#422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs
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The following is conversation with mark cuban, a multimillionaire businessman and western star of the series shark tank, long time principal owner of the dallas mavericks, and is someone who is unafraid to get into frequent battle on x. Most recently, our topics of D I voguish, gender and identity politics with the likes of elan, must can, Jordan Peterson. Now, a quick few second mention of its sponsor checking out in the description.

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I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will do. This episode is brought to you by listening an APP, a website that allows you to listen to academic papers, listen to a much of stuff.

I think you couldn't listen to emails to websites. All of the event tried that respectively. I should probably to listen to emails.

I wonder how that would work. They have a chrome extension, but I take us to the chrome extension anyway. The way I use IT.

And I think the original use case, which I think is awesome, is listening to research papers. And this includes super, super technical papers or more narrative. Jo philosophical papers, like for example, you can take the touring paper on the touring test.

Obviously, the paper titles is not the touring tests. I think it's called computing machinery and intelligence. And of course, you didn't not go to super technical papers, and I use IT for that as well.

I often do the following. I'll print out the paper because the haptic feedback of a sheet of paper is really powerful for me, so i'll take note on that with the highlights on the pen. I will also take notes on the PDF, and I will also listen to IT over over lovers.

So for me, the process of reading an academic paper is one that requires returning to IT over, over and over again, unless i'm doing a quick skin. So for skimming, I can look at the P, D, F, and quickly school, and then listen to certain parts that I find useful. So sometimes related work is really powerful, because IT summarises in a nice way where the field stands.

I'll listen to that. Sometimes the abstract could listen to. Sometimes the abstract introduction related ed to work jump P Y to the conclusion. There's a methods in the paper. You can listen to that.

Anyway, I will basically use the listening function while i'm walking over to get some coffee or a run, and i'll listen different parts of a paper to get a sense of what that paper contains in the main idea, so on that can build on. Or as I said, to review a thing. I've already returned to many, many, many times, and I have a large number of favorite papers that return to many times.

It's super easy to upload a paper theyve really nice A I voices that pronounce stuff well, and also just the at the sentence paragraphs vel the kind of narration style I have is really, really nice. And obviously S A I improves. They will keep improving.

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So go to listening that outlasted gs as listening that conlon h legs. This episode is also brought by cloak as a mention last time is the thing that I always thought and hoped would exist. Now I know that exist.

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I can be in the worst mood, and a nap just helps that mood, whatever that is, to disappoint, to just disappear into the either, wherever my mind goes, that returns quickly, refreshed, renewed and ready to take on the day. Once again, i'm a huge support. Now I don't care.

I don't care what anybody says. Not a huge actually find to mention that when I was a google, they have these nap pods. Sure, a lot of time companies have nap part.

I here I go, go invented the nap pod. I think a lot of people weren't sort of confident enough or were a little bit embarrassedly on the map on. I did too IT felt kind of weird.

So I was just like put my head on on the deck, the desk, resident care. But when I did use the new pass ever, pretty epic, because I kind of keeps out rest the world. So there is a sense of privacy in IT.

It's pretty ool, but nothing compared to eight leeve. You can check IT out yourself and get special savings when you go to a little dog com flash legs. This episode also brought you by sharpie Y A platform designed by anyone to sell anywhere, anything with a great looking online store.

Even I friends can figure out how to do IT. In a few minutes, I create a store like from that come slash store. I think IT is where there is a bunch of shirts now that stores super minimalist, and i'm a big fan of minimalism, but you can get superfan y and IT integrates with a lot of third party apps.

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Lower case got a sharp fied decon slash legs to take your business to the next level today. This is elected ment podcasts to supported. We should cut our sponsors in the description and now their friends. Here's mark given.

You've started many businesses, invested in many businesses, heard a lot of pitches privately in on shark tank. So you are the perfect person. 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. Somebody who's ajo 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 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 skilled thing. How do you sell? Let me by selling.

selling, 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? My product helped from the time I was twelve years old, selling garbage bags door to door.

And just asking a simple question, do you use garbage bags? Do you need garbage bag? Well, let me save you some time or bring them to your house and drop him off to, you know, streaming.

Why do we need streaming when we have TV and radio? Well, you can 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 what's the product that we actually sell? We sell trust um in a simply list c approach. We buy drugs and sell drugs, but we have transparency to IT and bring transparency to an industry is is a differentiation and that helps .

people trust in industry that's highly lacking and trust exactly. okay. So what's what's the trick to selling garbage bags? Let's go back there.

Two thousand years old. What I mean is that just natural charisma? I guess a good question ask you, born with IT.

can you develop IT? Or you can definite develop IT? yeah. I mean, because selling guards back door, the door was easy, right? Like twelve year old mark going, hi, my name is mark.

Do you use garbage bags? You know what the answers is going to be, right? Can I just drop movie 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 none. Everybody says.

yeah, what's your was your percentage?

I don't remember, but it's pretty close to one hundred percent.

okay. So that's why you don't remember.

Yeah right? Because he's going to say no to twelve year old kid going to save time and money. But you know typically my career where i've started companies is to do something that other people aren't doing, whether IT was connecting pcs and to local area networks and at micros lures and you know the sales, the ship 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? You and the answers 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 sales person 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 the skill thing to IT too, like how you solve the puzzle of communicating with the 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 a more on product of and I think that's probably my biggest skill being able to just drill down to what the actual need is of 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 interview something new that they haven't seen before? IT, is that a business that I can create.

make money from? So figure out how this kind of business makes money in the present and then figure out is their way to make more money in the future by introducing the telling you kind of thing, correct? And to do that with anything .

pretty much yeah and .

you think you 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, which is absolutely true. If you're not a vacuous 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 gonna useless.

Would you learn about life from your dad? You mentioned your dad.

My dad did a pulse ry on cars, you know, got up, went to work every morning at seven o'clock, came back five or six, seven o'clock, exhausted. And I learned to be nice. I learned to be Carrying.

I learned to be accepting. Just, you know, quality is that I think he really tried to pass on myself in my two Younger brothers would just be a good human, you know. And I think you know, he didn't have business experience.

So as I got the business, he would just know, say, sorry, mark can help you. I don't understand what you're doing. You never want neither one of my parents have plan to college. Um you've got to fear out for yourself but he was also very insistent that um you know he worked at a company called regency products where they did a posture and cars and he would bring me there to sweep the floor not because he wanted me to learn that business, because he wanted me to learn how backbreaking that work was. I mean he lost A I an accident network staple broke um and he the only thing he wanted for my brother's, I was brust never have to work like that to go to college to figure out he .

said to be nice. That said, you also said that you when you were first starting business, you were a bit more than assess than you wish you would a bit.

Absolutely, because I was more of a yellow.

I was I know really .

what you see on the sidelines you would be at a math game maybe a little bit. But I also didn't have any patients for somebody I thought wasn't using my kind of common sense, right, because I was always on the go, go, go, go, go. I particular 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 speed up and getting on the train, or will stop and drop off at the next station, but let's go where you go.

The G, F. Trouble with the higher, fast fire, fast part running a business.

Yeah, always because I hate a fire in people, because he meant when I was an admission of mistake in the high in and two, the sales person to me always wanted to come out ahead. And I was always horrible firing. But I always partnered with people who had, no, I was delegated that this is a tRicky thing .

when you working with somebody and they're not quite there and you have to decide are they going to step up and grown to the person that does the right or they're not in and in that gray area is probably where you have to fire was hard yeah .

for sure because you know there is obviously a failure somewhere in the process.

You know, what did we do wrong? And when I would interview people for jobs, I mean, ninety nine percent of the people i've ever interviewed, i've wanted to hire because in my mind, I was like, okay, I can far out how to make this person work, right? And then they won't in them, you know, people at the company we like, mark, you sucked at this, you know and so I always delegated hiring.

Yeah, I mean, i'm the same. I see the potential people. I see the beauty in people, and which is, which is a great way to live life. When you're running a companies a different day.

different, and you gotta know what you're good at, when you're bad at, right? I I was good at, you know, I was already fire aim guy. And I always partnered with people who are very anal and perfectionist, because where I could just go, go, go, go, go, go, they would keeping, keeping inside the bed lines.

they would do, do diligence.

Yeah, or just yeah, the detail worked that out.

The eyes in the cross. What does that take to take that first left and to starting a business .

that's the hardest part? IT really depends on your personal circumstances. Like I got fired. I always sleep in on the floor, guys in a three Better apartment so I could not go any lower. So there was no downside. Yeah, there was no downside from me starting a business and I was just like I was twenty five when we started micros lures and you know I just gotten fired and I was like, look, i'm allows the employee um i'm going to just start going to some of my prospects that I had 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 five hundred dollars for me that allowed me to buy software and have fifty percent margins and that's how I started my company.

But like my way of advice for you say, I mean, it's a terrifying thing yeah mean.

you've got ta be in a position where you're confident. I get emails and approach by people all the time 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 what you don't.

You know, in the united states, with the american dream, everybody kind of always looks at themselves and say, okay, you know, I have this idea, right? And then you goes to with this process of saying, okay, you talk your friends or family, what do you think? And then almost always, always 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, ten companies have 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 when i'm doing in my life. And that's not easy for ninety nine percent of the people.

Some people look at that as an opportunity to get excited about IT. Some people get terrified because it's okay, maybe uncomfortable, maybe I have respons bi lit ie. s. And so whatever your circumstances are, if you want to take that next step, you have to be able to deal with the consequences of changing your circumstances.

And that's the first thing you know you save money is so you have you know if you have a job but you have a mortgage, do you have a family? You've got to save money. You can just walk, you know I mean, they've to eat, they've got to have shelter. But on the other side, the coin, if you've got nothing, is the perfect time to start a business.

Desperation is a good catalyst that we're starting a business. But in many cases, the decision, as you're talking about, you're going have to make us to leave a job then providing some degree of comfort already. So and I suppose when you're keeping on the floor and there are six guys, it's a little bit easier.

really easy. And when you get fired and you don't have a job, know you're looking at bar tending at night, just try to pay the bills. And so um IT wasn't hard for me, but to your point and 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 is you need to give up to put the money inside. 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 of people, write you a check, dress for money to buy whatever is you're selling and by doing those things, you can put yourself in a position to succeed. It's where people just think OK know jeronimo m leave you off the edge of a Cliff and i'm starting a business that's tough.

