Mark Cuban on Entrepreneurship, DEI, and the Future of Healthcare
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Introduction
In today's world, the individual who controls the algorithm possesses significant power over public narrative and discourse. In this compelling conversation with billionaire businessman Mark Cuban, we explore the essence of entrepreneurship, the implications of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) programs, and the revolutionary changes needed in the healthcare system. Cuban, a prominent figure known for his role on Shark Tank and as the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, shares invaluable insights that can illuminate the paths to success for budding entrepreneurs and reflect on essential societal issues.
The Nature of Entrepreneurship
What Makes a Great Entrepreneur?
Mark Cuban emphasizes three essential qualities that form the backbone of any great entrepreneur:
- Curiosity: An entrepreneur must possess an insatiable desire to learn and adapt. The business landscape is ever-evolving, and those who do not keep pace risk falling behind.
- Agility: As new information and challenges arise, successful entrepreneurs can pivot quickly to seize opportunities or rectify missteps.
- Sales Ability: Cuban states, "No business has ever survived without sales." The ability to convey passion for a product or service is crucial in garnering interest and trust from potential customers.
Selling as Helping
Cuban defines selling as helping—an approach he developed from a young age. He recalls his first sales endeavor at 12 years old, selling garbage bags door-to-door, teaching him the art of empathizing with clients: "Can I help this person? Can my product serve their needs?" Cuban stresses that this mindset can be learned and is foundational for any entrepreneurial journey.
The DEI Debate
Addressing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Cuban is an unabashed advocate for the principles behind DEI. He highlights that true diversity expands the pool of potential applicants while equity ensures equal opportunities for success. Inclusion, he adds, supports all employees, particularly those who might not fit the traditional mold. However, Cuban acknowledges the criticisms surrounding DEI.
Criticism of DEI Programs
In debates with Elon Musk and Jordan Peterson, Cuban points out the backlash against DEI as potentially misguided. He argues that while DEI initiatives might not be perfect, they should neither be summarily dismissed nor regarded as racially discriminatory. Cuban believes robust conversations surrounding DEI are essential, allowing businesses to operate transparently and inclusively.
Revolutionizing Healthcare
What's Broken in Healthcare?
Cuban believes the primary issue within the healthcare system is a lack of transparency. Without clear pricing data, patients and practitioners often cannot make informed decisions, leading to distrust. He cites his own experiences and missteps in managing health insurance as a wake-up call.
Cost Plus Drugs
In a groundbreaking move, Cuban founded Cost Plus Drugs, a transparent pharmacy model aimed at eliminating the complexities and hidden fees typically associated with pharmaceutical pricing. By laying out the actual costs of medications, along with a simple markup, Cost Plus Drugs offers an industry alternative that prioritizes patients' needs over profit.
The Role of Big Pharma and Middlemen
Understanding PBMs
Cuban sheds light on how pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) complicate the healthcare landscape by prioritizing profits over patient care. He outlines the various layers of complexity in drug pricing, demonstrating how patients often pay significantly more than necessary due to opaque pricing structures and hidden rebates.
Achieving Transparency
His advocacy for transparency extends beyond drug pricing; Cuban maintains that hospital and medical practices should also detail their pricing models. This knowledge not only empowers patients but also encourages competition among service providers, ultimately benefiting everyone.
Looking Ahead to AI
The Future of AI and Open Sourcing
In discussions about artificial intelligence, Cuban points out the different approaches large tech companies take, including open-sourcing models. He posits that while this choice could pave the way for innovation and democratization of technology, it's important to ensure the driving forces behind AI development remain safe and accountable.
Conclusion
Cuban’s insights underscore the dynamic interplay between innovative entrepreneurship, the importance of transparency in healthcare, and the evolving nature of DEI in business. He promotes a future where success is accessible to all, driven by an informed and engaged population willing to challenge existing paradigms. Mark Cuban's journey is a testament to the potential of ideas rooted in integrity and the continuous quest for learning. As he poignantly reminds us, every individual has the power to change their world, reinforcing the idea that the next spark of innovation could be just around the corner—and it might just be you in the driver's seat.
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 the following is a conversation with Mark cubin a multi-billionaire
businessman 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 Alex Freedman podcast to support it please
cubin 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
want to keep on learning because business is ever changing it's never static um 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
um and somebody who can sell because no business has ever survived without sales and as an entrepreneur who's creating in
a company whatever your product or service is if that's not the most important thing and you're just dying
and and excited to tell people about it then you're not going to 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 too 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 um 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 um in a simplistic approach we buy drugs and sell drugs but we add transparency to it
and bringing transparency to an industry is is a differentiation and it helps people trust in an industry that's
highly lacking in trust exactly okay so what's what's the trick to selling garbage bags let's go back there 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 because
like 12-year-old Mark going hi my name is Mark do you use garbage bags you know what the answer is 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 him down sure
so that was easy but I'm sure you've been rejected oh yeah of course not everybody says yes what's your what was
your percentage I don't remember but it's pretty close to 100% oh okay never so that's why you don't remember yeah
right because who's going to say no to a 12-year-old kid who's going to save them 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 micro Solutions 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 puzz 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 um 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 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 going to be able to keep up and no matter what your sales skills or ability are they're
going to be useless what did 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 7:00 came back 5 or 6 7:00 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 you never went neither one of my parents had gone to college um you've got to figure it
out for yourself but he was also very insistent that um he 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 um a
staple broke um and he the only thing he wanted from 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 have been absolutely yeah yeah because I was more of a yeller
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 when I 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 higher fast Fire fast part of running a business yeah always cuz I
hated firing people because it meant one it was an admission of a mistake in the hiring and two the salesperson of 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 this a tricky thing when you 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 that's the
right or they're not and in that grayer area is probably where you have to fire was hard yeah for sure because you know
there it's 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 and then they wouldn't and then you
know people at the company be like Mark you suck at this you know and so I I always delegated to hiring yeah I mean
I'm the same I see the potential of people I see the beauty in people and which is which is a great way to live
life but when you're running a company is a different thing it's different and you got to know what you're good at what
you're bad at right I 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 in keep me inside the
baselines they would do the due diligence I supp or just yeah the detail work to dot the eyes and the cross the
tees uh 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 six guys in a three-bedroom
apartment so I couldn't go any lower so there was no downside yeah there was no downside for me starting a
business and it was just like you know I was 25 when we started micro Solutions and you know I just gotten fired and it
was like look I'm I'm a lousy employee um I'm going to just start going to some of my prospects that I had in my 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 got
to be in a position where you're confident you know I get emails and 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 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 then almost always oh it's a great idea
right 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 out of 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 get excited about it some people get terrified because it's okay maybe I'm comfortable maybe I
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 you know so you have you know if you have a job do you have a mortgage do you have a
