YouSaid · the spoken record

Mark Cuban

lines on the record: 171
first: 2024-03-29
most recent: 2024-03-29
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“No, it is evil complicit, right? Because somebody in hospitals right now, they won't perform abortions because of state law. In Alabama, they stopped IVF treatment immediately after that ruling by that judge, right? The QAnon judge, to think that they're not going to pay attention to the possible consequences of being the hospital that does transgender, that gives doctors operating rights there and not be aware of the risk associated with it and double check. To me, that's just insane. They're risking their entire business and livelihood and personal relationships for not checking that this 14-year-old boy who wants to be a girl or vice versa is there waiting for surgery. I just don't see that.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Kids are dying because it's just like when people accuse Trump of potentially influencing people to inject bleach into their veins. Can't, you know, that's a big old leap to say that because Trump says it, that people are going to start investing. And then they find somebody who actually did. And it's like, oh, it must be true. You know, this is a trend now. I'm just not buying it that there aren't enough roadblocks in the way. Now, I'm not saying it never happens, right? And for me, to me, you should have to wait until you're 18 to actually have any surgery to transition. Your parents approve it earlier, then you can have a conversation with your doctor. But you're suggesting that everybody in that process to go to transition a minor is corrupt. That the doctor, the sociologist, the psychologist, all the people involved, the hospital where the surgery is happening, the insurance company that's paying for it, they all have been corrupted by this trend.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's the worry that has a big stretch, right? To think that all the things that have to happen before you transition gender, right? And I'm not saying kids might identify, you know, find it cool or in the moment expedient, if you will, to dress up as the other gender. Great. Who cares, right? But to go through the actual physical transition, I don't remember what the numbers were that I read, but I do remember that the latest numbers that came out in terms of transitioning were from JAMA, which is a medical association that said. From 2021 to 2022, the numbers went down. But the bigger point is there are no numbers for 2023 when post-Dylan McDermott. So there's no way to know if the assertion is true, even marginally true. Now, you can easily suggest it, right? But you can say that about any social media influencer, right?”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My point still holds. I don't know how many kids were following, and you can look at the followers list. It's not like it's hidden, right? Back then, if they had 250,000 followers and now we're on TikTok where he might get 50, some thousand views or likes, right? I don't know how many views, but likes. I've never seen any evidence that Dylan McDermott influenced people to transition their gender. As he transitioned to her, it was documented on TikTok over the course of a year. And again, when you go back and look at the views on those TikToks, it wasn't enormous”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, just the point is that if you looked at impressions, like when you run an ad, you're curious about impressions and who sees them, right? But if you look at the impressions related to Dylan McDermott, like I just said, I bet 90% or more were in conservative media. And I don't know how many followers she had, 250,000 followers or whatever when the Bud Light ad came out. And if it weren't for Kid Rock shooting, you know, shooting at Dylan McDermott Bud Light cans. She'd be long forgotten.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was a way to gauge the number of impressions that she had, right? And where they source from, I'd be willing to bet any amount of money that 90% plus of the impressions and discussions of Dylan McDermott were on right-leaning media.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Committed to one specific platform as your singular source of information or affiliated platforms, then whoever controls the algorithm or the programming there controls you in a lot of respects. And I think that's where our biggest problem has been. We get people attached to specific platforms and apps and media outlets. And they become part of that team. And they identify as such. And either you're part of the team or you're not. And that to me is the fundamental problem. It's not woke ideology because I never felt any pressure to make the choices that I've chosen, 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 woke ideology, no one ever got forced. I mean, if you look at Dylan McDermott, right?”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, because that's exactly what Putin said. And we don't have. One uniform media outlet. That's the difference. Even though people like to talk about mainstream media as being the source of a lot of the friction, there is no such thing as mainstream media anymore. Fox is the biggest cable news channel with the biggest audience and they call everybody else mainstream media. You know, it's insane the things that we accept from our sources of information. To me, that's the bigger problem. The bigger problem is trying to figure out what is free speech and what is the line of tolerance for free speech and at what point does hateful free speech crowd out other people? Putin's the master of that. You're going to jail or you're going to be dead if you disagree, right? No, God help us if we ever get to that point here. But the person who controls the algorithm controls the world, right? And if you are...”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's fair, and that's right, you know, as opposed to Pravda telling you everything you want to know, right? And everybody believing it because there's control of everything, right? And so going back to what you said earlier, people in Russia don't think invading Ukraine, a lot of them see it as a positive, right? I'm sure you have relatives and friends who think it's the best thing that ever happened, right? Because they believe in Putin. 