But sometimes just like the way you do IT.

though, there's always examples of any situation but I mean.

do to evidence for everything yeah but if .

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 let remark, just kick her us yeah and so you've got to be prepared how you're onna 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 that also creates the most risk.

So that capital machine, there's a lot of elements. By contrast, a the respect for the law make an entrepreneur can trust that if they pull IT off, the law will protect them. There on't be a good .

day is still the case.

Yeah.

there's always other country as first as other countries like so bad. End of all, people said to me, IT was an entrepreneur ship 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, know, the one thing that separate i've been to every country around the world, and the one thing that separate us is the entrepreneur ship, where the most entrepreneurs country in the world, and there's no one else, was 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 is an american origin story somewhere behind there. And I think, you know, that just is perpetuated on itself.

We see those racial just stories. We see on examples of the jeff bases other world, Steve jobs in the world, those some types of people. We we want to cope yeah we want to be really .

careful and trying to really figure out what that is because we don't want to lose that. sure. We want to protect that, whatever you know.

And that's a lot of the discussions about what's the right waited to government, big, small government. What's the right policies, but also culture like who we celebrate. What I think that troubles me is that we don't enough celebrate the the entrepreneurs that take risks and entrepreneurs that succeed. This seems like success, especially when cause of wealth is uh immediately matched with distrust and criticism all that yeah what .

is changing for sure because you can go back just twelve years right? Traditional media dominated, let's say, through two thousand twelve that was the peak of linear television. You know newspapers weren't as strong but they still had some some bread and depth to them.

Um and then social media comes along and everybody gets to play in their own sandbox and share opinions with people who think just like them and that and that also gives them the opportunity to amplify um those feelings. And I think that's where celebrating entrepreneur R S. Really started to subsides some.

There are always people who were progressive that we're like billionaire are bad or millionaire 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. IT was going to be if you read a book and someone talked about or you read a magazine and there was an article talking about, you know this progressive movement or that progression move, whatever IT may be um you know and then or political parties but now all of that is front center and social media and we are trying .

to figure that out how we deal with the with the mobs of people in the reality at all. I I think we'll find our footing and started celebrating greatness again.

Well, that I mean orizondo shark talk.

that's true. That show celebrates the treatment ur.

the only place where every single minute, every single episode, we celebrate the american dream. And the reason I do IT is we tell the entire country has shown around the world even we're amazing advertising for the american dream. And i'll even know how many countries, but every time somebody walks onto the carpet from to buk, iowa, or catch him, idaho, you know, that sends a message to every kid is watching seven, eight, nine, ten, twelve year old kid that if they can do IT from catch a 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 si you can do IT and that I mean, i'm proud of that um the fifteen years of that is just IT it's just been insane you know now kids walk up to me go yeah I started watching you when I was five or ten and I started a business because I learned about if in short tank and so you know, I think you we're being celebrated IT and we convey 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 the guts step up to be there to believe in yourself, to really reach. I mean, that's what that matters. I think because like some of the best business ideas are probably uh, maybe even you in shark .

tangle laugh at oh for sure yeah without question, the good ones. We're not going to recognize every good one. And then sometimes we're just motivate people to work even harder to get down 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. You've been pitched on shark tank. What was the best one that sends out member?

There's no best one, right? They're different. They are best in way, I guess, the stupid ones.

And you know, we haven't had any world, world changing in our shadow in ones, right, because those i'm gonna apply to shark tank. They don't need us, right you. So we typically get businesses that need some help at some level or another.

But this once i've passed that I wish like Spike pology, you know Spike polish, 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 competitive game, but they're killing IT. So if you go to beaches in new york or L A, you'll see kids playing at all the time. And IT was a fun game um that I wish that i'd done to deal with this.

And there's been others and you passed and I passed. They were getting some traction, and they wanted to create leagues, speke ball leagues, and they wanted me to be the commissioner. And I don't want to be a commissioner .

of a new Spike bali. So you are going to have this gut feeling of, will this scale.

will this click with, of course yeah kind of be protected is a difference. Rentier, is this something that makes me think know why did I think of that um or is this just a good um solid business that's gonna a pay a return to the the founder and may not be enough of a business to return to?

I'm an investor and and I guess the question you're trying to see with this scale, this promise, will the promise materialized into a big thing? We'll see.

I don't even care if it's couldn't be a big thing, right, because it's all relative to the entrepreneur. We had a nineteen year old from pitzer glani who came on with a simple sugar scrub, and there was nothing outrageously special about IT. I didn't see IT becoming one hundred million dollar business.

I thought I could become a two, three, five million dollars that paid the bills for her and that that was good enough and you know six months after um the show aid SHE called me up SHE goes mark, I got a million dollars in the bank. What am I going to do and I 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. This just got to be one that makes the entrepreneur happy.

But then there's the valuation piece in right? Do a lot of the entrepreneurs over value?

Of course, this yeah I mean that's that's the nature of IT, right? I mean, that's really where the biggest conflict in shark take happened. That's an evaluation. They think this is the best business ever. You know we had one lady um couple that came on and they had this scrapper for cats tongue right nice bizarre most one of the most bizarre pitch ever. I love IT you and they had this since ane valuation and IT was on because IT was corning in fun TV not because IT .

was a good business. All really okay. Here you can see the potential.

No, yeah, there's a lot of cats.

Yes.

go very well without.

So how do you determine the value of a business where there is on shark tank courageous? In general?

It's actually really easy, right? So if you take, just to use an example, business that's valued at one million dollars and I want to buy ten percent of that company um for one hundred thousand dollars, then in order for me to get my money back, they've got to be able to generate one hundred thousand dollars. And after tax cash flow that they're able to distribute, can they do IT or can they not? right.

And if it's two million dollar of value, what are 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 is 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 I don't want to say important but isn't going to guide the valuation.

And how do you know the company is going to acquired technologies?

But team right IT could be could be a super products company that um I think is going to take off.

And how do you know they can generate the money? Well, you made a sound easy.

You 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 were barber corner. The best you can look at a person and hear them talk for twenty minutes. And no, can that person do the job and do the work?

Can you tell us they are full share? not. So one of the things with entrepreneurs are kind of like we say overvaluing.

So there maybe overselling themselves, but also they might be fully shit in terms of their understanding. The market are also like or exaggerating what those things can do. All that can.

So 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 to column IT. So you get people trying to sell supplements that come on there and it's a cure for cancer, whatever IT may be. Or there's this latest fat that you know increases your core strength without doing any exercise. You shit like that. I'm just going to about i'm not pound on him, right?

I still love that. I still love the trying. So you know.

given credit, right, because they know all of amErica is going to see IT and they're luted themselves to believe the story is so strong.

I mean, there's a delusional aspect to entrepreneurship, right? Like you .

just I see that is a great question. Do you have to be ambitious and you know citified reality at some level to think that you can create a company that could be worth ten hundred about billion dollars, right? Um yeah some level because you don't know it's all uncertainty.

But I think if you're dilution onal that works against you, you because everything's grounded in reality, you've got to execute, you have 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 missioner. This is my driving principle, but you still got execute on the business plane and that's where most people fail.

Yeah, you have to be kind of two brain. 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 to like to the first principles, the basics of how to build the thing, how much is going to cause all yeah I mean.

because if you can do the basics, you not can be able to do the bigger things. And at the same time, you've to be able one of the things and 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 finite situation is never going to change, right? And there's always somebody I can leap frog businesses. There's whoever is competing against you.

You know if you do abc, they are going to try to do cdna, right? And you you Better be prepared for that to come because otherwise there are out of business too. So you're never in a vacuum. You're always competing against sometimes an unlimited number of entrepreneurs that usually even know exist. We are trying to kick your ass.

And the tRicky part of all the tools you might need to frequently pivot, especially in the beginning, hopefully. So you think like in the beginning, the product you have should be the thing that cares you a long time.

Yeah because I mean, that's your risk is 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 is then and you raise money or whatever just to pivot, you've always shown that you haven't been able to read the market.

And so it's not the pivots can't work and always don't work. They can, but more often not they don't. You pave IT for a reason that's because .

you made a huge mistake. Well, I also mean like the the microbial ts, which is like iterated development .

of yeah ah just iterations yeah no entrepreneur ship been having any business is just continuous international continuous your product, your sales pitch, your advertising, introducing new technology. How do you use A I or not use AI? Where do you use IT? What person's the right person? There's there's just a million touch points. You know that you're always reevaluating in real time that you have to be agile and adapt and change.

But especially in software, he feels like business model can evolve really quickly.

Make money was software for sure because you know anything digital because I can change in a millisecond .

speaking which how did you make your first billion?

So my partner taught wagner and I we get together for lunches and we were at california ece a kitchen and present halloween dallas and he was talking about um how we could use this new thing called the internet this is late ninety four, early ninety five to be able to listen to indian university basketball games that that's where we went to school and he was like, look, we would listen the games.

We would have somebody in bloomed in inDiana have a speaker phone next to a radio, and then we would have a speakerphone in dale's and six packer, twelve packer beer. And we sit around, listen to the game, because there was no other way to listen to IT. So I was like, okay, my first company microscope, you know, i'd written software, done network and aggression, and so I was comfortable digging into IT.

And so like, okay, let's give me a try. So we started this company called audio net and effective became the first streaming content company on the internet and IT. We're 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 music labels and everything and um evolved audio t that com, which is only audio at the beginning to broadcast that com in one thousand nine and ninety eight, which was audio in video, and became the largest multimedia site on the internet, took IT public on in july of one thousand nine hundred ninety eight. IT had the largest first day jump in the history of the stock market at the time. And then a year later, we sold at the ahoo for five point seven billion dollars in yahoo stock. And I owned, you know, right around thirty percent of the company ever take. And so after taxes, that's what about me.

There was a lot of questions there. So the technical chAllenge that you making that sound easy but you rope code but still in the early days, how do you figure out how to create this kind of product of of just audio first.

video for a lot of iterations, right? Like you talked about um we started in the second Better of my house set up a server. I got an isdn line which was one hundred twenty A K line and set up downloaded nescafe server and then started using different file formats that were progressive loaded and allowing people to connect to the server and do a progressive download so that the audio you can list to the audio what was downloaded in on your PC IT was a super choppy.

There was going to think for .

IT would buffer IT was a IT IT wasn't good, but IT was a start because there was .

good enough because it's the first yeah because .

there was no other competition right? There was nobody else ing ah and so was like, okay, I can get access to this this or this and then there were some third party software companies, singing and progressive networks and others that were that took IT a little bit further. So we partner with them.

