And it's led to, you
know, research being done comparing our pricing to CMS, and ours being cheaper, you know, than even the government is negotiating, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so just that transparency
alone had an impact, and saved millions of people hundreds of millions of dollars or more. - And maybe it results
in more transparency in other parts of the system too. Seeing the business of it. But what do the so-called
middlemen companies. So the PBMs. - The pharmacy benefit managers. - Thank you. CVS, Caremark, Cigna's Express Scripts, and United Health's Optum Rx. They control majority of the market. What do they do wrong? - They put profits over everything, right? And they know in an industry
that's completely opaque, they can pretty much do what they want and nobody gets to see what
they're doing in detail. And so, you know, the first
thing when you sign a contract with one of those big PBMs is says you can't disclose any of this. And the fact that you can't be disclosed means they could tell Lexus
company that they're being, you know, they're getting a great price and they're only being charged x, and they can tell Mark's company, oh, you're getting a great price, and we're charging Mark x plus, right? But Mark doesn't know any better 'cause there's no way to know. - The markup is not transparent. - The cost isn't transparent,
the markup isn't transparent, you know, and, you know,
there's different things. You know, like I was
just talking to a company in a presentation a couple days ago, and they took the step to
leave the big three PBMs to go to a rebate-free
PBM that was smaller. And what they said led to the decision, they had a contract with the PBM for these things called rebates, right? Where depending on the volume
of medications you buy, they'll kick back to you
a percentage of them. And as it turns out, when they compared what was contracted for to what they actually got, they were getting underpaid
every single year. They just don't care, right. They'll take products, there's
a drug called Humira, right? And it is the number one
revenue drug in the country. And there's also a biosimilar,
multiple biosimilars, but one we carry called YUSIMRY. And Humira, the pre-rebate
price is about $8,000 per month. And after rebates, depending
on the size of the company, it'll be anywhere from
3 to $6,000 a month. You can go to your doctor to prescribe that biosimilar
YUSIMRY, and you pay $594. But those big three PBMs won't allow their clients to get YUSIMRY because they don't get
a rebate on YUSIMRY. So they'd rather keep a
drug on their formulary, even though their patients would save, you know, their customers
would save a lot of money. They'd rather keep a
drug and exclude another because they'll make a lot more money. - So the CVS Caremark spokesperson,
I think responded to you Phil Blando, with the usual language that so deeply exhausts me. But I was wondering if
there's any truth to it. Employers, unions, health
plans and government programs work with CVS Caremark precisely because we deliver for them, lower drug costs, better health outcomes, and broad pharmacy access through
our true cost cost vantage and choice formulary initiatives. We are the leading agent
of change, innovation, and transparency in the market. - That's a whole lot of nothing. - So they are not transparent. - No, no. Call them up. You go to Cost Plus Drugs,
we'll give you our price list of all 2,500 plus drugs. - [Lex] The actual cost. - The actual cost, and
what we sell it for. 'Cause it's just a plus 15%. Call up any of the big three companies and ask them for the same thing. They're gonna laugh at you. It's so bad in fact, if you do
business with them right now and you just ask for your claims data, meaning, you know, how
many people use Humira that we're paying, and
what are we paying for it? They won't even give it to you unless you really, really
scream and yell at them. And then they'll charge you
and take six months to get it. So like when we moved away from them, we wanted to get what our claims data was to understand what we
were gonna be facing. They wouldn't give it to us
until like six months later. I forget the exact month. And then they charged us for
it as well. Our own data. - On the CEO front, you said that CEOs don't understand healthcare coverage and it's costing them big. What's the connection between
Cost Plus Drugs and companies? - So I can speak for my own companies, and this applies to all
companies, you know, bigger companies that self-insure,
'cause we self-insured. When I finally, when we started Cost Plus, I finally said, okay, it's
time for me to understand how I'm paying for my healthcare for my employees and their families. And the first thing I looked at was a lot of these companies use employee benefits consultants. And turns out I was getting, I was paying $30 per employee per month, which was millions of dollars a year. And they were just sending
us to the companies that paid them the biggest commissions. I'm like, how fucking dumb am I, right? So I'm like, okay, we're cutting that. And then I looked at our
medication, our prescription deal that goes through the
PBMs that we were using, and that the consultant connected us with. And I took a list of, this was
early on in Cost Plus Drugs, a list of the generic drugs that we sold that cost more than $30, that the Mavericks also
had purchased, right? We were able to get that claims data. And it turns out we spent