15.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Built someone open source, maybe it'll be copy pasta where you can just cut and paste and create your own model and train it yourself. Maybe it'll be a mixture of experts where maybe it'll be a meta front end like we're working on a project where we take 30 different AI models and there's just a meta search engine where it searches all of them and you can compare all the outputs and see what you think is the best, kind of like a search engine, right? Because you might get Is DEI good, right? You know, is the COVID vaccine good, right? You're going to get a variety of outputs and you have to make that decision yourself. That's what I think is going to happen with AI as well because I think brands, there's no way the Mayo Clinic and the Harvard Medical School are just going to contribute all their IP to”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What happens next? And I mean, going back, I mean, I've been in so many PC revolutions, right, or evolutions, where porn was the big issue, right? Now we don't even talk about porn being an issue, even though, you know, every post on Twitter now has, you know, Lincoln bio for a porn post, right? We don't even think that's a negative anymore. That's just an accepted thing. And now it's become very where your politics on Twitter. But again, as you extend that and things grow, as AI models become more efficient and trainable on less for a lot less money or even locally on a PC or a phone, we're all going to have our own models. And there's going to be millions and millions and millions of models, not just foundational models. Now, maybe there's”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I know that's not direct to your point of internal influence to the output, right? But people on the outside are going to check for that now, right? It's almost like the new bug contest, right, to try to find bugs and software. And then on the inside, if it's all left-leaning and all you have is left-leaning employees because most conservatives won't want to work there.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's where the market corrects it, right? And not only from the outside because everybody you know is going to test it, like when YouTube first came out, or not first came out, when after Google bought them, used to be able, there used to be different commands you could give it, right? They were prompt commands that you could give it. And you could find all the nasty porn that got loaded before they kicked it off, right? And it was just the nastiest shit ever. And even now to this day, if there's some horrific, tragic event, somebody's loading it up, right? Yeah.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's brand new, and we know what happens right. And they do it on the front end with prompts, and they try to do it on the back end with the neural networks that are underneath them, right? And it doesn't always work. And that's why there's going to be millions of models rather than just four foundational models or five that everybody uses”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Neural networks work, though, right? That's why there'll be millions of models because weights and biases putting together a neural network.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of customers who are not going to. So, what you're saying is the free market stops with artificial intelligence that people don't pay attention and respond, that Google doesn't listen to the responses, that people inside of Google will ignore their own best financial interest, and even their own best personal interest because they know they're going to get docs now by Elon and others. And so I just don't see that. And Elon's not allowed to make those same mistakes, but he's allowed to make those mistakes, but Google isn't.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But why didn't Google fix it? Editions didn't happen once over one week, over two weeks, right? And because it was hard to fix. As it turns out, I was working with them to try to find a fix. And we would both look at the same page. And if you were inside of Google within the Google.com domain, it would show one page. If you were outside of Google, it would show another. And it took us looking at it at the same time for anybody to realize it, meaning that there's a lot of technology problems that are hard to fix.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, see, you're giving them too much power. And maybe I'm not recognizing the power, right? So I'll tell you a personal experience. Up until... A month ago, maybe, if you put in keto gummies, shark tank keto gummies. It would show up with scami ads. Scam ad after scam ad, and I would get emails up until a month ago from elderly people asking me why the gummies weren't working and why the companies were charging all this money on a month-by-month basis when they tried to cancel. And they said it was the number one deal on Shark Tank of all time, right? And Shark. It was a mistake”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He pointed out to Elon that Elon's AI was woke when it answered certain questions. And other people have pointed out other things to Elon about Grock, whatever it's pronounced, that was leaning left or woke, right? And Elon's response was, oh, it'll change. It's a mistake. We're fixing it. When it happens to Gemini in Google, it's the end of the world. Look how woke they are in this reflection of all their culture. Now, Google comes out and says it's a mistake. And then they dox the guy who is the product manager or whatever of AI of that product. And then they go back and look at his old tweets, right? And show that he's very left-leaning and very DEI supportive. And that's the end of the world”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, why is it when that came out, it was a big uproar, but when somebody, so who was it? One of the people who were trying to fuck with me. I forget which one.