And I started going into local radio stations where literally we would set up a server right next to IT. I've had a forty nine dollar 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 plugging into the server encoded and make IT available from audio net t com.

Then I would go on u unit button board. I would go on copy serve. I would go on protests.

I would go on A, I would go whatever I could find bodies. And i'd say, okay, we've got this radio station, K I, F. And dallas has got dallas ports and dallas news and politics.

And if you're in an office or you're outside of dallas, connect to audio net dot com. And now you can listen to these things on demand, and that's how we started. And I started with run one radio station, and then IT was five, then I was ten, then IT was video content.

And the laws were different then. So we could literally go out and buy cds and host them and just let people listen to whatever music. And we went from, you know, ten users a day to one hundred to a thousand, to hundreds of thousands to a million over the next four years.

How do you find the users? That is .

a watermelon.

a mouth just .

watermelon advertise.

So the thing fox on to pick up the phone .

ever quite like everything that was public domain, I go on by a video or because whatever IT was um and this is before the the dims, the digital m copyright act of ninety set whatever kicked in, so literally anything that was audio we would put online so people could listen to IT now and if you think about somebody at work. They didn't have a radio.

Most likely if you did, you could get reception, definitely didn't have a TV, but you had a PC and you had ban with available to you and the companies warn up on firewalls or anything at that point time. So are in office listening you know during the day what just exploded because whoever sitting next you are what are you you listening to right? And that was the start of IT.

And then you know in early ninety eight, um we started adding video and just other things and we had and that with thousands of servers know there is no cloud back then and just putting together all these 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 sane. Look, it's nineteen, nineteen, ninety six, ninety seven, ninety eight.

And to communicate with your world ride employees, what they would do is they would go to an auditorium that had a satellite up link, and then they would have people go to like theatres or ballrooms and hotels that had satellite dumplin's, and then would broadcast, you know, the product introductions, whatever. And so we said to them, look your pain, 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 pcs at work. So we did you know when intel announced the p ninety PC, we you know charged them two million dollars whatever to do that when motor roller announced a new phone or a new product, we would charge them. And so we use the consumer side to do a proof concept for the network um and then we would take that knowledge and go to corporations. And that's how we made .

a revenue and there's some selling there .

with the corporations and we saving them so much money and were technology and these they wanted be perceived as being leader. And so was when when .

how much technical savy was required? He said, a bunch of servers, I go, which point to get more engineers, how much did you understand could do yourself? And then also, once you can do all yourself, how much technical service is required to understand how to hire the right people to keep buildings .

in the novi did all the technology and then we hired engineer after engineer after engineer to implement IT. And so wow yeah um from putting together multiple ast network software to just all these different things was just like a scary .

thing like IT is terrifying.

right? Because as we were growing, trying to keep the scale and literally we're buying off the shelf pcs and then you know server cards as the technology advanced and hard drives and things would fail and we would have to we didn't have machine learning back then to do an analysis of, you know, how to distribute server resources. So know, like there is there was a time when bill clinton, in all the moniker, the winsley stuff, happened.

They released the audio of their interviews of him or something like that, right? And we literally, I knew at that point in time when that was released, everybody at work was going to want to listen to IT, right? So we had to take down servers that we're doing, chicago cubs baseball, you know, just make all these on the fly decisions because there was no we didn't have the tools to analyze or in predict be predictive. But yeah, IT was IT was all technology driven in marketing .

the acquisition by yahoo. Can you tell the story that but also in the broader context of this internet bubble, this is fascinating part of our human .

history have so on the acquisition side, we were the largest media side on the internet wasn't close. There was nobody calls. We were youtube and relatively speaking, we would be ten x youtube relative to the competition because there was nobody there.

Um and so IT became obvious to yahoo, A O L and others that they needed a multimedia component and we had the infrastructure sales, all that stuff. And so yahoo when we went public in ninety eight or right before I think IT was they made an investment of like two million dollars, which gave us a connection to them. And then after we went public, they decided they needed to have multimedia. So in April of ninety nine, we made a deal, and then july of two thousands when I closed.

And can you explain to me the trickiness of what you did after that.

which the color? yeah. okay. So when we sold to yahoo, we sold for five point seven billion dollars in stock, not cash.

And so I looked that I know. After micros lucon, when I saw that, I took that money. And initially I told my broker, I want to invest like a six year old man because I want to protect IT.

But then he started asking me all kinds of questions about all these technologies that understood, like network side and install. We had become one of the top twenty, let's say, systems integrators in the country at one point time. With the largest IBM token ring installed in the country was crazy, right binion being blast from the past.

I mean, so anyway, so these wall street bankers um or analysts rather um that were the big analysts at the time would call me up because they would ask my broker, what does he know about this product? And I knew all what was working and not working right. And so the ones that work, you know, I say that's working and I see the they say some the stock will go up to twenty box, right? So i'm like, well, in my brokers like you, you know this Better than they do.

You need to invest. So I started buying and selling stocks and this was in nineteen ninety and which was killing IT. I was making eighty ninety a one hundred percent a year um over those next four years to the point where guy came in and as to use my trading history to start a hedge fn, which we did and I sold within nine months IT was great right but the point being as IT goes force so went um we sold to yahoo.

I thought we had a lot of experience trading stocks and I had seen different bubbles come ago. The bubble for PC manufacturers, a bubble for networking manufacturers, they went up up, up, up up and then they came straight down, be after the hype or somebody just um leap broker and so when we sold the ahoo, um I was like, i've GTA 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 brothy and go straight down. And I knew that because all of what I had was in stock, I needed to find a way to cooler, IT and protective.

So understanding stocks and trading the options and all that. My broker and I we went ensure ted, an index that had yahoo in IT. And so the lot the time was you couldn't short any indexes that had more than five percent of that stock in IT, right? Of any ones of the a who stock. And so um I took pretty much twenty million dollars, everything I had at the time, and I shorted the index.

This is fascine because it's based on your estimation. This is a bubble.

Just might not want to be greedy. sure.

I the foundation of this kind of thing is um you don't want to .

be greedy yeah I mean, how much money do I need right? You know where other people saying I think you higher, higher, higher. I went to see abc and um I told them what I done and they were like in yahoo's stock had gone up significantly from the time I colored and one of the guy, joe turnin, was on there.

Don't you feel stupid now that you have stock? Is guy up um you know x percent more unlike you? I felt real stupidity on my jet.

But so I mean, there is some fundamental way in which bubbles are based .

on this greed. And before, right, like I just in. And so what I did was that we put together color where I sold calls and butt puts. And as IT turns out, when the market just crated, I was protected. And you know, over the next two, three years, whatever IT was IT converted to cash, paid my taxes eeta but um IT protect to me and and is this turns out he was called one of the top ten trays of all time and what was even more interesting in out of that period um my broker at that time was a golden sex and I had asked him to see if there was a way to trade vick. The vics write the volatility index and there wasn't right and so one of the the people that golden that we were working with to try to create this actually left golden and created indexes that allows you to to trade the fix .

what's not trivial to understand as a bubble? I mean, you're kind of lessons you're insight until of this because you 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 I was going to keep on going up and I was there was a trinities value there, I would have stayed in IT. But IT IT wasn't so much yahoo who was just the entire industry. You would back then, you know, like we're looking at the the magic seven or whatever is stocks now and people asking is 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 going public. You 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 frothy ss 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 IPO right now for that matter. So 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.

This thing is 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 us and we see a rush of companies who are scans on other people 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 fourteen year old IT was bragging about buying in video with me in his robot hood account. He tells me the order I place that and he was like, oh yeah, it's going up, up, up and i'm like, yeah, we're not quite there yeah but that's know that's .

one thing to pay IT .

worth luton .

with IT yeah you said that becoming a billie requires a luck yeah can you explain?

Yeah I mean, there's no business plan where you can just start and say, yeah, i'm definite going to be a billionaire you can know if I had to start all over, could I start a company that made me a millionaire yet because I know how to sell and I know technology and I ve learned enough over the years to do that. Um can I make ten million? Probably one hundred million, I hope so.

Um but a billion just something good is got to happen. You know, timing, timing. Internet stock market was going nuts right when we started, you know and that certainly I couldn't predict or control.

Um no, it's like A I right now a isbn around a long, long, long, long time and the NVIDIA process is or GPU rather you could not predict that. Now is the time that they were going to be in to that cost effectiveness where know you can do you can create models and train them. And although it's expensive, it's still doable.

You we didn't really even we had asic right for custom applications and we had CPU that we're leading the way. But GPU were more for gaming and then crypto mining. And now then of the son they were the foundation for A I models.

Luck being a century to become a burden. Air is a beautiful way to see life in general. First of all, I personally think that everything good that ever happened to me because of I think that's just a good way of being. It's like you're grateful that said, there are some examples of people that you're like they seem have done a lot of they seem have got a lucky a lot. You know you mention jeff bases IT seems like hey did a lot of really interesting, powerful decisions from many years of amazon to make a 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 making, they weren't profitable. And we we were in an environment where IT was possible .

to rose to raise money. I mean, what about somebody you get sometimes fast with a nat ion. We cannot even look at sock and gates. More of IT.

That was just trying to get laid, right? And I took off .

and you rose some good with human civil ation.

But yes, so more power to them, right? You can take anything away from but yes, snaps chat. Same thing took off apps take off in two thousand and seven when the iphone came out. Apps took off in two thousand seven, two thousand twelve. And if you were there with the right up at the right time and even facebook um you in two thousand four the bubble had burst and you know the Price for computers had fAllen nothing kids in school, i'll need to computers or laptops if he had tried to do something like that. You know five years earlier I was too Young, but you know, five years earlier, or five years later, you know where friendster might have been the ultimate, or myspace .

friends to? I remember friendster or my space.

I had a my space account that was before facebook.

Yeah, the time means important, but this is like the details of how the product is built. The fundamentals of the product .

like that get you when the opportunity is there, right? That's what allows you to take advantage of that opportunity and and the is made of at all, right? You've got to be because IT wasn't like any other people I mention.

They warn others trying the same thing. Yeah, right. You had to be able to see IT. You had to be able to visualize and put together a plan of some sort or at least 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, they raised a ship load of money. IT wasn't bootstrap in if they .

got them there. And raising money is not just about sales, is about the the general feeling of the people with money at that time .

and proximity. Yes, sure. Duck wasn't at harvard and he was at miami of ohio university or he was at richling community college. Same idea, the same person, same execution and nothing.