$169,000 with that PBM, one of the big three PBMs. And it would've cost us buying
from Cost Plus Drugs $19,000. And that's just a simple example. Then I looked at the insurance
side of things, right? We self-insure, so there
weren't premiums per se, but we were getting charged
$17.15 per employee per month just to use the network that
they put together for us, you know, providers, hospitals, whatever. And I'm like, all right,
are there companies that won't charge us to put
together these networks? Turns out there's a lot of them. And that those insurance
companies and those PBMs are also responsible for
determining what claims, what to authorize and what to deny, right? So for a drug, it may be, all right, this is an expensive drug. But before they'll allow, before they'll say
they'll pay for the drug that your doctor wants
to prescribe for you, you have to try these three other drugs in what's called step up therapy, right? To see if these other cheaper drugs work, or they're not even necessarily cheaper. They may just be being pushed because they're getting a higher rebate. And so I'm like, that's insane. I want my employees to get the medication that the doctors say is best. And so I didn't realize
those were the intricacies of how my health or where
my healthcare dollars went. There's not a single CEO who does. Because that's not a core
competency that they need. And the CFOs, that's not
their core competency. And the HR people, they contribute and they understand it some because they're dealing with the claims, but they spend most of their
prescription drug-related time or healthcare-related times trying to get preauthorizations approved. So you know, your kid breaks
their arm or you get sick, and you go to the doctor, and before the doctor will
do a surgery or do whatever, they have to go to the insurance
company, get preauthorized. and then they always say no, right? And then you have to go back and somebody has to argue for you. And that just eats up employee time because you know, I'm
sick or my kid's sick and you're wasting my
time, eats up HR time. The CEOs don't know any of this, right? So what I'm saying is, one,
the smartest thing to do is to get a healthcare
CEO at every company with over let's say, 500 employees, that focuses on all these things. You'd save a shitload of money. And two, health care
is your second largest line item expense after payroll. And in some companies there's hundreds, billions of dollars, right? And you don't understand it, and you're letting these guys rip you off? And it's because these big
CEOs don't understand it and are getting ripped off that the industry is the way it is, because that allows the
opacity to continue. - That's fascinating. So that most companies outsource, offload, sort of the expertise
on the healthcare side when they really should be,
internally there should be an expert that. - Yes, because it's the
wellness of your employees and their families. - [Lex] And it costs a lot of money. - Yeah, but if your
employees aren't healthy or if they're worried about their kids, and what is more worrisome and detrimental to the performance of a company, right? A DEI program, or, (laughs) or having to go to HR and
scream and yell and explain, and your doctor wasting
their time doing same thing to get authorization for
a surgery or a medication. It's insane. - What made you decide to step into this cartel-like situation where so much is opaque? - So I got a cold email
from a Dr. Alex Oshmyansky who's my co-founder. He's a radiologist by
trade, and a physicist, and a smart motherfucker. And he had a pharmacy
that he wanted to create, a compounding pharmacy, that
would manufacture generic drugs that were in short supply. Because it happens all the time that things aren't available. I'm like, you're thinking too small, we should do something
on a much bigger scale. And then it was right around the time they were sending the pharmacy
bro, Martin Shkreli to jail. And so I was reading up on that, and he increased the price
of this drug Daraprim, I think it was like 7,500%, or increased a low cost drug
to $7,500, one of those. And I'm like, well if he can just jack
up the price to this drug and charge more and get away with it, this has to be an incredibly
inefficient market. And so the question is,
why is he able to do it? And it was immediately apparent that it was a lack of transparency. And so can we start a company that is fully transparent with our costs, our markup, and our selling
price, and see if it works? And so we went for it and
it took off immediately. I mean, you know, you read a press release from
a company saying, you know, they were creating a
cost advantage program basically pretending to replicate us. We haven't been in business
two years. How insane is that? - Did you get a lot of pressure to mean, I'm sure they're very
good at playing games. Like so cartel-type
situations they protect. It feels like healthcare like is very difficult to get in there. - It very, yeah, it does. I mean, and the whole
industry is an arbitrage, but we don't work inside the system, we work outside the system. And so we don't work with
those biggest companies. The biggest companies with
the most dominant control, you know, it's very insulated
and very controlled, like you said. We work outside them,
we won't work with them. And so because of that, we don't have access to every medication because they've told a lot of