family you got to save money you can't just walk you know I mean they've got to eat and they've got to 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 going to have to
make is to leave a job that's providing some degree of comfort already so and 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 um it wasn't hard
for me but to your point it 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 um if you have
obligations um 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 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 gono I'm leaving 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 right but I mean
anecdotal evidence for everything yeah but if you're if you're going into a new business you're going to have
competition unless you're really really really really really lucky and that competition is not going to just say
okay let Lex or Mark just kick her ass yeah and so you've got to be prepared to how you're going to deal with that
competition what 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 um you've got to you know creating a business gives you the greatest
potential upside and the greatest leverage on your time um but it also creates the most risk so that capitalist
machine there's a lot of elements by contrast uh the respect for the law like an entrepreneur can trust that if they
pull it off the law will protect them they won't hopefully that's still the case Yeah
well yeah there's always uh yeah USS other countries you're right right so US versus other countries like Joe Biden of
all people said to me um it was at an entrepreneurship conference that when he was vice president he had put together
and we had gone up there from 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 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 Al aler stories we see um examples of the Jeff Bezos of the world
the Steve Jobs in the world and those are the types of people we we want to copy yeah want to be really careful and
try to really figure out what that is because we don't want to lose that for sure we want to protect that 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 what but also culture like who we celebrate one of the things that
troubles me is that we don't enough celebrate the uh the entrepreneurs that take risks and the entrepreneurs that
succeed it seems like success especially when it comes with wealth is uh immediately matched with distrust and
criticism and all that kind ofu yeah it's changing for sure because you know you can go back just 12 years right
traditional media dominated let's say to through 2012 you know that was the peak of linear television you know newspapers
weren't as strong but they still had some some breath and depth to them um and then social media comes along and
everybody gets to play in their own sand boox and share opinions with people who think just like them and that and it
also gives them the opportunity to amplify um 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
going to be on the Evening News it wasn't going to be in the front page of the newspaper um 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
um talking about you know this Progressive Movement or that Progressive move whatever it may be um you know and
then or political parties but now all of that is front and center on social media yeah we're trying to figure
out how we deal with the with the mobs of people and the virality of it all and um I I think we'll find our footing and
start celebrating greatness again well that I mean that's the whole reason I do shark tank that's true that's that show
celebrates the entrepreneur it's the only place where every single minute of every single episode we 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 we you know we're 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 debuk Iowa or Ketchum Idaho you know that sends a message to every
kid who's watching Seven 8 nine 10 12 year-old kid that if they can do it from catch 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 um the 15 years of that is just it 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 because I learned about it from Shark
Tank and so you know I think you know we're being C 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 is obviously
horrible just just just the guts to step up to be there to believe in yourself to really reach I mean that's what matters
Tank will laugh at oh for sure you know without question the good ones we're not going to recognize every good one and
then sometimes we'll just motivate people to work even harder to get it done because of what we say to them and
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 on uh you've been pitched on Shark Tank what what's the best one that stands out there's no best
one right they're all different um they're all best in their own way I guess they're stupid ones and you
know we haven't had any you know World Earth world changing Earth shattering ones right because
those aren't going to 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 um but there's ones I've passed that I wish like spike ball do you know what spike
ball is so it's just 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 um that I wish I had done a deal with there's and there's been
others and you passed and I passed they they were getting some traction and they wanted to create leagues spikeball
leagues and they wanted me to be the commissioner and I don't want to be a commissioner of a new spikeball league
so you have to kind of 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 um or is it
just a good um solid business that's going to pay a return to the the founder and may not be enough of a business to
return to um an investor yeah and I guess the question you're trying to see will this scale This Promise will the
promise materialize into a big thing we see I don't even care if it's going to be a big thing right it because it's all
relative to the entrepreneur we had a 19-year-old from Pittsburgh Laney who came on with the simple sugar scrub and
there was nothing outrageously special about it I didn't see it becoming a hundred million doll business I thought
it could be come a two three5 million business that paid the bills for her and that that was good enough and you know 6
months after um the show aired she called me up she goes Mark I've got a million dollars in the bank what am I
going to 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 got to be one that makes the entrepreneur happy but then there's the valuation piece I mean
right do do a lot of the entrepreneurs overvalue of course business yeah I mean that's that's the nature of it right I
mean and that that's really where the biggest conflicts in Shark Tank happen that's in valuation they you know they
they think this is the best business ever you know there we had one lady um couple that came on and they had this
scraper for cat's tongues right nice bizarre most one of the most bizarre pitch ever I love it um 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 you didn't see the potential none yeah none there's a lot of cats in the wmart 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 um for $100,000 then in order for me to get my
money back they've got to be able to generate a $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 Valu 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 um something specific about them that some other company would want to acquire then the cash flow isn't as as
um not I don't want to say important but isn't going to guide the valuation and how do you know if a company's going to
be uh 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 a super Products company that um I think is going to take off and how do you know if
they can generate the money what's what's the you made it sound easy you know yeah I mean is 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 that where Barbara corin'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 they're thinking to
do all that kind of stuff can you see through that y for sure just by asking questions you know so if if they are um
delusional at some level or misleading at another level I'm going to I'm going to 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 GNA bounce I'm gonna pound on them right see I still love that I still love the trying just you know give them
credit right because they know all of America is going to 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 I I see that that's a great
question um 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 um yeah at some level because you don't know it's all
uncertainty but I think if you're delusional that works against you um 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 got to execute on the business
plan and that 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 how to like the you
know the first principles the basics of how to build the thing how much it's going to cause all that yeah I mean
because if you can't do the basics you're not going to be able to do the bigger things and at the same time
you've got to be one of the things that entrepreneurs do that I 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 um finite situation that's
never going to change right and there's always somebody I call them Leap Frog businesses there's whoever's competing
against you you know if you do a or C they're going to 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 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 um you should have confidence that you're going to be able to sell it
now if you didn't do your homework and you go out there and you sell whatever it is then 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 also mean like the the micro pivots which is like iterative development of a thing oh yeah
that's not yeah just iterations yeah you know entrepreneurship being having any business is just continuous interation
continuous your product your sales pits your advertising you know introducing new technology how do you use AI or not
use AI where do you use it what person is the right person there's there's just a million touch points you know that