I believe in the power individuals to find there to realize their potential no matter where they come from.

But I agree, I rea hundred percent with that.

right? I ck is required.

yeah. I mean, scale is the only delta scale. You know we're not all blessed with the access to the tools you need to to hit that grand slam.

But then also billion is not the only measures.

Absolutely not right. There's everybody defines the success in their own way.

How do you define success? mark?

Waking up every day with a smile, excited about the day you know I was you know, people say, well, when you get that kind of money doesn't make you happy and and my answer always is IT, if you are happy when you were broke, you're going to be really, really, really happy when you're rich.

But you've got to work on being happy when you're broke.

I guess what? You're just being unhappy, right? If you are miserable, you in in your job before there's a good chance you're still gonna miserable. That's just who you are.

It's a pretty good definition and success, by the way. So how do you reach that success? But we have advised the people.

you know, we talked about my dad, my the I never looked at my dad and said, okay, you're not successful. He busted as as when he came on. You know, he we enjoyed our time together, right? There was nothing at any point time where I felt like, oh, this is miserable, wear awful where you know we don't have this.

We don't have that. We celebrated the things we did have and um never knew about the things we didn't have. no. And so I think you know you have to be able to find your way to whatever IT is that puts a smile on your face every day. Some people can do and some people can .

is not always about the smile for the smile on the outside .

IT could be small in the yeah whatever .

makes you feel good, the struggle and even the struggle, if if you're dad, really, really hard work can be, can be if you're filling experience, because the struggle leading up to then seeing your kids exactly right.

because that was my dad's grand slam. Yeah, but i'd seen three kids go to college, be successful spend to be able to spend time with. I mean, that was the other thing you know he really made me realized 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 good 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 beautiful .

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, uh, uber.

yeah we call that not doing something yeah, wasn't a mistake. I was just, I mean, IT was a mistake but try to yeah I always tried to look at a mistake, the things you did that did turn out as opposed the things you did do you know the negative.

but but what can you tell the story that maybe it's just interesting because IT is illustrative, like how to know when the thing is going to be big and not and what are the fundamentals of IT and how to take the risk not? And all this kind of stuff.

right? So the back story of that is bill girl came to me and said, mark, there's this guy, travis, that has this company, red rush, which is appear appear networking company that 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 I was like two thousand and six, I was an investor at box tot net with and levy and others, one other company.

But there were three of them where there be emails between you know where i'd introduced them and when we'd all talk to these in emails and they'd all going to be have astronomical success right um but so switch had its issues because always look at the peer to peer is kind of stealing band with from the internet providers when then with was a scarce commodity um and so you know what travis did with that though was great. You know he convinced gaming company is he wanted to do downloads of the clients for those games to use his peer to peer red switch. And you know, he butted as as, and I think he sort of for eighteen million dollars.

So he did well, and so was natural for him to come to me. And I saw at the emails and asked me about uber cab. 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 ten or fifteen million dollars, whatever. And 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 out of business.

That's going to be a chAllenge. And I think you don't have enough money designated for marketing to get all that done. And I said i'd invest, but not quite devaluation, right? Never came back to me.

Yeah I mean, there are some lessons there connected to what you're doing now will talk about the costly drugs is like looking at industry that seems like there's a lot of complexity involved, but it's like hungry for revolution and the .

caps for they were they were dominated by an installation few they were not very transparent. You didn't know the intractable, very politically driven um an old boy and sessions network and to trap and like I told him, drivers the best thing about you is you run through walls and breakdown beards. The bad thing about you is your run through walls even if you don't have .

to you know yeah and there you can have to see is a possible to reason of money, is a possible to all this is a possible is a possible to breakthrough. And it's kind of a fascinating success story with .

uber is I think he tried to go too big. He had too bigger ambition, which costs him in the end, not financially personally but just you know in terms i've been able to stick IT out with them um but you know that's what makes them a great entrepreneur.

What is a fascinating successor. You have like certain companies like airbnb, just kind of go into this thing that we take completely for granted.

And and and and john, who worked as our general council at broca com, was was brians gc and chief Operating officer. So they they had a smart, smart, smart.

smart team and they believed in IT. And I mean, just it's a it's a beautiful story because you're like, all right, all the things that annoy you about this world like they're an inefficient and just seem like good paying.

That said, no, like a lot of people did to airbnb because I like not on what people sit in my stupid in my bed.

I wouldn't to us like this is not going to work. I've done like cow surfing this stuff and I was always IT didn't seem right IT didn't seem like you .

could do this that a to moitie IT yeah but he did more power .

to b in two thousand, I think january, you purchase a majority stake in the the N. B. A team, dallas mavericks for two hundred and eighty five million.

So at this point, maybe you can correct me, but there was one of the worst performing teams in franchise history. true. How how did you help turn IT around? I had this big.

tall guy. They dig navasky and I let him be dirk navy, right? I got all the way um but I think more than anything else um there was the turn around on the business side and then there was the turn around the basketball side and on the baseball side, I just went in there immediately said whatever 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. Then we do developing the most important asset, other business.

So I made the decision to go out there and higher, like fifteen 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 he took to win. And once the guys believe that, you know, winning was the goal as supposed to just making money, attitude change, effort went up and you know the rest of history.

So the assets of the business here.

the the players, the players, yeah for sure. And then on the business side, the first question I asked myself is what business are we in? And I really didn't know the answer immediately.

But within the first few months, IT was obvious that the entire NBA thought we were in the business of basketball. We are not we are 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 of the dunk. You remember who you were with and remember why you went. I was my first day with the girls.

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 my uncle, he took me those of the experiences you remember and once I conveyed our people that this is what we were selling, that what happened in the arena um off the court was just as important with what happened on the court, if not more so because if you know mom data or bring in the ten year old, you have to keep them occupied because they have short attention to spans. And so you know I would get into vice with the MBA, put a side, the refs, but getting side and vice in the MBA, I would say, N, B, A, nothing but a tourneys, right? Because they had no marketing skills what so ever. And to their credit, they realized that was a problem as they are bringing Better and Better.

Better marketing people. So part of the selling is you're selling the team, selling the sport, selling the people, the idea that all of IT like you see at the experience.

So if you have you ever been to an N, B A game.

miami heat.

do remember walking into the arena and you feel the energy, right? That's what makes us special.

Yeah, the energy is everything to play off games, right? sure.

right? And even a regular season game, right? Even against the worst team, you know, that's where we get you because IT tick is a tend to be a little but cheaper on the recent market.

That's where parents bring their kids. And so you hear kids screaming the entire game. And the parents are thrill to death, right? They got to do something with your kids. The kids are thrill to death because they got to see basketball in NBA game and scream at the top of their lungs. And you know if that turns out to be a close game in that balls in the air, and if IT goes in, you know, everybody is hugging in high five people you've never seen before in your life. And if a misses you're commiserating with people you've never seen that's such a unique experience that unique to sports and we never saw that and that's exactly what we started.

I say like just going to that game, turn me around a basketball, football guy. So that's why wasn't like that point. He was like, oh, wow.

it's fun yet the energy in in a stadium is completely different than the energy arena. You can know in the states particularly IT doesn't have a roof. It's hard to to bottle that energy you feel IT in.

You see, I got from pitzer, so there's a terrible tiles and people screaming defense and everything as dealers, games. But in the arena, you the energy level just indescribable. So how much .

of IT is the selling the tickets in person, but also versus what you see on T. V. So when you are owning a team, do you get any other cut for the what's shown? T V.

yeah yeah we yeah so that there's a TV deal that's done with either a local TV broadcaster and we get all that or um a network broadcasters like a bcc S P T N T whatever and then we get one thirty to that.

So what role does A T V play in? Like turning?

He keeps fans connected. Look, when the team is doing really well as easy, right? There's more viewers are more excited. And when you're not is you know the stock will be hard core fans and and you know general fans and kids that like to watch the game.

What about like the personality that people the in in the stands? I can be clearly your part of the legend of the team because you're literally there go Green .

at the whole game, right? Yeah, it's money. You know, the way I am here is how I am twenty four hours a day, unless there's a math game. Yeah and for whatever reason, that's where I LED at all that stress and frustration. Um but yeah, I mean, it's not some the fans, you know the six man, and right we need fans to bring that energy and you know amplifying that as much as we can as important.

You've had a beef freeing on twitter on x with elon over D E, I programs. What is the accents disagreement there? I won't .

call to a beef, right? It's just it's a bit of fun. Yeah it's fun for me, right? I just, you know it's his platform.

He goes to run in any way, 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 of his platform, people are less likely to um disagree with him visually. Somebody who's who's got a platform themselves.

And so when we start talking about dei, and it's just the factor racist and this stuff stuff that I just think is nonsense, I have no problem you know sharing my opinion and and you know if he disagrees, okay, he's 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 your comments.

which is no his choice yeah you in your comments what you do a .

bit is not too but .

yeah a little bit but yeah you're pretty, let's say, regress in your responsible. There is some exchange of ideas. There's some snack, there's some fun or that kind of often you do voice the opinion in the represents a large number of people and is great. I mean that's what is really beautiful um but just lingering on the topic, what use the good and the bad of D I programs really .

simple right? D is diversity and that means you just expand your pool of potential applicants to people who you might not otherwise have access to, you know to look where you didn't look before, to look for other people on looking for quality employees um that simple. And the e an 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 me some love and and give them support they need so they can do the job as best they can and feel comfortable and confident. Going to work is as simple.

So that's a beautiful ideal. When I implemented, implemented poorly perhaps, or in a way that doesn't reach that ideal. Do you see maybe when it's quoted based, do you see that you can result in a century racism towards asian people and White people, for example?

There's a lot one pack there, right? Um so first you can't to quote us they're illegal and that there's you're um and i'm not the lawyer on the suburbs unless you're you're trying to repair something that happened in the past like some discrimination that happened in the past. So it's not quote base.

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 D I. Problems are implemented? orly? Course not. There are everything that 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 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 gonna 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 of x, the feedback is completely different here here, right? But to your question of reverse racism, yes, IT happens.

There's because people are people. There's no there's no human being that is a one hundred percent objective, and it's also there's very, very, very few jobs that can be determined on a purely quan quantitative basis. right?