the big brand manufacturers that if they work with us, they'll take them off their formularies or change the rebate structure so that they won't be prescribed as much. - That's dark. - Yeah, it is dark. But
we'll get past that, right? Because there's a downstream impact of all this in the rebates, and the greediness of
those big three PBMs. When you go to a local
pharmacy here in Austin, right? And let's just say you have,
you have a friend here, right, that is on Medicare or Medicare Advantage, and they go to a local pharmacy and they get a drug that costs $600. Well, in the insurance company, that $600, the pharmacy first buys that drug for probably that price minus 5%, so $570. Then there's probably
a copay by the patient, and that's probably $20. So now the net investment
that the pharmacy, the local pharmacy has for
that brand medication is $550. Where it gets really fucked
up is those big three PBMs, they're not reimbursing them $550 or more, they're reimbursing them $500 or less. And literally those community pharmacies are eating that loss. And as a result, they're going outta
business left and right. And the most insane part of it is, yes, with corporate employer
insurance, that happens, but it happens more with Medicare Part D and Medicare Advantage. It happens all the time with those, almost with every script. So the government is complicit in these community pharmacies
going out of business. So how does that connect
to Cost Plus Drugs? And what we're doing and the big brands. The big brands know that if all these community
pharmacies are going, tens of thousands of them
are gonna go out of business because of the way this pricing is, they're gonna lose a connection between their brand medications and grandma and grandpa and Aunt Sally, and all that business is gonna get transferred
to the big companies, and they're gonna have even less leverage. So they're working with us
to come up with programs that are very supportive
of independent pharmacies, and that's gonna allow
us to break the cartel. Because it's in their best interest not to allow them to be
so vertically integrated that they destroy the entire community and independent pharmacy industry. - Is there other aspects
of the healthcare industry that could use this kind of transparency and revolutionizing? - Yeah, so what we're gonna do with our own healthcare, right? We're not gonna be in the
business of selling healthcare or anything like that or operate. But the things we do for my companies, we're only gonna do deals with providers, healthcare providers, that allow us to be
completely transparent. So that whatever contracts we
do, we're gonna post them all, whatever pricing we get,
we're gonna post them all so that every company who's
our size or even bigger will have a template
that they can work on, which will take it away from the big three insurance
companies and the big three PBMs. Because now without that transparency, they have to use consultants who are getting paid by those big three, you know, those big companies, and aren't giving them the best response. And so now that transparency
will overcome that. - And you're using your,
how should I say it? Celebrity, your name, to
kind of push this forward. - It's the only company
I've ever put my name on. - It's weird that people
aren't getting into this space. Like, public people, you know, like big, there's not like a big,
you know, you look at tech, there's like these like, like
CEOs are open and public, and public and they're pushing the company and they're selling everything and it's like all transparent. But you don't see that in healthcare? - No, because it's a big business, and most people, like if I was
25 trying to start a company, I'd work in the system. 'Cause if I can build up big
enough, they would just buy me, and I'd make, you know,
money and buy a sports team. But I don't need that money now. - Let me ask you about AI, you got in a little bit of an
argument about open source. I think you stepped in
between Vinod Khosla and Mark Andreessen. You think AI should be open sourced? - Yeah, for sure. Yeah. - So like all that
discussion we've been having about like Google and so on, one of the. - Okay, two different things. Meaning that Meta's
doing open source, right? And that's a good choice for them. I think that's a smart choice, right? But it's just a business
decision for everybody else. I don't think it should be forced. - Forced, yes, yeah, right. And even Google's open sourcing
some of the models and. - Because they're all, that's
a very incestuous industry where, you know, the people all
work together at some level. They read the same papers, they
go to the same conferences. You know, it's like the early days of streaming and the internet where people use the same
technology everywhere, and now they just try different things. And you get one smarter or two, a couple smart people in one
company like Anthropic, right? And they do things a little
bit better and efficient. Model efficiency gets better. So, you know, it's just a business choice. But I don't think it should be forced, but I think it's a
smart business decision. - Open sourcing is a
smart business decision. It's a tricky one. I mean Google is a pioneer in that with TensorFlow in the AI space. That's a tricky decision to get. - [Mark] It really, really is, right? - To give away the code. - Go back to historically, you know, there was digital computing,
which was a dominant player, and they thought, and