you're always re-evaluating 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 you going to make money on this with
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 um would get together for lunches and we were at
California Pizza Kitchen in Preston Hollow in Dallas and he was talking about um 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 because that
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 speaker phone next to a radio and then we would have a speaker phone in Dallas and you know
sixpack or 12 pack of beer and we sit around listening to the game because there was no other way to listen to it
so I was like okay okay my first company micr Solutions you know I'd written software done Network integration and so
I was comfortable digging into it and so I 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 it we were like okay we're not sure how
we're going to make this work but we were able to make it work we started going to radio stations and TV stations
and you know music labels and everything and um evolved aet.com which is 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 on 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 uh you wrote code but still in the early days of the internet how do you figure out
how to create this kind of uh product of of of just audio at first and then video at first a lot of iterations right like
you talked about um we started in the second bedroom of my house set up a server I got an ISDN line which was a
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 was it super choppy so you trying to figure out
yeah for sure for sure it would buffer it was yeah was it it wasn't good but it was a start but it was good enough cuz
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
um Progressive networks and others that were 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 um radio the highest FM radio that I could find and we 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 aet.com then I would go on yunet
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 um news and politics
and if you're in an office or you're outside of Dallas connect to aet.com and now you can listen to these things
on demand and that's how we started and it started with one one radio station and then it was five then it was 10 then
it was video content then it um the laws were different then so we could um 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 a thousand 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 mou didn't spend a penny on Advertising so the thing you were focusing on is getting the radio
stations and all or radio and TV anything any content at all you pick up the phone what did you how you I would I
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 um and this is before the the DM the digital minim Copyright Act of 90 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 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 what just exploded because whoever was sitting next to you what are you
listening to right and that was the start of it and then you know in early 98 um we started adding video and just
other things and we had end up with thousands of servers you know there was no cloud back then and um 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 it's 1996
9798 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 um and hotels that had
satellite downlinks and then would broadcast you know the 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 um pay us a half a million
dollars and we'll do it just under 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 Ed the consumer side to do a proof of concept for Network um 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 winwin uh 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 Innova I did all the technology and then we hired engineer after engineer after
engineer to implement it and so wow yeah um from putting together a multicast network to um software to just all these
different things was this like a scary thing like it's terrifying right because as we were growing trying to keep up the
scale and literally we're buying off-the-shelf PCS and then you know cars 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 there was a time when um
Bill Clinton and all the Monica Lewinsky stuff happened they released the audio of um their interviews of him or
something like that right and we literally we I knew at that point time when that was released everybody at work
was going to want to 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 predict be
predictive but yeah it was it was all technology driven and marketing um 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 so so on the acquisition side we were the largest media site on the internet it wasn't
close there was nobody close we were YouTube and relatively speaking we would be 10x YouTube relative to the
competition because there was nobody there um and so it became obvious to Yahoo AOL and others that they needed a
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
trickiness of what you did after that oh the um the collar yeah okay so when we sold to yah we sold for $5.7 billion in
stock not cash and so I looked at I you know after micro Solutions um when I sold that um I took that money and
initially I I told my broker I wanted to invest like a 60-year old man because I wanted to protect it um 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 um systems integrators in the country at one point in time we're the
largest IBM token ring um installer in the country it was crazy right Bon name blast from the past I mean so anyway so
these Wall Street Bankers um or analysts rather um that were the big analysts of the time would call me up because they
would ask my broker what does he know about this product this and I knew them all what was working and not working
right and so the ones that work you know I say it's working i' see the stock they say something the stock would go up 20
bucks right so I'm like like well and my broker was 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 um 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 um we sold to Yahoo I already had a lot experiened trading stocks and I had seen different bubbles
come and go a 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 um Lea frogged and so when we sold to Yahoo um I was
like I've got a be 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 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 that of anyone's of the Yahoo stock and so um
I took pretty much 20 some million dollars everything I had at the time and I sorted the index this is fascinating
by the way cuz it's based on your estimation that this is a bubble or just mind not want be to be greedy sure so
you're the foundation of this kind of thinging is uh you don't want to be greedy yeah I mean how much money do I
need right you know where other people were saying oh I think can go up higher higher higher I was like I went on CNBC
and um I told them what I had done and they were like in Yahoo stock had gone up significantly from the time I had had
collared and one of the guy Joe and was on there don't you feel stupid now that yaho stock has gotten up um you know x%
more I'm like yeah I feel real stupid sitting on my jet but so you I mean there is some
fundamental way in which bubbles are based on this greed greed and I'd seen it before right like I just said and so
what I did was we put together a caller 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 it converted to cash paid my
taxes Etc but um 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 um my broker at that time was at Goldman Sachs and I had asked him to see if
there was a way to trade Vic the vix right the volatility index and there there wasn't right and so one of the the
people that Goldman that we were working with to try to create this actually left Goldman and created indexes that allowed
you to to trade the vix it's not trivial to understand it's a bubble I mean you're kind of lessening your insight
into all this by saying you just didn't want to be greedy but you still have to see that it's a bubble yeah I mean yeah
obviously if I thought it was going to keep on going up and it was there was intrinsic value there I would have
stayed in it but it it wasn't so much Yahoo it was just the entire industry you would back then you know like we're
looking at the the magic 7 or whatever it is stock now and people are asking is it in a bubble and when I would get into
cabs and people 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 or just creating models to create models that are going public then yeah that's
probably the start of a bubble um but that said my my 14-year-old was bragging about buying Nvidia you know with me in
in his Robinhood account he tells me the order I place 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 yeah we're flirting with it
yeah uh you said that becoming a billionaire requires luck yeah can you explain yeah I mean there's no business
plan where you can just start it and say yeah I'm definitely going to be a billionaire you can you know if I had to
start all over could I start a company that made me a millionaire yeah CU I know how to sell and I know technology
and I've learned enough over the years to do that um could I make 10 million probably 100 million I hope so um but a
billion just something good has got to happen you know um 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 um 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 going to be get to that cost Effectiveness where you know you could do 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 as6 right for
custom applications and we had CPUs that were leading the way but gpus were more for gaming and then crypto Mining and
now all then all of a sudden they were the foundation for AI models so 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 uh 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
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 um making they weren't profitable and we
we were in an environment where it was possible to raise possible to raise that money I mean what about somebody you get