How do you tell one good one genitor from the other who's the best? right? How do you tell one sales person that you're higher inversus another high because they haven't soldier product yet?

So you don't know, we talked earlier about firing people because we made mistakes. And you know, yes, there's discrimination against any world, White, asian, black, Green, orange, whatever IT may be. But I truly believe that there's far more discrimination against people of color. Then there are people who are White, and I think it's it's become a strong man that reverse discrimination because of dei is is prevalent or near ubiquitous.

Well, much of american history was defined by intense radical racism and sexism. But in the recent years, there's A A correction. And I think the nature, the criticism is that there's an over correction where D I programs that 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 is so on, you can they have a very strong commune system. Or that you could that if you criticize the D I program, IT seems like it's very easy to be called racist. And if you called racist or sexist, that's that's a sticky label.

So you're getting into the culture of organizations, right, in leadership within organizations and accepting any type of criticism and criticize D E I. When I criticize the referees in the NBA, I got fined, right? That was their option. I knew what I was getting to rent.

Not that they're completely analogous, but is causing effect if i'm in a major company and i'm publicly criticizing or even internally criticising a sales plan or a product, our product socks, right where like there was a google engineer get fired for saying. Know google head A G I, right? And nobody believe they did, and they knew that created problems.

Wasn't D I related? But I was saying something publicly that was to the in the ceo's ice, to the detriment of the company, right? So I think those are all analogous st.

If you're trying to accomplish something within an organization because you think there's a problem and there's people speaking out saying, look, you were getting wrong, I think i'm a victim of all this in the company right then you know, leadership has you got to make a decision, do they agree or not agree, are they right or they wrong? Is to the the positive is a positive or negative to the company and you decide so you know this conversation that conservatives are being um silenced in organizations now um I just I haven't seen IT know i've talked to and then the other side of your question, I think i'm packing IT is um what's driving all this particia universities for wanted in corporate america? When I talk to people in corporate amErica about um dei, they always start talking about ideology, right? And like i've talked to build a man who you've head on, right? And when I asked them, we will build you run your own companies who's telling you what to do?

They are whose day well is the universities, you know, the people who have the ideology of the E. I am I, did they force you? Did they call you? Did did you lose control of your company? No, it's not me that happens to other people that I talk to other people.

Same thing. So I get, try not to go one on one in tip twitter conversations on this topic. So in the dms i'll talk to people who are really conservative and i'll ask the same question um and be like what who's forcing you to do this? Well it's the ideology that's everywhere you see IT don't did you see the harvard thing know a university, north CarOlina?

I've never had anybody tried to push me in this direction to do this. This is 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 if somebody doesn't feel confident and comfortable with IT, they may feel they're being discriminated against.

There was something I just read the wall street journal, where the wall street journal had a company interviewed two million people, right? And the diff ult firing and how people, when they were fired, for percent of the people who were fired felt like I was wrong, that they were doing a great job. Yet they then they 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 or not doing a good job, right. So I see that has been an acknowledged to all this know this puffy about um reverse discrimination and conservative not being able to speak up because forty percent of people who have been fired don't believe they should have been fired. There's there's a disconnect somewhere and 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 you're White and that doesn't comport well with ei programs, a lot of things are gonna happen, right? Either you're going to just going to come up in your performance review, hr or your boss is going to have to address IT in some way. It's going to get to hr some level and then decisions are going to have to be made.

And and you can just fire somebody because they spoke up, right? Somebody who'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 is happening at first is everything i've read and seen. And when I talk to people in positions of authority within organizations and ask them who's forcing them, you know, to implement this ideology, nobody says, nobody says, yes, there is somebody. But on twitter sounds great.

IT is true for conservatives, but in general, you can sell books. You can get likes when you talk about this ideology and and there's a degree to which is, is this work ideology in the room with us right now a meaning like it's this bogging monster that we are all of.

Where is IT a positive?

I guess another way to say that is they don't highlight a lot of the positive progress has been made in the positive version of the word woke in terms of correcting some of the wrongs done in the past. So but that said, you know, if you ask people in russia, a lot of them will say there's no propagate hear, there's no sense ship and all that kind of stuff. It's sometimes hard to see when you're in IT that this kind is happening.

IT does seem difficult to criticize D I programs. Not horribly difficult, terrible, there are this monster, the infrared, everything. But IT is difficult and requires great leadership.

So where have you criticized that and been condemned? A academic or academic, academic lets two different words.

companies and academy. Yeah, two different words. But I also think it's not I really want to point my finger at the failure of leadership of basically firing mediocre people.

Like people, they're not good at their job. The problem to me is D I. Defense mechanism, like commune system, is so strong that the shady people don't get fired. So the vision, the idea of the eyes is a beautiful ideal. It's just like, well, maybe 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 nineteen day different, right? I can see an argument for the ideology in the university.

I can see you know you look at the the the amount money spent on IT. And so well the the goal is right um the way they implement in the 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 the I I waited into dei, universities at all.

most focus on companies.

harder percent, right, because that's where where I exist. But at the same time, like I read Christopher roof rose book, where he talks about the canada, the geneology of vocational m an idiot. Gy, 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 way he used to try to counter that.

G, E, I, and that seems to me to be counter to the whole conservative movement right now, other than schoolyards, right? Where is centralized? And you know, the republican candidate is all about centralized power in him. And you know, to me that's just a conflict. And a lot of the entertain ion of this of the deal d ei conversation that a lot of, a lot of which goes through Christopher rufo right now.

Let's continue on a theme of fun exchanges on the so elon tweed, the fundamental exec flaw of the workmen virus is that the weaker parties, always right in printanier, even if they want you to die.

And you responded at length, but the beginning is the fundamental extreme tic flaw of the anti walkmen is that IT allows groups with historical power to play the victim by taking any goal examples and packaging them into conjured the spiritual al ideology that threatens to up and the power structures that have been depending on so well, well, that there's attention there. So yes, but both can be abused, right? Both positions of power can be abused. There's power and D I. And there's shady people that can crave power and hold onto power and sacrifice their s okay.

put aside universities. Okay demand. Yeah I mean because i'm not going to argue that university is implemented. E I well, right and i'm not going to tell you that um you they need to be spending twenty five million dollars a year on dei positions to me that's insane.

Um do I look at the harvard in north line the decision and say IT was a great decision? No, because you know I think having a diverse student body helps make for. Kids who are Better prepared for the real world. But i'm not running a university so it's not much choice. Maybe some point in the future I will but no no um in in terms of the corporation of IT, who's calling anybody what to do.

well, maybe you can give me .

some help. Sure, i'm here to help you. Like there's .

an example in an A I world of a system called .

germany, or what if .

people washing but were black?

So why why is IT? When that came out, IT was a big upper but when somebody so who was IT one of the people who are trying to fuck with me um I forget which one there are so many yeah he pointed out to um elan that g elan ai was won when they answered certain questions and other people have pointed out other things to e laan about grow whatever they however pronounced um that was leaning left or walk right and elan's response was oh it'll change is the mistake or fixing IT when IT happens to gemini in google is the end of the world.

Look out what what they are in this reflection of all their culture. Now google comes down, says mistake and they ducked the guy um who is the product manager, whatever a vi of that product um who and then they go back and look at his old tweet right and show that he's very left lean and very D E I supportive. And that's the end of the world.

not the end of the world. But uh google so much uh dependent on trust that trust the google search has as objective as possible a channel into the world of information. And so that brand is really important.

Yes, you you 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 up until .

a months ago.

maybe if you put in kito gummy shark tk kito gams into google IT will show up with scammy ads scheme at after chema and i'll get emails um up a few month ago from elderly people asking me why the dummies weren't working and why the companies were charging on 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 all shark right?

IT was a mistake while there's fraud. There's mistakes but the mistakes no but .

why didn't google fix IT right? A distance that happened once over one week, over two weeks, right? And because IT was hard to fix, yeah, as this turns out, I was working with them to try to find a fix.

And we would both look at the same page. And if you were inside of google, within the google outcome domain, IT will show one page. If you are outside of google, IT will show another. And IT took us looking at the same time for anybody to realize that, meaning that there's a lot of technology problems that are .

hard to fit their super complex. And we can talk about IT forever. Social media, the criticism towards google, those are the companies when they're based in silicon valley. There could be an ideological drift into a ideological bubble. I wish the technologies is created and they could be blind to the obvious bias that's that's yeah but .

the billions of customers who are not going to say what you're saying is the free market stops with artificial intelligence that people don't pay attention in response, that google doesn't listen to the responses, that people inside a google will ignore their own best financial interest and even their own best personal interest because they know they are going to get docks now on on by elon and others. And so I just don't see that. And he loves not allow to make those same mistakes, but as he allowed to make those mistakes.

but google isn't I know elan is one hundred percent should be criticized for for the ridiculousness of statement say he makes about various products. He's having a bit of fun like you are yeah um but and I also believe in the free market, but it's not it's not always efficient. There's like a delay time.

It's ine.

So which is why elan is important when calling out, I think, overstating the criticism of german I but elan and others just .

german I wasn't even a folly available public product yet.

It's still a bias that resonate this way. Your own networks work though.

right? That's why we'll be millions of models because weights and biases to go, you know, a neural network.

But well, no, so like the the black George washington is a is a correction on top of the foundation model, some to keep IT court on quote of safe. One of the big criticisms of all the models, Frankly, probably even grow a little bit less so is there they're like trying to be really conservative in the in the sense of trying to be yeah careful not to say crazy shit because because you know how the thing brand do .

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 north 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 as you want to have some transparency of all the teams are involved in 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 market. Yeah, that's where the market corrects IT, right? And not only from the x outside because everybody you know was going to test IT like when youtube first came out, we're not first came out when after google bought them, used to be able there are used to be um different commands. You can give IT right a line um prom command said you could give IT and you could find all the nasty porn that got loaded before the they they clicked IT off right right and IT was just the new shit ever.

And even now to this day, if there's some horrific, tragic event, somebody he's loading IT up right now, I know that's not directly 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 in software. And then on the inside, if it's all left leaning and all you have is left leaning employees because most conservative won't want to work there, then again, that's self .

correcting as well. That's the hope. But you can self correct in different kinds of ways. You can have a different company that competes. And because more concerned, I mean, my worry is that it's becomes like two different world where there is like, already is not common IT don't give up. Oh.

not give you. So where does this go is the question yeah right what what happens next? And I mean gone 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 link in bio for a porn post, right? We don't even think that that's a negative anymore that just and accept the same. And now IT is become very where you're politics on on twitter. But again, as you extend that and and things growth as A I models become more efficient and trainable unless for a lotless money or even locally on a PC or a phone, we're all gonna our own models and there's going to be millions of millions of millions of models are not just foundational as now maybe open, maybe there are build someone open source.