IBM to a certain extent thought that they wouldn't
be subject to a problem with the PC industry. And then all of a sudden, and with their mainframes and everything, they had captive software. They wouldn't use off the
shelf software, right? So for a Digital Equipment
mainframe or an IBM mainframe, you needed software
that was written for it. There was nothing off the shelf. And when the PC industry came along, it was the exact opposite. There was, you know,
MSDOS and then Windows, things that were off the
shelf that every PC could use. And that changed how people
thought about software. And I think the same
thing will happen here, where it's going to be, as
models become more efficient and easier and less expensive to train, I think there'll be more
reasons to open source. - Yeah, that's the hope. And it creates more competition and a lot of different
diversity of approaches in how they're implemented, deployed, what kind of products
they create, all of that. Vinod compared it, the danger of that, to the Manhattan Project that. - Yeah, yeah. I'm not buying that. - You don't see the parallels between nuclear weapons and AI. - No, no. I think, I'm not
an AI fatalist at all, right. I'm an AI optimist, but it's not to say that there isn't a lot of scary shit that can happen with it. Militarily, you know, like I said earlier, I'm a big believer that
there's going to be millions and tens of millions of models, and people will take their expertise and either get hired
for it and contribute, or create their own models and license. So that, you know, you
see now with this thing called mixture of experts, right? Where you connect things. And people can take their expertise and we'll be able to take that expertise and retain it in a way that
they want to retain it. So, you know, I don't
think there's gonna be one medical database. I told this to people at
a couple big companies that were doing healthcare initiatives. Branding is so important
in the healthcare space, you know for hospitals,
you know, the Mayo Clinics, the MD Andersons, they're huge brands, and I don't think they're just
gonna give up their expertise to some, you know,
singular model, you know, and say, okay, you know,
whatever expertise we have is available to you in Gemini or ChatGPT or you know, so-and-so's
version of Meta's opensource. I just don't, there's just,
that would be business suicide. And so I think you're
gonna see each of them have their own models, and update them as they
go and license them. - Yeah, and yeah, make
money from the expertise. - You have to, you have to.
- And don't the wages. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Any expertise evolves and grows
and all that kind of stuff. And you want own that growth. What advice would you
give to young people? You have an exceptionally
successful career. You came from little, made a lot. What advice would you give them? - Love your life, right. You know, find the things that
you can enjoy. Be curious. You don't have to have all the
answers when you're 12, 15, I get emails from 13,
15-year-old kids, right? - [Lex] What do I do? - What do I do? Right. You know, I feel like I'm being held back. I'm like at 15, you feel
like you're being held back? But just be curious. 'cause you don't have to have the answers. You don't have to know what you're gonna be when you grow up. I'm a hardcore believer
that everybody has something that they're really,
really, really good at. That could be world class great. Every single human being on this planet. And the hard part is just
finding what that is. And in some places having
resources to enable it. But be curious so you
can find out what it is. I didn't take a technology. I took one technology class in college, Fortran programming, and
I cheated on it, right? I mean, it wasn't until I
got a job at Mellon Bank and I started learning how to program in this thing called RAMIS, this scripting computing
language, that I realized, oh, this is interesting to me and I like it. And that's what got me, you
know, a job selling software and the, you know, going on from there, you just don't know
what that's going to be until you go out and
experience different things. So for anybody young out there listening, you know, enjoy your life,
find things to smile about. Be curious, read, watch, you know, expose yourself to as many
different ideas as you can because something's gonna
click at some point. You may be 15, you may
be 25, you may be 55, but it can happen. - One thing to mention is
sometimes it's difficult, or your parents, people around you, might not be conducive
or might not be of help in finding the thing you're good at. In fact, like in my own life, you know, the society was such that, I don't know if they've helped much at the thing I was good at. I'm still not sure what
that is. But I think. - I think interviewing
done pretty well for you. - Well, it's not even, there was a thing where I saw the beauty in people. Like I, very intensely. So you can call that empathy,
all that kind of stuff. - Some will call it wokeness. - Wokeness, super woke,
awoke, I guess you could say. Just super woke. That's me. And you know, but in the
education system, I came up, and it was a very hard
mathematics, you know, science and so on. And it didn't notice that
whatever that was and mean. But you know, you have
to keep the flame going. You have to try to find your
way and see what that's useful. And like others around you
might not always notice it. So it might take time.