sometimes uh feisty with on the internet Elon but we couldn't even look at Zuck and Bill Gates and Warren Buffett look
Zuck was just trying to get laid right and it took off and you wrote some good stuffff AR we all is some level
Foundation of human civilization right but um yeah so more power to them right you can't take anything away from them
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 um you know in 2004 the bubble
had burst and you know the price for computer had fallen enough and kids in school all needed computers or laptops
if he had tried to do something like that you know 5 years earlier I mean it was too young but you know five years
earlier or five years later you know frster might have been the ultimate or Myspace frster remember frster or
Myspace I had a MySpace account and that was before Facebook yeah the timing is 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 and
the Kismet of it all right you've got to be because it wasn't like any of the people I mentioned there weren't others
trying the same thing yeah 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 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 the
general feeling of the people with money at that time in proximity if duck 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
matter where they come from but I agree I agree 100% with that right but luck is required yeah I mean scale is the only
Delta is scale yeah right we you know we're not all blessed with the access to the tools that you need to to hit that
grand slam but then also billion is not the only measure of success right absolutely not right there's a everybody
defines the success in their own way how do you define success Mark Kean 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 and
my answer always is it if you were happy when you were broke you're going to be really really really happy when you're
rich but you got to work on being happy when you're broke I guess well you're just being happy right if you were
miserable you know in in your job before there's a good chance you're still going to be miserable if that's just who you
are that's a pretty good definition of success by the way thank you how do you reach that success by way of advice to
said okay you're not successful he busted his ass and when he came home you know he 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 we're you know we
don't have this we don't have that you know we we celebrated the things we did have and um never knew about the things
we didn't have you know and and so I think you know you have to be able to find your way to whatever it is that
puts a smiling on your face every day 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 the struggle even the struggle like with your dad the the really really hard work can be can be a fulfilling
experience because uh the struggle leading up to then seeing your kid exactly right right because that's that
that was my dad's grand slam right seeing three kids go to college be successful you know spend be able to
spend time with him and that was the other thing you know he really made me realize is the 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 um and that's the
most special thing you ever can have beautifully said you have made some mistakes in your life yeah a lot of them
one of the bigger ones on the financial side uh we could say is uh Uber yeah we call that not doing something yeah it
I always try to look at mistakes at things you did that didn't turn out as opposed to things you did to you know um
the negative but but what can you tell the story of that and maybe it's just interesting because 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 or not and all this kind of stuff right so the backstory of that is Bill Gurley came to me and said um Mark
there's this guy Travis that has this company red swoosh which is a peer-to-peer networking company that um
I think you can help and so I invested and would spend a lot of time with Travis and it's funny because back then
that was like 2006 I was an investor at at um box.net with Aaron Levy and oh there's 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 be have astronomical success right um but so red swoosh had its issues you know cuz I
always look at peer-to-peer as kind of stealing bandwidth from the internet providers when bandwidth was a scarce
commodity um 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 um about Uber cap and I thought okay this is a great idea I really really like it I
said you're going to and he showed me his budgets and I think they were raising money at 10 or $15 million or
whatever and um I'm like your biggest challenge is going to be you're going to have to fight all the incumbent taxi
commissions they're going to want to put you out of business that's going to be a challenge and I think you don't have a
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 uh what you're doing
now we'll talk about a 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 for sure and the Cals are that yeah for sure right they
were they were dominated by an insulated few they were not very transparent you didn't know the intricacies they were ve
very politically driven um and old boy incestuous Network and to tra 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 all 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 um 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 and change it all just change it all yeah
blinda Johnson who worked as our general counsel at broadcast.com was you know was Brian's um GC and Chief Operating
Officer so yeah they they had a smart smart smart smart team and they believed in it and they I mean it's just it's a
it's a beautiful story cuz you're like all right all the things that annoy you about this world like they're
inefficient and it just seem like pain I probably would have said no like a lot of people did to Airbnb because I'm like
I don't want people sitting my sleeping in my bed I would have too I was like this is not going to work I've done like
cou 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 the
NBA team Dallas Mavericks uh for 285 million so at this point maybe you can correct me but it
was one of the worst performing teams in franchise history uh true how did how did you help turn it around um I had
this big tall guy named Dirk niski and I let him be Dirk nitzki right and I got out of the way um but I think more than
anything else um there was the turnaround on the business side and then there was the turnaround 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 um 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 believe that you know winning was the goal as opposed to just making money attitudes change effort
went up and you know the rest is history so the assets of the business here are the the players the players yeah for
sure and then on 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 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 was my first date with the girl who 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 um I conveyed to our people that this is what we were selling that
what happened in the arena um 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
aside 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 better
selling the people the idea the all of it like just the well yeah the experience so if you have you ever been
to an NBA game yeah Miami Heat 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 are 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 your 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-f fiveing
people you've never seen before in your life and if it misses you're commiserating with people you've never
seen that's such a unique experience that's unique to sports and we never sold that and that's exactly what we
started see I have to say like just going to that game turned me around on basketball cuz I'm more of a football
guy so basketball wasn't like them a sport I was like oh wow okay ener like yeah the energy in a in a stadium is
completely different than the energy in Arena you know you can you know in the stadium particularly if it doesn't have
a roof it's hard to to bottle that energy you feel it and you see like I'm from Pittsburgh so there's a terrible
the energy level is just Indescribable so how much of it is the selling the tickets in person but also uh versus
what you see on TV so when you're owning a team do you get any of the cut for the what's showing on TV yeah yeah we yeah
so the there's a TV deal that's done with either a local TV broadcaster and we get all of that or um a network
broadcaster like abcc um ESPN TNT whatever and then we get 130th of that so what role does the TV play in like
turning a team keeps fans connected look when a team is doing really well it's easy right there's more viewers
everybody's more excited um and when you're not it you know there's still going to be hardcore fans and and you
know General fans and kids that like to watch the game what about like the personality of the people in the in in
the stands like I mean clearly you're part of the legend of the team because you're literally there
going yeah screaming yeah the whole game right yeah it's funny you know you the way I am here is how I am you know 24
hours a day unless there's a Mavs game yeah you know and and for whatever reason that's where I let out all that
stress and frustration um but yeah I mean it's not so 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 I it's just it's a bit of fun yeah it's fun for me right um I just you know it's his platform he gets to run it
anyway please he pays for that right and so I have total respect for whatever choices he makes even if I don't agree
with them but because it's his platform people are less likely to um disagree with him particularly somebody who's of
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 um 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 you in your comments well you do a bit of snark too
but yeah a little bit but you you're pretty um 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 uh you do voice the opinion