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because I'm not going to argue that universities implement DEI well, right? I'm not going to tell you that they need to be spending 20 some million dollars a year on DEI positions. To me, that's insane. Do I look at the Harvard and North Carolina decision and say it was a great decision? No, because I think having a diverse student body helps make for Kids who are better prepared for the real world, but I'm not running a university, so it's not my choice. Maybe at some point in the future I will, but not now. And in terms of Corporate side of it Telling anybody what to do.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“100%, right? Because that's where I exist. But at the same time, like I read Christopher Rufro's book where he talks about kind of the genealogy of wokeism and ideology, but then he gets to the point, and I hope I'm remembering this right, where he says that the response to it is decentralized activism, if you will. That's not the word he used to try to counter that DEI. That seems to me to be counter to the whole conservative movement right now, right? Other than school boards, right, where it's centralized and 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 underpinning of the whole DEI conversation. And a lot of which goes through Christopher Rufro right now.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, maybe it's because I'm an entrepreneur. When I see an ideal that you try to implement it and support it and get to that point, but universities and companies are night and day different, right? I can see an argument for the ideology in a university. I can see you look at the amount of money spent on it. And so while the goal is right. The way they implemented in universities, the way they implement most things in universities is wrong, right? There's a reason why tuition has gone up a multitude of or a multiple of inflation, 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 DI, I haven't waded into DEI in universities at all.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you just feel like I can't speak up because of it, because of your white, and that doesn't comport well with DEI programs. A lot of things are going to happen, right? Either you're going to, that's going to come up in your performance review, HR or your boss is going to have to address it in some way. It's going to get to HR at some level. And then decisions are going to have to be made. And you can't just fire somebody because they spoke up, right? Somebody's going to have to communicate with you. And so I think a lot of I just don't trust the supposed volume that people say it's happening at versus everything I've read and seen. And when I talk to people in positions of authority within organizations and ask them who's forcing them to implement these ideologies, nobody says yes, that there is somebody. But on Twitter, it sounds great.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the difficulty in firing and how people, when they were fired, 40% of the people who were fired felt like it was wrong that they were doing a great job. Yet they then have 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. This might be in told they're not doing a good job, right? So I see that as being analogous to all this, you know, this huffing and puffing about reverse discriminations and conservatives not being able to speak up because 40% of people who have been fired don't believe they should have been fired. There's a disconnect somewhere in how you think you're doing your job.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They coerce you? Did you lose control of your company? No, it's not me. It happens to other people. Then I talk to other people. Same thing. So I get, you know, try not to go one-on-one and Twitter conversations on this topic. So in the DMs, I'll talk to people who are really conservative and I'll ask the same question and be like, well, who's forcing you to do this? Well, it's the ideology that's everywhere. You see, didn't you see the Harvard thing in University of North Carolina? I'm like, I've never had anybody try to push me in this direction to do this. This was my business choice. I'm not trying to tell other people you have to do this. You make your own business choices. And so we're companies have made their business choices. And if somebody doesn't feel confident or comfortable with it, they may feel they're being discriminated against. There was something I just read in the Wall Street Journal where the Wall Street Journal had a company interviewed 2 million people, right?”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They always start talking about ideology, right? And like I've talked to Bill Ackman, who you've had on, right? And when I asked him, well, Bill, you run your own companies. Who's telling you what to do? They are. Who's they? Well, it's the universities, you know, the people who have this ideology of DEI. I'm like, did they force you?”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because you think there's a problem and there's people speaking out saying, look, we're getting it wrong. I think I'm a victim of all this and the company, right? Then, you know, leadership has got to make a decision. Do they agree or not agree? Are they right or they wrong? Is it to the positive? Is it positive or negative to the company? And you decide. So, you know, this conversation that conservatives are being silenced in organizations now, I just, I haven't seen it. I've talked to. And then the other side of your question, I think I'm packing it is. What's driving all this? Put aside universities for one in corporate America.