Maybe you know um IT will be copy positive where you just cut in paste and and create your own model and train IT yourself, maybe to be mixture of experts where you know maybe you will be a metal front end like we're working on a project where we take thirty different AI models and there's just a meta search engine where IT searches all of them and you can compare all the outputs and see what you think is the best kind of like a search engine, right? Because you might get, is D E I good? right? Is the covet vaccine good? right? You're onna get a variety of of of outputs and you have to make that decision yourself. That's why things is going to happen with the eyes as well because I think brands, there's no way the male clinic and the harvard medical school are just going to contribute all the IP to ChatGPT or german I or whatever they're going. It's going to have to be licensed or there's going to do their own.

Yeah, I mean, that's a very hopeful message. But that said, you know, a human history doesn't always auto correct really quickly, self correct really quickly. Sometimes you get into this very painful things you have, you have stolen, you have hitler. You can get the places very quickly where the ideological thing just build on itself. And like .

twitter is not real world. There's twenty that .

is not real. That's yeah yes. But you can still have a nation captured by ideology. I think amErica has been really good at having these two blue, red, always at attention with each other, dividing the popular and in the process of doing that, figure something out. They almost like playing devils adia, but like in real life.

And and that's fair, and that's right, you know, as opposed to prove that telling you everything you want to know, right? And everybody believing that because this control of everything, right. And so going back to what you said earlier, people in russia don't think you know invading ukraine know a lot of them seat as a positive, right? Um i'm sure you have relatives and friends who think it's the best thing never happened, right? Because they believe in input .

in they're notifying ukraine, they've removing .

the notes. Is that exactly what put and said? And you we don't have one uniform um media that that's the difference. Even though people like to talk about mainstream media has been the source of a lot of friction, there is no such thing as mainstream media.

More you know fox is the biggest um cable news channel with the biggest audience and they call everybody is mainstream via 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? Puts the master of that.

He, you're going on to jail, or you're gonna 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 a fillide platforms.

Then whoever controls the algorithm, the programme in there controls you and a lot of respect. And I think that's where our biggest problem has been. We get people attach to specific platforms and apps and media outlets, and they become part of that team and they identify as such.

And either you're part of the team or you're not. And that to me, is the fundamental prom. It's not woke ideology because I never felt any pressure to make the choices that i've that i've chosen, you know, including diversity, equity and inclusion.

And i've never forced anybody or told anybody to do IT. I just said, here's my experiences. Whenever i've talked to people who talk about the work ideology, no one ever got forced. I mean, if you look at Dylan mcdermid, right, if if there was a way, engage the number of impressions that he had right, and where they source from, i'd be willing to bet any amount of money that ninety percent plus of the impressions and discussions of dynamic .

dormit were on right lane media. Several things actually was even there. You got got a bit of a beef with again, n. So the topic there was the general transition and tell me of any can you explain the nature, the beef? I mean, the it's an interesting claim you're making the most most of the people who are concerned about the servais ves.

Yeah I just the point is that if you looked at impressions, like when you run an add, you're curious about impressions and who sees them right. Um but if you look at the impressions related to dilma dormit, um I would like I just said i'd bet ninety percent more or were in conservative media and you know I don't know how many followers he had two hundred and fifty thousand followers or whatever when the butt ad came out and if IT weren't for kid rock shooting, you know, guns i'm shooting at dilema donate budi cans sh'd be long forgotten yeah but .

most of the people that care about censorship are gonna free speech advocates. Like most people I care about putin suppressing speech, or anybody else suppressing speech are going to be like global talian. So like there is probably an explanation that the criticism the Jordan Peterson could provide. I guess he said that a deem of any popular zed the the kind of mutilation right in his view um they can affect as a very serious life changing process that a person goes through. And when I applied to a child you can do a lot of harm to a person .

if but in my pointer holds, I don't know how many kids were following and you can look at the followers list is not like it's hidden and right back then if they had two hundred fifty thousand followers and now we're on tiktok um you know where he might get fifty seven thousand views or likes right?

Not many views but likes I don't i've never seen any evidence that dilema dermid influenced people to transition their gender as he transition to her. IT was documented on tiktok over the course of a year. And again, when you go back and look at the views on those tiktok IT wants, you know, IT wasn't like enormous.

yeah. But the trend start IT can be a worries. People is for Young kids there to be a trend of we push when you feel like an outsider, you feel not yourself less than yourself, all this kind of tough then feel like that if it's because popular enough a trend, you would gender transition uh, without mean, to do that is just part of a trend.

That's the worry. 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 my identity know find a 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, I I don't remember what the numbers were that I read.

But I do remember that the latest numbers that came out in terms of transitioning were from jama, which is a medical social that said twenty from twenty twenty one to twenty twenty two, the numbers went down. But the bigger point is there are no numbers for twenty twenty three win post dynamics termin. 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 what people IT accused trump, of potentially influencing people to inject bleach into their veins.

You can, you know, that's a big old leap to say that, because the, you know trump says that that people are going to start invest, you know, injecting and then they find somebody who actually did and is like, all must be true. You know, this is a trend. Now I just I just not buying IT that there aren't enough road blocks in the way.

Now I just saying that never happens, right? And I and for me to me, you should have to wait until you're eighteen 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 of 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 pain for they all have been corrupted by this trend. I just don't see that well.

not corrupt of we know people uh, this back to the D I think that that could be pressure and we are pressured to Operate.

So think about all the people who have to be complicated. Yeah, to do an Operation .

is not complicit like evil complicit.

It's no IT is evil complicit right because somebody duck in hospitals right now, they won't perform abortions because of state law in alabama. They stop I V F treatment immediately after that.

Um ruling by that judge right to q in on judge think that they're not going to pay attention to the possible consequences of being the hospital that does transgender that that that gives doctors Operating rights there and not be um aware the risk associated with IT and double check to me that just insane, they're risk in the entire business and livelihood and personal relationships for not checking him. That fourteen 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 .

that in america, yes. But if you look at humans in general and Jordan Peterson, I think i'm just incorrectly born up.

osu. Tz, yeah. That was dict ous.

But if you look to me, world war two is a very interesting time. IT does reveal a lot about human nature and that humans are able to commit atrocities without really speaking up. The point I want to make is that when you're in the situation where everybody is around around you is committing an atrocity ity. You can be served the good german and and you I mean human nature such that you can.

but that is in a time of war yeah but it's still .

human nature is interesting to remember that war .

when you feel like there's nothing. Alisa patristic m, everything that comes up russia, right? Know the moms of the the kids sent to be you sent to ukraine who didn't come back. Russia feels certainly different than the the everyday russian who's just taking, you know, whatever information is available from a unified controlled media.

But you know, we should remember, human nature is interesting.

I'm not just missing human nature at all, but there's a difference, I think that human nature, self preservation influences those decisions. There's nothing about self preservation involved in dei wildness, you know, transgenderism to compare IT to oahu.

Tz, that's insane. yeah. Well, that comparison is almost always, probably always isn't sane.

The person between anything and the holocaust. I think there's a name for that role. But once you bring up hate ler, the conversation ends. I do appreciate you bring up trump and bleach as an example so continuing and fun exchanges between you and island.

You said if they were having by his last week and he was inversus trump and he was being given last rights, I was still vote for biden to which elon replied, character ing you if biden were a flesh eating zombie with five seconds to live, they were elected, earth would plunge into a one thousand years of darkness. I would still vote for him that's basically quoting you, but in the character and you responded, while I have your attention, wanted to say thank you, your consults. The tesla followed up about using cosplay s drugs, but which we will talk about to save the company money.

Truly appreciated. And in practice is my limit is three hundred years of darkness where well done, mark. Ah what's your intuition if you just stick on biden trust for sex with your intuition?

Why bed would make a Better president than trump? H look at the at the basics, right? If you look at the people he's hired, um there hasn't been any turn nee ver 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 turned on him and came out and written blocks in made public statements about how is bad for the country now compared that to trump the people closest to him, almost all of them turn unless there's a financial relationship involved. And to me, that says everything .

the dynamics of the team is important to.

If you going to be the most powerful person in the world, you Better know how to manage and lead. And that's not to say biden hasn't made 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 ta fix IT or I made a mistake afghanistan, whatever IT may be right the the position of commander, chief in um president, you're gona make mistakes then I look the other guy never miss a mistake and the list as long what what do you .

think about the immigration situation? A lot of conservatives are using that. So the. The theory is that the reason is happening is because they would be able to illegally vote.

That's insane for by 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 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 enables or services a catalase for question the legion .

acy of election. I remember going into the debate with trump twenty sixteen, and he was debating clinton in one of the things he said was, we don't even know if the election IT will be legitimate if I lose. This was just in two thousand sixteen before he was even elected, and that was where he was going.

That's just what he does. He's never admitted a mistake. Guys failed at zillion times.

Most people say, OK, I learn from him. You read, I read a book about roy coin. And rickon was the ultimate denied, denied, deny.

And that was one of trumps mentors. And you can see almost everything of y. Colin ever did in the same way the Donald trump approaches thinks.

But given how drastically the immigration situation is, that story becomes more believable.

Yeah, of course, IT is right. But the fact is still the facts, right? And in red states they're going to be checking in every there will be making sure it's not the case.

And you know you can also make the argument of work in a blue stata doesn't matter. In the the swing states, they're still gonna checking because they know troops is going to sue the shit out of her money losses, you know. And so again, that's where you people will take those self preservation steps to keep their job and do the right thing.

There's still enough people who are believe in this country and how amazing IT is to do the right thing. And a lot of the press of what some, some 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 just wrong, you know, that is just misleading in wrong.

I just worry about, I don't care about trump, biden. I care about democracy. I just worry how I worry about the viral nature of the idea of this illegal immigrants.

But this is just is very functional, right? Either they get across, there's a thousand different ways to an unlimited number ways to enter the united states of amErica undetected, right? And the south water works the easiest in, the worst in. Biden needs to take steps to reduce that. Remember when biden was vice president and um obama was president, they called obama deported and chief, he had no problem deporting people.