that represents a a large number of people and it's great I mean that that's what's it's really beautiful uh 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 pull 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 um that's
simple and the e in equity means when you hire somebody you put them in a position to succeed the eye inclusion is
when you've hire somebody and they may not be typical if you will right you show them some love and 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 uh 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 um so first you can't do quotas
they're illegal unless they you're um and I'm not the lawyer on this subject but unless you're 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 a straw man that 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 um Human Resources you can pick any element of business and find
companies that implement it poorly um 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 going to lose your best people you're not going to be
able to hire the best people you're not going to 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 is completely different right um but to your question of Reverse Racism
yes it happens there's I mean because people are people there's no you know there's no human being that is 100%
objective and it's also there's very very very few jobs that can be determined on a purely
quantitative quantitative basis right how do you tell one good J One janitor from the other who's the best right how
do you tell one salesperson that you're hiring versus another you're hiring because they haven't sold your product
yet so you don't know we talked earlier about firing people because 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 it's become a
straw man that reverse discrimination because of Dei is is prevalent or near ubiquitous uh well much of American
History was defined by intense radical racism and sexism mhm but in the recent years there's a 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 you can they have a very strong immune system where that you could they
could if you criticize a dii program it seems like it's very easy to be called racist and if you're called racist or
sexist that's that's a sticky label for some reason so you're getting into the culture of organizations right and
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 analogist 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 or 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 de related but it was you know saying something publicly that was to the in in
the CEO's eyes to the detriment of the company right so I think those are all analogist if you you're trying to
accomplish something within an organization because you think there's a problem and there's people speaking out
saying look you we're getting it wrong I think I'm I'm a victim of all this and the company right then you know
leadership has got to make a decision do do they agree or not agree are they right or they wrong is it to the the
positive is it positive or negative to the company and you decide so you know this conversation that conservatives are
being um silenced in organization now um I just I haven't seen it you know I've talked to and then the other side
of the your question I think I'm packing it is um what's driving all this put aside
universities for one in Corporate America when I talk to people in Corporate America about um
Dei they always start talking about ideology right and like I talked to Bill 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 coer you did 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 oneon-one and tip Twitter conversations on this topic so in the DMS I'll talk to people who are
really um conservative and I'll ask the same question um and be like well who's forcing you to do this well it's the
ideology that's Everywhere You See It Don't 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 have made
their business choices and 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 two million people right and the difficulty and 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 they then I 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 analogist to all this you know this huffing and puffing about um
reverse discriminations and conservatives not being able to speak up because 40% of people who have been
fired don't believe they should have been fired there's there's a disconnect somewhere in how you think you're doing
your job and um if you just feel like I can't speak up because of it um because of you're white
and that doesn't comport well with Dei programs a lot of things are going to happen right either you're going to
that's going to come up in your performance review HR or your your boss is going to have to address it in some
way it's going to get to HR at some level and then decisions are going to have to be made and Comm and you can't
just fire somebody because they spoke up right somebody's going to have to communicate with you and so I think a
lot of I just I I just don't trust the supposed volume that people say it's happening that 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
somebody but on Twitter it sounds great it is true for conservatives but in general you can sell books can get likes
yes when you talk about this ideology and there's a degree to which is is this woke ideology in the room with us right
now uh meaning like it's this boogie monster that we're 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
maybe it's because 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 the the amount of money spent on it and so while the the
goal is right um 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 uh or a multiple of inflation um they're
not well-run organizations across the board so I'm not going to argue with that at all so when you've seen me argue
with Dei I haven't waited into Dei and Universities at all so it's mostly focused on companies 100% right because
that's where where I exist but at the same time like I read Christopher ru's book where he talks about the kind of
the genealogy of ISM and 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
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 I to me that's just a conflict in a lot of
the under opinion of this of the whole Dei conversation that a lot of it and a lot of which goes through Christopher Ru
right now let's continue on a theme of fun exchanges on the internet so Elon tweeted the fundamental exatic flaw of
they want you to die and you responded at length but the beginning is the fundamental ecomatic 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
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 on to power and sacrifice their ideals okay put aside universities okay damn it yeah
and I'm not going to tell you that um you know they need to be spending 20 some million dollars a year on Dei
positions to me that's insane um 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 um 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
do well maybe you can give me some help sure I'm here to help you Le there's an example in the AI world of
uh a system called Gemini everybody was black or whatever people the color George Washington black
Nazis were black so why 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 um I forget which one um there's so many yeah but um he pointed out to um
Elon that grock elon's AI was woke when it answered certain questions and other people have pointed out other things to
Elon about gr Gro gr whatever they however it's pronounced um 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 in Google it's the end of the
world look how woke they are and it's reflection of all their culture now Google comes out and says it's a mistake
and then they dock the guy um who was the product manager or whatever of AI of that product um who and then they go
back and look at his old tweets right and show that he is 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 uh Google's so much uh dependent on trust that trust a
Google search has as objective as possible um channel into the world of information and so that brand is really
important for yeah see you're you're over you're giving them too much power um and maybe I'm I'm not recognizing the
power right so I'll tell you a personal experience um 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 and I
get emails um up until a month ago from elderly people asking me why the gummies weren't working and why the companies
were charging um 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 and all shark right it was a mistake well there's fraud there's mistakes but
the mistakes no but why didn't Google fix it right distance didn't happen once over one week over two weeks right and
because it was hard to fix yeah as it turns out I was working with them to try to find a fix and we would both look 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 with social media the criticism towards Google towards other companies when they're based in ccon
Valley there could be an ideological drift into um a ideological bubble out of which the technology is created and
they could be blind to the obvious bias that's that's billions of customers who are not
going to 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 interest because they know they're going to get
docks now on on by Elon and others and so so I just don't see that and and elon's not allowed to make those same
mistakes but is allowed to make those mistakes but Google isn't oh no Elon is 100% should be criticized for for the
Ridiculousness of over statements that he makes about various products he's having a bit of fun like you are also uh
uh but and I also believe in the free market but it's not it's not always efficient you know there's like a delay
just takes time yeah it's fine so which is why Elon is important we're calling out I think overstating the criticism of
Gemini but Elon and others are just Gemini wasn't even a fully available um 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