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're getting into the culture of organizations, right? And leadership within organizations and accepting any type of criticism put aside DEI. When I criticize the referees and the MVA, I got fined, right? That was their option. I knew what I was getting into, right? Not that they're completely analogous, but it's cause and effect. If I'm in a major company and I'm publicly criticizing or even internally criticizing a sales plan or a product, our product sucks, right? Where like there was a Google engineer that got fired for saying, you know, Google had AGI, right? And nobody believed they did. And they knew that created problems. It wasn't DEI related, but it was, you know, saying something publicly that was to the CEO's eyes to the detriment of the company, right? So I think those are all analogous. If you're trying to accomplish something within an organization,”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But to your question of reverse racism, yes, it happens. I mean, because people are people. There's no, you know, there's no human being that is 100% objective. And it's also, there's very, very, very few jobs that can be determined on a purely quantitative basis, right? How do you tell one good one janitor from the other who's the best, right? How do you tell one salesperson that you're hiring versus another you're hiring? Because they haven't sold your product yet. So you don't know. We talked earlier about firing people because you made mistakes. And, you know, yes, there's discrimination against any group, white, Asian, black, green, orange, whatever it may be. But I truly believe that there's far more discrimination against people of color than there are people who are.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On your business plans in the way that we discussed, regardless of the size of the company. And it also, I think. Depends on where you're having the discussion. So when I'm in a different group of people off of X, the feedback's completely different, right?”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a lot to unpack there, right? So, first you can't do quotas, they're illegal unless you're, and I'm not the lawyer on this subject, but unless you're trying to repair something that's happened in the past, like some discrimination that's happened in the past. So it's not quota based. And I think that's really just kind of a straw man that people put out there. Now, does that mean that there aren't DEI programs that are implemented poorly? Of course not. Everything that's implemented poorly in one company to another, right? Sales, marketing, human resources. You can pick any element of business and find companies that implement it poorly. But that's the beauty of capitalism in a free market or mostly free market where if you make these choices and they are the wrong choices, you're going to lose your best people. You're not going to be able to hire the best people. You're not going to execute.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really simple, right? D is diversity, and that means you just expand your pool of potential applicants to people who you might not otherwise have access to, you know, to look where you didn't look before, to look where other people aren't looking for quality employees. That's simple. And the e in equity means when you hire somebody, you put them in a position to succeed. The I inclusion is when you've hired somebody and they may not be typical, if you will, right? You show them some love and give them the support they need so they can do their job as best they can and feel comfortable and confident going to work. It's that simple.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's fun for me, right? I just, you know His platforms run in any way he pleases. He pays for that right. And so I have total respect for whatever choices he makes, even if I don't agree with them. But because it's his platform, people are less likely to disagree with him, particularly somebody who's got a platform themselves. And so when we start talking about DEI and it's just de facto racist and this stuff, stuff that I just think is nonsense. I have no problem sharing my opinion. And if he disagrees, okay, he can disagree. I don't care. It's fun to engage, but he doesn't really engage. He just comes back with snark comments, which is, you know, his choice.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, screaming the whole game, right? Yeah, it's funny the way I am here is how I am 24 hours a day unless there's a Mavs game and for whatever reason, that's where I let out all that stress and frustration. But yeah, I mean, it's not so much the fans, you know, the sixth man, right?”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Keeps fans connected. Look, when a team is doing really well, it's easy, right? There's more viewers, everybody's more excited. And when you're not, there's still going to be hardcore fans and general fans and kids that like to watch the game.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, so there's a TV deal that's done with either a local TV broadcaster and we get all of that or a network broadcaster like ABCC, ESPN, TNT, whatever. And then we get one-thirtieth of that.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like the mace board It's fun, right? Yeah, the energy in a stadium is completely different than the energy in an arena. In the stadium, particularly if it doesn't have a roof, it's hard to bottle that energy. You feel it and you see, like I'm from Pittsburgh, so there's the terrible towels and people screaming defense and everything at Steelers games, but in an arena, the energy level is just. Indescribable.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Playoff games, right? For sure. Right. And even a regular season game, right? Even against the worst team, you know, that's where we get, you know, because the tickets tend to be a little bit cheaper on the resale market. That's where parents will bring their kids. And so you hear kids screaming the entire game. And the parents are thrilled to death, right? They got to do something with your kids. The kids are thrilled to death because they got to see basketball and NBA game and scream at the top of their lungs. And, you know, if it turns out to be a close game and that ball's in the air, and if it goes in, you know, everybody's hugging in high find people you've never seen before in your life. And if it misses, you're commiserating with people you've never seen. That's such a unique experience that's unique to sports. And we never sold that. And that's exactly what we started saying.