And I think if I had to guess, and this suggests to guess that when they looked at the initial statistics for immigration when biden took over, they thought there was room for more migrants, not because they would vote, but you know, you can make an a fiscal argument that in a 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 then you know in digits american citizens, digits in the right way but american citizens um and so they made a calculate a 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 buy you like what you was pushing that on. The whole reason is they are voters and will become voters.

And we should say the obvious, your descended of immigrants. And the immigrants is what makes this country great in many parts of diversion, this nation. And we should probably keep the people that are like already been in this country for a while and are killing IT like P G, D students and all .

this a secret's donal trump ones. So he wants to ship him all out, right? There's just a whole lot of hyperbaric IT comes to talking to all about about all of these things were talking about when there is right verses left, my team versus your team, my try versus your tribe. The only way to stand down is hyperbole.

The hard part in why I like this conversation is, how do you distinguish hyperbole versus reality? And I get where you're going and likes where is like what the smallest Spark sometimes can cause people to change and the next Spark becomes bigger and then IT becomes um more widespread than all of sun. Your country has changed.

It's not what you thought I was. I get that completely right. And yes, you always have to be on top of that to make sure.

But a lot of that comes from lack of leadership, right, and lack of trust because there's nobody who's saying, all right, republicans, that's all hyperbole and you're wrong for that. Democrats, you've fucked up on immigration, right? You've fucked up in the next afghanistan, right?

Here's where you made my uses mistakes owit. There's nobody who says, right um we're not going to just bring in republicans if the republicans win and then and nobody 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 is not no leadership.

They have leadership and the others is, is whatever systems we've created. It's it's really frustrating that if you don't like trump, it's it's really is strong arrangement center of like he's the he's definitely hit ler. If you don't like buying his see no lizard person death everybody .

is labelled right. And because that works on social media that look if ella and changed the algorithm yeah just by taking himself out of IT, certainly I might say don't post right post all you want but he you know if you look at this followers um there are almost all right leaning. If you look at the people he engages with positively, they're almost all right leaning and and feel the people who engages with negatively like me right i've consider myself independent but lean left on the D E I topic right um that influences is the algorithm. And so you see what you see because of what he says.

what I mean, the fish. But the there could be a lot of influential people on twitter that influenced, although that kind of I do feel it's not even about ideology where you lean. It's about like the alga not prioritizing drama. Be like the the the attention grabbing thing or the lower lizard version of that, or like people just want the drama they want out.

When I last read through all the stuff on on the algorithm maybe is changed. Whoever has the biggest account and gets engagement on that account influences what people see the most.

Yeah I mean that SHE, I don't love that to degree, that's true. Still pretty rigorous description of what um of the way they are going the works is actually kind of fascinating. There's a clustering of people .

based on interest in the news 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 igher ors, who in turn have their neighbors, and that's how they design what comes next.

But there is a clustering still. So like if you don't give a shit of body .

on and you're not all way up .

and you're not you're not gna have an influence when .

you get a break, just create a burn or account on twitter and see where who they recommend you.

elon.

and not just elon. That mean the people that elon likes and i'm saying that's not in on sane at this person, at this person and and suggest this person, this person and this person. I'm saying that's what the .

algorithm there should be transparency around that for sure.

There is there is that the whole point, right? He knows the 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.

he wasn't only in twitter. He was one of the biggest accounts of not the biggest account .

already IT wasn't but still like even like the kim the kim cardan's an accounts whatever right IT I don't IT wasn't open source to a lunch credit is now so I couldn't see IT to know right. So I didn't get the sense one where the other of one, one element being dominant over the other. But obviously conservative felt that that left leaning was more dominant. Backman.

yeah, I would love to see numbers .

on all of this. Yeah.

you've D I. Everything like this. Sometimes ana dotal data really frustrates me.

IT frustrate me primarily because of how sexy is. People just love great way, love a story. And on my god, damage is not science. This.

it's not even common sense.

Well, no, I I, I think little stories often have a wisdom in them.

no doubt. right? There's something to .

be gained from from there's a signal there. But like how representative is that signal of the broader thing?

Just all out more noise and signal more after night. All right.

So as I mentioned, cost POS drugs are so many questions I can ask you. But what's the big question was broken about our health care system.

There's no transparency. And when lack transparency leads the lack trust. And when you can trust the healthcare system other than maybe your doctor, that's a broken system.

So what aspect of this system, this costs as drugs, is trying to solve.

So the thing we're trying to solve, force trust, and the way we feel we get there is through complete transparency.

So when you got a cost plus drugs that calm and you put in the name of the medication, if one of the twenty five hundred and growing that we Carry, we will first show you our costs, what we actually pay for IT, then will show you are fifteen percent market, then will show the the pharmacy, fillery 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 and hs being cheaper. You and even the government is negotiating an ex ex. And so just that transparently transparency alone has had an impact and saved millions of people, hundreds, millions of dollars or more.

And maybe IT results in more transparent in other parts of the system. Uh, what do this? So called middleman companies.

So the the p bm, enfin manager, thank you.

C V S. Caremark, signals express scripts and united health of them are ex. They control majority of the market, right? What do they do wrong?

They put profits over everything, right? And they know in an in an industry that's completely open, they can be 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 p bms is says you can't disclose any this and the fact that you can be disclosed means they can tell lexus company that um they're you know they're great Price and they're only being charged x and they can call tell mark company, oh you're getting a great Price and will charge you mark x plus right? But mark doesn't know any Better because is no way to know the .

mark up is not a transparent the cost isn't transparent.

The market up isn't transparent. Know there's different things. Know like I was just talking to a company um in a presentation in a couple days ago and they took the step to leave the big three p bm to go to a rebate free pbn that was smart um and what they said LED to the decision, they had a contract with the P V M for these things called revenge, right? We're depending on the volume of medications you buy theyll kick back to you on 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.

There's a drug called you mira, right? And this is the number one revenue um drug in the country. And there's also bio similar multiple biosimilars.

But when we Carry called you simmery and human, the the priebke Prices about eight thousand dollars per month. And after we base, depending on the size of the company, it'll be anywhere from three to six thousand dollars a month. You go to get on your doctor to prescribe that bio similar, you simmering and you pay five hundred ninety four dollars. But those big three p bms won't allow they are clients to um get your summary because they don't get a rebate on your summary. So they rather keep A A drug on their formula, even though their patients would save, their customers would save a lot of money y'd rather keep a drug and exclude another because they'll make a lot more money.

So the C. V. S. Caremark spokesperson, I think, responded to you feel blender with with the usual language that so deeply exhaust me.

But I was wondering if there's true any truth to IT. Employers unions, health plans and government programs work with C, V S. Care, mark, precisely because we deliver for them lower drug costs, Better health outcomes and broad pharmacy access. There are true cost, cost vantage and choice formula initiatives. We are the leading agent of change, innovation and transparency .

in the market.

That's a whole lot nothing. So they're not transparent.

No call up IT you go to cost us drugs will will give you our Price list of every all twenty five hundred plus drugs the actually cost, the actual cost and what we sell IT for because it's just a plus fifteen percent. Call up any of big three companies and ask them for the same thing. There are a 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 huma that we're paying, what are we paying for IT? They won't even give IT to you unless you really, really scream and yet at them and then we'll charge you and take six months to get.

So like when we moved away from them, we want 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 month. But and then we, they charged for as well around .

data on the C E O front. You said that C E O don't understand health care. Courage is costing them big.

what? What's the connection between of Cosmos drugs and companies? So I can .

speak for my own companies, and this applies to all companies, you know bigger companies that soften sure 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 health care for my employees and their families. And the first thing I looked at was allowed these companies use employee benefits consulting.

And turns out I was getting, I was pain, thirty dollars per employee per month, which was millions of dollars year. And they were just sending us to the companies that paid on the biggest commissions are my have fucking done in my right. So my okay, we're cut them.

And then I looked at our um medication prescription deal that goes to the p bms that we were using and that the consulting connected us with. And I took a list of this is early on in Cosmos drugs list of the generic drugs that we sold, the cost more and thirty dollars that the mavericks also had purchased, right? We ever get that claims data.

And IT turns out we spent one hundred sixty nine thousand dollars with that p bm. When the big three p bms and would have cost us buying from cost of structure nineteen thousand thousand dollars and that's just a simple example. Then I looked at the insurance side of things, right we often sure um so they went premiums ms per say, but we are getting charged seventeen dollars and fifteen cents per employee per month just to use the network that they put together, force provider hospitals, whatever.

And i'm like, alright, other companies that won't charges to put together these networks. Turns out there's a lot of home and those that those insurance companies in those p bms are also responsible for determining what claims, what what um what to authorize in what to deny right? So for a drug IT maybe all right, this is an expensive drug.

But before they will, all before they'll say you'll pay for the drug that your doctor once proscribe you. You have to try these three other drugs and was called step up therapy, right? To see if these other cheaper drugs work or they're not even necessarily cheaper.

They may be um being pushed because they are 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 were, where my health care dollars went. There's not a single CEO who does because that's not a core confidences y that they need and the cfs, that's not their core compensate.

And the hr people, they contribute, they understand its song because they're dealing with the claims, but they spend most of their prescriptions, rug related time or healthcare related times trying to get to authorization approved. So you know your kid breaks their ARM, or you have you get sick and you go to the doctor, and before the doctor will do a surgery or do whatever, they have to go to the insurance company, get preauthorized. And then they always say, no, right? And then you have to go back and somebody has to argue for you, and that just needs a employee time because you know ARM sick or my kids sick, and you're waste of my time.

It's up ajar time. The CEO 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, five hundred employees that focuses on all these things, you'd save a shit load of money. And to health care is your second largest line item expense after payroll and in some companies as hundreds, billions of dollars, right? And you don't understand IT and you're let these guys rip you off and it's because these big CEO don't understand IT and are getting ripped off that the industry is the way that is because that allows trans the the opacity .

to continue as fascinating. So so the most companies outsourced offload of expertise on health care side when they really should be internally. There should be yes.

because it's the wellness of your employees and their families and because yeah but if your employees aren't healthy or if they are worried about their kids and what is more worried them and detrimental to the performance of a company, right, A D E I program, or for having to go to hr and scream and yell and explain and in your doctor waste their time doing the same thing to get authorization for a surgery or medication is insane.