the the black George Washington is an is a correction on top of the foundation model to keep it quote unquote sort of
safe one of the big criticisms of all the models frankly probably even grock a little bit less so is they're they're
like trying to be really conservative in this in the sense of trying to be careful not to say crazy shit of course
because 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 going to be millions of models rather than just you know four
foundational models that every 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 was 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 um different
commands you could give it right there were line um prompt commands that you could give it and you could find all the
nasty porn that got loaded before the they they kicked it off right 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 going to check for that now
right it's almost like the new Bug Contest right to try to find bugs and 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 want to 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 that it's kind of
becomes like two different worlds where there's like it already is the no come on don't give up oh I'm not giving up
don't give so it where does this go is the question yeah right what what happens next and I mean going back I
mean I've been in so many PC revolutions right or Evolutions um where porn was the big issue right now we don't even
talk about porn being an issue even though you know if every every post on Twitter now has know Lincoln
bio for for a porn post right we don't even think that's that's a negative anymore that's just a an accepted thing
and now it's it's become very um War your politics on on Twitter but again as you extend that and and Things Grow you
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 going to have our own models and there's going to be millions and millions and millions of models and not
just foundational models now maybe op maybe they're built some on open source maybe you know um it'll be copy pasta
where you can just cut and paste and and create your own model and train it yourself maybe it'll be mix mixure of
experts where you know maybe it'll be a metap 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 is the best kind of like a search engine right because you might get is Dei good right you know is
the covid vaccine good right you're going to get a variety of of of um outputs and you have to make that
decision yourself that's what I think is going to happen with AI as well because I think Brands there's no way the Mayo
to chat GPT or gemini or whatever they're going to it's going to have to be licensed or they're going to do their
own yeah I mean that's a very hopeful message but that said you know uh human history doesn't always autocorrect
really quickly self-correct really quickly sometimes you get into this very painful things you have 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 there's 20 is 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 at
tension with each other dividing the populace and in the process of doing that figuring stuff out like almost like
uh Playing devil's advocate but like in real life you know and that's that's fair and that's right you know as
opposed to Prova telling you everything you want to know right and and everybody believing because there's control of
everything right and so going back to what you said earlier people in Russia don't think that you know invading
Ukraine it's it's you know a lot of them see it as a positive right um 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 in Putin they're densifying Ukraine
they're removing the Nazis ukra right because that's exactly what Putin said and you know we don't
have one uniform um 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 um 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 other people right Putin's the master of that he you're going to jail or you're
going to be dead if you disagree right now 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 control MIT were on right leaning media several
things actually let's even go there you've gotten a bit of a beef with uh 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 moaney can you can you explain the nature of the beef I mean the it's an interesting claim you're making that
most most of the people who are concern 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 um but if you
look at the Impressions related to Dylan McDermot um I would like I just said I'd 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 guns um shooting at Dylan mcdermit Bud Light cans she'd be long
forgotten yeah but most of the people people that care about censorship are going to 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 like it there's there's probably an explanation of that you the the criticism that Jordan Peterson could
in his view um they can affect there a very serious lifechanging 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 Tik Tok um you know where he might get 50 some thousand views or likes right I don't
know how many views but likes I don't I've never seen any evidence that Dylan mcder
influenc people to transition their gender as he transitioned to her it was documented on Tik Tok over the course of
a year and again when you go back and look at the views on those Tik toks it was you know it wasn't like
enormous yeah but the trends start right it could be uh 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
transition uh without meaning to do that is just part of a trend that's the worry they 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 um
might identifi you know find it cool or you know in the moment um expedient if you will um 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 jamama
which is a medical association that said um 20 from 2020 one to 2022 the numbers went down but
the bigger point is there are no numbers for 2023 when post Dylan mcder so there's no way to know if the assertion
is true even marginally true now you can you can easily suggest it right but you can say say that about any social media
influencer right you know people are kids are dying because you know I mean it's just like when people 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 the you know Trump says it that people are going to start invest 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 I and for me
to me you should have have to wait until you're 18 to actually have any surgery to transition um 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 uh 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 yeah
to do an operation it's not complicit like evil complicit it's it is evil complicit right because somebody Doc in
hospitals right now they won't perform abortions because of state law in Alabama they stopped IVF treatment
immediately after that um ruling by that judge right the Q andon judge does they think that they're not going to pay
attention to the possible consequences of being the hospital that does transgender that that uh gives doctors
operating rights there and not be um aware of the risk 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 for surgery that I just don't see
look to me World War II is a very interesting time it does reveal a lot about human nature and that humans are
you're in this situation where everybody is around around you is committing an atrocity you can be sort of the the good
German and and yeah but I mean human nature is such that you can but that that is in a time of
War yeah but it's still human nature it's interesting to remember that war when you feel like there's nationalism
patriotism everything that comes up Russia right you know the moms of the the kids sent to be you know sent to
Ukraine who didn't come back in Russia feel certainly different than the 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
using Cost Plus drugs but which we'll talk about to save the company money truly appreciate it and in parenthesis
my limit is 300 years of Darkness very well done Mark uh what's your intuition if we just stick on Biden and Trump for
a sec uh what's your intuition why Biden would make a better president Trump look at if at the basics right if you look at
the people he's hired um there hasn't been any turnover in his cabinet at all if you look at the
people he's hired um 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 bad for the country now
there's a financial relationship involved and to me that says everything the Dynamics of the team is important to
you when if you're going to be the most powerful person in the world you better know how to manage and Lead right and
that that's not to say Biden hasn't made a a lot of mistakes I mean immigration the border is horrific mistake um and
hopefully he he recognizes that and I don't like the fact that he doesn't admit his mistakes and just say okay I
got to fix it or I made a mistake in Afghanistan whatever it may be right the the position of commander-in-chief and
um president you're going to make mistakes then I look at the other guy never miss a mistake and the list is
that uh sort of the the the theory is that the reason it's happening is because they would be
able to illegally vote that's insane 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 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 that really worries me um enables or serves as a catalyst for
questioning the legitimacy of an election I remember going to the debate with Trump um in 2016 and 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 guys failed a zillion times most people say okay I learned from him you know read I read a
book about Roy Cohen and you know Roy Cohen was the ultimate deny deny deny and that was one of Trump's mentors and
you can see almost everything of Roy Cohen ever did in the same way that Donald Trump approaches things but given
how drastic the immigration situation is it be 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 going to be checking every ident ID they're going to be
making sure it's not the case and you know you can also make the argument well in the blue state it doesn't matter in