So it could be lonely. You can really have to find the strength to believe in yourself. - Oh, for sure. You know, and I'll tell
you one other quick story. 1992, I went to Moscow State University. To teach kids how to start businesses. - Wow. - 'Cause I had sold MicroSolutions,
and I wanted to travel, and I took Russian in high school. My Ruski is like (speaks Russian). - Good enough to remember that. - Yeah, right, yeah. But it was interesting to me, and I bring it up because
just, they didn't, they didn't know what the
word profit meant, right. But at the same time, I would
go around and meet people, and there were, it was as entrepreneurial, like right after the Soviet Union fell, entrepreneurship went through the roof. I mean a lot of it was mafia driven, but you know, people found
that spark, you know, because I think that that is natural. And so you just never
know when and how and when the circumstances will
come together for you to be able to take advantage. - That spark is really
important to comment on is, in Russia and Ukraine, I think the system kind of
suppresses that spark somehow. 'Cause you said you saw the
natural entrepreneurship, but there's not the entrepreneurial
spirit once you grow up in both of the nations. I mentioned there is. - [Mark] No, I believe it, right? I mean. - Actually the Ukraine, but there's something about
the system that kind of, you know, be reasonable.
- Without question. - Be, you know, be. - There would be no
reason for me to go over to do what I was doing
if it was otherwise. - But that's the thing that really can help a country flourish. - You know, it's gonna be
interesting with Ukraine, if they're able to survive this, right? Because as horrific as it is, you know, as you saw across Europe
after World War II, the rebuilding creates opportunities. - Rebuilding creates opportunities. But you know, first the war
has to end. How that ends. - [Mark] I don't know either. - Is a really complex path. What gives you hope about
the future of humanity? - Just looking in my kids'
eyes, just, you know, talking to them and seeing their spirit, their friend's spirit. And obviously we're
blessed as can be, right? And it's not the same for every kid, but I do, you know, I get
emails that I respond, don't respond to all of
them, but from 13, 14, 15-year-old kids around
the world, you know, 'cause "Shark Tank's" shown everywhere, asking me business questions. And it's just like they took the time. They were that curious
and that interested. And I see it when I talk
to schools, you know, when I go to different groups,
that spark in kids' eyes, that there's something bigger and better and exciting out there. And that's not to say
there's not fear, you know, climate, and any other number of things. But that's the beauty of kids. And I think Gen Z really embodies that. And to me that's just really exciting. - They dream, they dream big. They see the opportunity
for making the world better. It's cool, it's cool to see young people, and in their eyes, that dream. And I could be the one to do it too, which is a super problem. - You know, that's funny 'cause I, when when I go talk to like
elementary school kids, right? One of the things I do, I
said, okay, let's look around. You see that light there, one
day that light didn't exist. Then somebody had the idea, then somebody created a product of it, and now your school bought that. You see that chair? Chairs
didn't always look like that. Somebody had that idea. Why not you? So when you walk out
and what I make them do, ask yourself, why not me? Why can't I be the one
to change the world? - Thank you for that
beautiful hopeful message. And thank you for talking today, Mark. You're fun to follow.
I'm a big fan of yours. - Same. - But you're also an important
person in this world. I really appreciate everything you do. - Well, I appreciate it. Thanks for saying that Lex, and keep on doing what you're doing. This was great. I really enjoyed this. - Thanks for listening to this
conversation with Mark Cuban. To support this podcast, please check out our
sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with
some words from Oscar Wilde. "Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he's not. And a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is." Thank you for listening, and
hope to see you next time.