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Short attachment spans. And so I would get into fights with the NBA, put aside the refs, but getting fights to the NBA, I would say NBA, nothing but attorneys, right? Because they had no marketing skills whatsoever. And to their credit, they realized that was a problem and started bringing in better and better, better marketing people.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, for sure. And then on the business side, the first question I ask 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 MBA thought we were in the business of basketball. We were not. We were in the experience business. When you think about sporting events that you've been to, you don't remember the score. You don't remember the home runs or the dunks. You remember who you were with. And you remember why you went. Oh, it was my first day with a girl who's now my wife, or I went with my buddies and he threw up on the person in front of us. You know, my dad took me, my aunt, my uncles took me. Those are the experiences you remember. I conveyed to our people that this is what we were selling, that what happened in the arena off the court was just as important as what happened on the court, if not more so. Because if, you know, mom or dad are bringing the 10-year-old, you have to keep them occupied because they have”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I had this big tall guy named Dirk Novisky, and I let him be Dirk Novitsky, right? And I got out of the way. But I think more than anything else, there was the turnaround on the business side. And then there was the turnaround, the basketball side. And on the basketball side, I just went in there immediately said, whatever it takes to win, that's what we're going to do. You know, back then, they had three or four coaches that were responsible for everything. And I was like, okay, we spend more money training people on PC software than we do developing the most important assets of the business. So I made the decision to go out there and hire like 15 different development coaches, one for each player. And everybody thought I was just insane. But, you know, it sent the message that we were going to do whatever it took to win. And once the guys believe that winning was the goal as opposed to just making money, attitudes change, efforts went up. And the rest is history.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and Blinda Johnson, who worked as our general counsel at broadcast.com, was Brian's GC and chief operating officer. So yeah, they had a smart, smart, smart, smart team.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think he tried to go too big. He had too big an ambition, which cost him in the end, not financially and personally, but just in terms of being able to stick it out with him. But that's what makes him a great entrepreneur.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And like I told him, Travis, the best thing about you is you'll run through walls and break down barriers. The bad thing about you is you'll run through walls even if you don't have to, you know?”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, for sure. Right. They were dominated by an insulated few. They were not very transparent. You didn't know the intricacies. They were very politically driven. And old boy incensuous network.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Convinced gaming companies who wanted to do downloads of the clients for those games to use his peer-to-peer and red swoosh. And he busted his ass and I think he sold it for $18 million. So he did well. And so it was natural for him to come to me. And I still have the emails, you know, and ask me about UberCab. And I thought, okay, this is a great idea. I really, really like it. I said, you're going to, and he showed me his budgets. And I think they were raising money at 10 or $15 million or whatever. And I'm like, your biggest challenge is going to be you're going to have to fight all the incumbent taxi commissions. They're going to want to put you out of business. That's going to be a challenge. And I said, I'd invest, but not quite at that valuation, right? Never came back to me.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the back story of that is Bill Gurley came to me and said, Mark, there's this guy, Travis, that has this company Red Swoosh, which is a peer-to-peer networking company that I think you can help. And so I invested and would spend a lot of time with Travis. And it's funny because back then, that was like 2006. I was an investor at Box.net with Aaron Levy. Oh, there was one other company. But there were three of them where there'd be emails between, you know, where I'd introduce them and we'd all talk in these emails and they'd all gone to have astronomical success, right? But so Red Swoosh had its issues, you know, because I was looking at peer-to-peer as kind of stealing bandwidth from the internet providers when bandwidth was a scarce commodity. And so what Travis did with that, though, was great.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, we call that not doing something. Yeah, it wasn't a mistake. It was just, I mean, it was a mistake. I always try to look at mistakes, the things you did that didn't turn out as opposed to things you didn't do, you know.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right scene, three kids go to college, be successful, be able to spend time with them. And that was the other thing. You know, he really made me realize is the most valuable asset isn't the money. It's your time. That's why, you know, from a young age, I wanted to retire because I wanted to experience everything that I possibly could in this life. And, you know, he got joy from us. I get joy from my kids. And that's the most special thing you ever can have.”
2024-03-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #422 – Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source