the the swing States they're still going to be checking because they know Trump is going to sue the shit out of him when
he loses you know and so again and 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 believe in this country and how amazing it is to do the
right thing and a lot of the premise of what some conservative conservatives are saying and doing the underpinning of it
is that their fellow citizens will not do anything not something anything if that serves the best interest 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 MH I just worry I I worry about the viral nature of the idea of this illegal
immigrants but it's it's just it's very functional right either they get across there's a thousand different ways to 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 um 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 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 um and so they made a
calculated mistake they made a decision that was wrong and now they have to fix it or it's going to hurt them severely
but I don't bu you know like what elon's pushing that um the whole reason is they are voters and will become voters and we
should say the obvious you're a descendant of immigrants yeah for sure and the immigrants is what makes this
country great in 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 they're killing it like PhD students and all this it's like 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 about talking about all of these things we're talking about when there it's right versus left my
team versus your team My Tribe versus your tribe the only way to stand down 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
spark becomes bigger and then it becomes um more widespread and then all of a sudden your country has changed it's not
what you thought it was I 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 as Afghanistan right here's where you made my these mistakes own it there's nobody who says right um we're
not going to just bring in Republicans if the Republicans win and then you you know and there's nobody who says we're
not going to just bring in Democrats we're going to bring in a mix right we're going to try to get balance on the
Supreme Court there's just there's no leadership that's doing that 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 it's whatever systems we've
created it's it's really frustrating that uh if you don't like Trump it's it really is Trump derangement syndrome
like he's the he's definitely Hitler if you don't like Biden he's Cena lizard person right um that right everybody
algorithm yeah just by taking himself out of it seriously I'm not saying don't post right post all you want but he you
know if you look at his followers um 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 it I lean left on the Dei topic right um that influences the algorithm and so you
see what you see because of what he says yeah well I mean for sure but the the there could be a lot of influential
people on on Twitter that influence the algrim and all that kind of stuff I I do feel it's not even about ideology where
you lean it's about like the algorithm not prioritizing drama be like the the the attention grabbing thing or the
lower lizard version of that where like people just want the drama they want out when I last read through all the stuff
on 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 to the degree that's true
What's um of the way the aor works it's actually kind of fascinating there's like clustering of people based on
interest right but I think they call 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 you're not and you're not following him yeah you're not you're not going to have an influence he's not
going to have influence when you get a break just create a burner account on Twitter and see what who they recommend
to you 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 this person I'm saying that's what the algorithm is yeah there
should be transparency around that for sure there is there is that's the whole point right he knows his transparency
and he knows the impact that's why when I say take yourself out of 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 would I I don't 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 one element being dominant over the other but
obviously conservatives felt that that left leaning was more dominant back then yeah I would love to see numbers on all
of this yeah you me both Dei everything like this uh sometimes anecdotal data really frustrates me it frustrates me
primarily because of how sexy it is like people just love it's a great way to describe it love a story and I'm like
God damn it this is not science this is this it's not even common sense you know well no I I I think anecdotal stories
often have a wisdom in them like no doubt right you there's something to be gained from from seeing there's a signal
there but like how representative is that signal of the broader thing 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 uh
what's the big question what's broken about our healthc care system there's no transparency there and when there lack
of transparency leads to lack of trust and when you can't trust the Health Care System other than maybe your doctor
that's a broken system so what aspect of uh 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 cplus
drugs.com and you put in the name of the medication if it's one of the 2500 and growing that we carry we will first show
you our cost what we actually pay for it then we'll show you our 15% markup then we'll show the 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 in America today and it's led to you know research being done comparing our pricing to CMS um and ours
being cheaper you know then even the government is negotiating etc etc etc and so just that transparently
transparency loan has has 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 corre seeing the business of it but uh what do the
so-called middlemen companies so the the pbms pharmacy benefit managers thank you CVS care Mark signas Express Scripts and
United Health's optim RX they control majority of the market right what do they do wrong they put profit over
everything right and they know in an 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 um sign a contract
with one of those big pbms it says you can't disclose any of this and the fact that you can't be disclosed means they
could tell Lex's company that um they're being you know they're getting a great price and they're only being charged X
and they can call 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 because 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 um 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 um 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 um 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 there's a drug called
Huma right and it is the number one Revenue um drug um in the country and there's also bio similar multiple
biosimilar but one we carry called usim and Huma the 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 get um your doctor
to prescribe that bio simler you simmer and you pay $594 but those big three pbms won't
allow their clients to um get youim because they don't get a rebate on you Sim so they'd rather keep a drug on
their formulary even though their patients would save 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 KARK spokesperson I think responded to
I I was wondering if there's TR any truth to it employers unions health plans and government programs work with
CVS KARK 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 they are not transparent no no call them up you
go to Cost Plus drugs we'll give you our price list of every all5 200 plus drugs the actual cost the actual cost and what
we sell it for because it's just a plus 15% call up any of the big three companies and ask them for the same
thing they're going to 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 humra that we're paying 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 going to be
facing they won't give it to us until like six months later I forget the exact amount but and then we they charge us
for it as well our own data on the CEO front you you've said that CEOs don't understand healthc care coverage it's
costing them big what what's what's the connection between oh Cost Plus drugs and companies so I can speak for my own
companies and the supply to all companies big you know bigger companies that self-insure because we self-insured
um 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
healthc care 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 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 um 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 list of the generic drugs that we sold that cost more than $30 that the Mavericks also
$169,000 with that PBM one of the big three pbms and would have 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 um 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 or 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 those that
those insurance companies and those pbms are also responsible for determining what claims what what um 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 um 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 pre-authorizations approved so you know your kid breaks their arm or
you have you 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 pre-authorized 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 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 employes that focuses on all these
things you'd save a shitload of money and two healthc care is your second largest line item expense after
payroll and in some companies it's hundreds billions of dollars right 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 trans the the opacity to continue that's fascinating
so so the mo most companies uh Outsource offload sort of the expertise on the healthcare side when they really should
be internally there should be an expert that because it's the wellness of your employees and their families cost a lot