What made you decide to step into this cartel? eg. Situation was so much as so I got a cold .

email from a doctor, alexa h. Miana, who's mico founder. He's a radiologist by trade and a physicist and a smart mother fucker.

And he had a pharmacy that he wanted to create a compound in pharmacy that would manufactured genre rugs that weren't short supply because that happens all the time that things aren't available. I 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 march street to jail. And so I was reading up on that, and he increased the Price of this drug.

Decrem, I think, was like seventy five hundred percent are increased a low cost drug to seventy five hundred. Lars, one of us and my, if he can just jack up the Price to this drug and charge more and get away with IT, this has to be an incredibly inefficient market. And so question is, why is he able to do IT? And IT was immediately apparent that IT was a lack of transparency.

And so can we start a company that is fully transparent with our cost, our markup and our selling Price and see if that works? And so we went for and I took off immediately. I mean, you know, you read a press release from a company's ying, you know they are creating a cost advantage program basically pretending to replicate us here. We have been been in business two years. How was saying is that did you get .

a lot of pressure to mean i'm sure they're very good playing games like so cartel type situations they protect IT feels like health care, like it's very difficult to get in there.

And that I mean, and the whole industry is an architect, but we don't work inside the system. We work outside the system. And so we don't work with those biggest companies, the bigger companies with the most dominant control, you know, it's very insulated and very control.

Like you said, um we work outside, then 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 manufacturer that if they work with us, they'll take them off the formulas or change the rebate structure so that they won't be prescribed. Yeah, IT is dark, but we'll get past that right because there's a downstream impact of all this in the rebate.

And greetings ess of those big three p bms. When you go to a local pharmacy here and host and right unless you say you have a friend here, right that is on medicare or medical advantage and they go to a local pharmacy. And they get a drug that cost six hundred dollars.

Well, in the insurance company that six hundred dollars, the pharmacy first buys that rug for probably that Price minus five percent. So five hundred seventy dollars, then there's probably a copy by the patient and that's probably twenty dollars. So now the net investment that the pharmacy, the local pharmacy has for that made brand medication is five hundred fifty dollars.

Where IT is really fucked up is those big three p bms. They're not reivers them five hundred fifty dollars or more. They're reimbursing ing them five hundred dollars or less and literally those community pharmacies are eating that loss.

And as a result, they're going out of business left and right. And the most the same part of IT is yes with corporate um employer insurance that happens, but IT happens more with medicare party and medicare advantage. That happened all the time with those almost with every script.

So the government is complicit in this community. Pharmacy is going out of business. So how does that how does that connect to cosu s drugs? And what we're doing in the big brands, the big brands know that if all these community pharmacies are going tens of thousands, we're going to go out of business because of the way this pricing is. They're gonna lose the connection between their brand medications and grandma, grandpa and Sally and all those all that businesses is going to get transfer to the big company and there are can 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 car, tel, 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 health are industry that could use this kind of, yes, transparency revolutionizing, yes.

So what we're going to do with our own health care, right? We're not going to be in the business of selling health care or anything I get to Operate. But the things we do for my companies, we're only going to do deals with providers, healthcare providers, that allow us to be completely transparent so that whatever contrast we did, we're going to post them all. Whatever pricing we get, we're going to post them all so that every company whose our size are even bigger will have a template that they can work on, which will take that away from um the the big three insurance companies in the big three p bms because now without that transparency, they have to use consultants who are getting paid by those big three, those big companies and are giving them the best um response. And so now that transparency will .

overcome that and you're using your hashi say celebrity, your name to can push the company have ever put my name on.

It's weird .

that people aren't getting into the space like you public people. You don't like big. There's not like a big.

You know you would look at tech. There's like this like like ceos are open in public, in public and they're pushing the company in IT. They're selling everything is like all transparent. Uh, but you don't see that health care.

no, because it's a big business in most people. Like if I was twenty five trying to start a company, i'd work in the system because if I can build up big enough, they would just buy me and i'd make, you know, money and buy sports team. But I don't need that money.

Now let me ask you about, I got little an argument about open source. I think he stepped in between costa, mark and rison. You think I should be open source?

Yeah for sure.

So like all that discussion have been having about like google .

on one of things, I meaning that meta doing open source, yes, that's a great 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 should .

be forced force. Yeah I even google is open open sourcing some of the models and because they are all.

that's a very essential industry where you know the people all work together some level. They read the same papers, they go to the same conferences. It's like the early days of streaming in the internet where people use the same technology everywhere.

And now they just tried different things. And you get one smarter or two couple smart people in one company like an anthropic, right? And they do things a little bit Better and efficient model efficiency gets Better. So you know it's just a business choice, but I I don't think you should be forced, but I think .

it's a smart business decision. Open sources is smart business. Yeah trying one. I mean, google pioneer and that would TensorFlow in the A I space. That's a tRicky .

decision to get really is right. Go back to historic leap. You there was digital computing, which was a dominant player and they thought in IBM to a certain extent um thought that they wouldn't be subject to a problem with the PC industry and then all of the sun in with their their main frames and everything.

They had capital software they wouldn't use off the shelf software, right? So for a digital equipment mainframe where IBM mainframe you need a 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 M S. Dos and the windows, things that we're off the shelf that every PC could use. And that change, 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 they'll be more, more reasons to open source. Yeah.

that's the hope that creates more competition. A lot of different diversity of approaches uh, in how they implemented, deploy what kind of products they create. All that are not compare the danger of that to the manhattan project.

Yeah, I am not that you don't see the .

parallels begin nuclear weapons.

And no, no, I I I think i'm not an A I fatalist at all, right? I'm an A I optimist and but but it's not to say that there isn't a lot of scary shit that can happen with IT yeah literally um you know like I said earlier, i'm a big believer that there's going to be millions in 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 kind of mixture of experts where you you connect things and and um people can take their expertise and we'll be able to take that expertise and retain IT in a way that they want to retain IT.

So you know, I don't think there's going to be one medical database. I told us to people a couple of big companies that we're doing healthcare initially. Atis branding is so important in the healthcare space for hospitals, the mao clinic, the mda understands they're huge brands. And I don't think they're just going to give up their expertise to some you may singular model, you know and say, okay, you know whatever expertise we have is available to you and german I or ChatGPT or you know so when those version of a metal as open source, I just not 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 they have make money from the expertise, don't give away yeah yeah yeah. Any expertise of walls and the growth and all that kind something you want to own that growth. What advice would you give to Young people?

You have an exceptional 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 twelve fifty.

I get emails from thirteen, fifteen year old kids, right? What do I do? What do I do? right? You know I feel like i've been held back like fifteen.

You feel like you're being held back um but just be curious because you don't have to have the answers. You don't have to know what you are going to be when you grow up. I'm a hard core believer that everybody has something that they're really, really, really good at that could be world class create every single human bean 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 you can I know what is I didn't take a techno. I took one technology class in college for train and programme and I cheated on IT, right? I mean IT wasn't til I got a job at mellon bank and I started learning how to programme in this thing called raise the script computing language that I realized.

All this is interesting to me, and I like IT, and that's what got me, you know, a jobs selling software and and 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, enjoy your life, find things to smile about, be curious, read, watch, exposure yourself to as many different ideas as you can, because something is gone to click. At some point you may be fifteen, you maybe twenty five, you may be fifty five, but IT can happen.

One thing to mention is that sometimes is difficult. Or your parents, people around you might not be a conducive, 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 helps much at the thing I was good at. I'm still not sure what that is.

but I think the interview then pretty well.

It's not even if there was a thing where I saw the beauty in people, okay, it's very intensely. So you can call the empathy all that kind .

of so and call .

the witness super work, work. I guess you could say this super work as me a and you know, but in the education system, I came up in as IT was a very hard mathematics, you know, size and so on. I didn't notice that whatever that was in and mean, but you know, you have to keep the flame going.

You have to try to find a way and see what that's useful. And others around you might not always notice that I might take time so you could be lonely. You can really have to find the strange to believe in yourself.

sure. You know know, i'll tell you when a quick story nineteen ninety two I went to moscow state university um to teach kids how to start businesses wow, because I sold micros and I wanted to travel and I took a russian in high school. My risky is like, no other shop good .

enough to remember that? Yeah right?

yeah. But that 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 do IT.

IT was his 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. And so you just never know when and how and when the circumstances will come together for you to be able to take advantage.

This book is really important to comment on this in russian ukraine. Um I think the system kind of surprises that Sparks somehow he said he saw the natural entrepreneurship. But there's not the entrepreneur spirit. Once you grow up in both the nations I mention .

there is I am rain.

but there's something about the system that are you not to be reasonable be be there .

would be no reason for me to go over to do what I was doing if that was otherwise.

That's the thing that really can help a country flourish.

It's going 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 two, um the rebuilding creates opportunities.

We build a creates opportunities. But you know first the war has to end.

How that is is a .

really complex path. What is you hope about the future humanity?

Just looking at my kid's eyes, just, you know, talking to them and seeing their spirit, their friends spirit and obvious ly were blessed as can be right in. It's not the same for every kid. But I do you know, I get emails that I respond respond to all them, but from thirty and fourteen and fifteen year old kids around the world, because shark tank went everywhere asking me business questions, and it's just like they took the time.

There were that curious and that interested. And I see IT when I got to schools, you know when I go to different groups um that Spark and kids eyes that there's something bigger, Better and exciting out there. And it's not to say there's not fear you know climb in and any other number of things, but that's the beauty of of cars. And and I think genie really embodies that. And to me, that's just really exciting.

They dream, they dream big. You to see the opportunity for making the world Better is cool. It's cool to see Young people in that in their eyes that dream that, and I could be the one to do IT too, which is .

because when when I go talk to, like, elementary school kit, right, one of things I do, I said, okay, let's look around. You see that right there. One day that life did exist, then somebody had the idea, then somebody created approach of IT, and now your school, but that you see that chair, chairs that always look like that.

Somebody had that idea. Why not you? So when you walk out and when I make you, you to ask yourself, why not me? Why can I be the one to change the world?

Thank you for that beautiful hopefull message and thank you for talking to day. Mark your your fun. Uh, to follow on a big final years. But you're also an important person in this world. I really appreciate everything you do.

What appreciate saying that next? Keep on doing what you doing. This was great.

I really enjoyed this. Thanks for listening to conversation with mark cuban. The support of pot gas. Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you some words from moscow's d imagination was given demand to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humour was provided to console him for what he is. Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.