of money it's yeah but if your employees aren't healthy or if they're worried about their kids and what is more
or or having to go to HR and scream and yell and explain and and your doctor wasting their time doing the same thing
to get authorization for a surgery or medication it's insane what made you decide to step into this cartel like
situation uh where so much is opaque so I got a cold email from a Dr Alex hansy who's my co-founder he's a radiologist
by trade and a physicist and a smart motherfucker um and he had a pharmacy that he wanted to create a compounding
pharmacy that would manufacture um 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 yeah
and then it was right around the time they were sending the pharmacy bro Martin scr to jail and so I was reading
up on that and he increased the price of this drug der Prim I think it was like 7,5% or increased a lowcost 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
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 cost 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 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 yeah we haven't been in
business two years how insane is that did you get a lot of pressure I mean I'm sure they're
very good at playing games like so cartel type situations they protect it feels like healthcare like very
difficult to get in there it very it do 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 um 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
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 cost
$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 co-pay by the patient and that's probably $20 so now the net investment that the pharmacy the
those big three pbms they're not reimbursing them $550 or more they're reimbursing them $500 or
result they're going out of business left and right and the most insane part of it is yes with corporate um 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 uh 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 going to go out of business
because of the way this pricing is they're going to lose a connection between their brand medications and
Grandma and Grandpa and aun Sally and all those all that business is going to get transferred to the big companies and
they're going to 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 going to 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 yes transparency and
revolutionizing yeah so what we're going to do with our own health care right we're not going to be in the business of
selling healthare or anything like that operate but the things we do for my companies we're only going to do deal
with um providers healthcare providers that allow us to be completely transparent so that whatever contracts
we do we're going to post them all whatever pricing we get we're going to 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 um the 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 um response and so now that transparency will overcome that and you're using your how to should I say it
celebrity your name yeah to kind of push this the only company I've ever put my name on it's weird that people aren't
getting into the space like will you 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 or open and public and public and they're pushing the company and they're selling
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 because if I can build it 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 uh let me ask you about AI you got a little bit of an argument about open source I
think you stepped in between uh vano Coen Mark andri you think AI should be open sourced yeah for sure so like all
that discussion we've been having about like Google and so on one of the two different things meaning that um meta is
doing open source yes right 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 I even Google's open 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 Ed the same technology everywhere and now they just try different things
and you get one smart or two a couple smart people in one company like anthrop anthropic right and they do things a
little bit better and effic model efficiency gets better so you know it's just a business choice but I don't I
don't think it should be forced but I think it's a smart business decision open sourcing is a smart business
decision yeah it's a tricky one I mean Google is a Pioneer in that with tensor flow on in the AI space that's a tricky
decision to is right but go back to historically you know there was digital Computing which was a dominant player
and they thought and IBM to a certain extent um thought that they wouldn't be subject to a problem with the PC
industry and then all of a sudden and in with their their main frames and everything they had captive
software they wouldn't use offthe 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 Ms Doss 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 um as models become more efficient and easier and less expensive to train um I think there'll be more more reasons
diversity of approaches uh in how they're implemented deployed what kind of products they
create all of that V compared the danger of that to the Manhattan Project that yeah I yeah I'm not buying that at all
you don't see the parallels between nuclear weapons and no no I I I think I'm not an AI fatalist at all right I'm
I'm an AI Optimist and but but it's not to say that there isn't a lot of scary shit that can happen with it militar
um 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 um 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 you connect
things and and um people can take their expertise and will 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 going to be one medical database I told this to people
important in the healthare space if you know for hospitals you know the Mayo clinics the MD Andersons they're huge
Brands and I don't think they're just going to give up their expertise to some you know main singular model you know
and say okay you know whatever expertise we have is available to you in gemini or chat gupt or you know so and so's
version of of meta's Open Source I just don't I there's just that would be business suicide um and so I think
you're going to 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 don't give away yeah yeah yeah and the expertise evolves and grows and all that kind of stuff and
you want to own that growth uh what advice would you give 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 what do I do what do I do right you know I feel like I'm being held back I'm like a 15 you feel
like you're being held back um but just be curious because you don't have to have the answers you have to know what
you're going to be when you grow up I 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 in some places having resources to enable it um but be curious so you can find out what it is I
didn't take a techn I took one technology class in in College Fort Tran programming and I cheated on it right I
I mean it wasn't until I got a job at melon bank and I started learning how to program in this thing called RIS this
the 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 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 going to 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 that sometimes it's difficult where your parents people around you might not be U conducive or might not be
a 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 help 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 it's uh there was a thing where I saw the beauty in people
like I it very intensely so you can call it empathy all that kind of stuff and someone call it
wokeness super woke I guess you could say just super woke that's me uh and you know but in the education system I I
came up in is it was a very hard mathematics you know science and so on and it didn't notice that whatever that
was and 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 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 quick story um
1992 I went to Moscow State University um to teach kids how to start businesses wow CU I sold um micro Solutions and I
wanted to travel and I took Russian in high school my risky is like not show um good enough to remember that yeah
right yeah um 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 the the Soviet Union fell entrepreneurship went through the roof I mean a lot of it was Mafia
driven but you know it was people found that spark you know because I think that that is natural um 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
suppresses that spark somehow because 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 I believe it Ukraine but there's
something about the system that kind of you know be reasonable be you know be no reason for me to go over to do what I
was doing if it if it was otherwise that's the thing that really can help a country flourish you know it's going to
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 um the rebuilding creates opportunities rebuilding creates
opportunities but you know first the war has to end how that ends I don't know either is a really complex path what
gives you hope about the future of humanity um just looking in my kids eyes just you know talking to them seeing
their Spirit their friend 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 because shark Tank's shown everywhere a 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 um 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 of kids and 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 that in their eyes
that dream that and I could be the one to do it too which is a you know that's funny because 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 you're fun uh to follow I'm a big fan of yours but
you're also an important person in this world I really appreciate everything you do well I appreciate 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 cubin to support this podcast please check out our sponsors in the description and now let
compensate him for what he is not and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he