The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
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Cuban opposes Medicare for All in favor of a hybrid healthcare model
“I'm not a huge fan of Medicare for all or single payer simply because there's a variety of issues. I'm more a fan of a hybrid system where lower income people get single payer and higher income people like me pay for what they use.”
Cuban: Hospitals lie about losing eight to nine percent on Medicare
“It's a shit show. You know, you don't need, you know, all these, building all these new buildings and buying all this real estate, and there's no, you know, lying about your cost to do something. Oh, our Medicare, you know, we provide Medicare. We lose eight, …”
Cuban: Algorithmic content amplification is protected under First Amendment
“They made a really, really good argument while that it's still protected under the first amendment in the United States, whether it's algorithmically derived or some comes out of someone's mouth. And so I went from saying, okay, algorithmic amplification shoul…”
Cuban: Post-pandemic period will be the best time to start a business
“And going forward over whatever period of time it takes for us to get to the other side, it'll be the best time in the history of mankind to ever start a business because there are no rules.”
Cuban refuses to invest in venture-backed companies that buy market share
“The type of investments I won't do or don't do is ones where companies buy sales. So this is going to be a company that has to raise five hundred million to do one hundred million in sales because they want to own market share. And then they can get an exit be…”
Cuban claims Uber and Twitter would be more successful outside Silicon Valley
“I think if you take some of the companies, Twitter, or almost any of them, Uber in particular, Lyft, and you move those to Kansas City, Dallas, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, New York, they would have been so much more successful, so much more quickly.”
Cuban: Cost Plus Drugs prices beat market rates 99% of time
“And just the way the industry is set up, that price, not always, but 99% of the time ends up being lower than what you're probably already paying. And most likely, It's lower than your insurance copay.”
Cuban: Big pharma will match Cost Plus Drugs' pricing as scale grows
“A lot of them will match. Some of them will ignore us. It depends on how big we get. You know, if we have ten million customers, they'll pay attention to us. If we have a million customers, maybe not. You know, and there'll be times when there'll be PR and, yo…”
Cuban asserts that the greatest companies rarely have had to raise money
“Again, the greatest companies rarely have had to raise money.”
Cuban predicts the post-COVID economic recovery will not be V-shaped
“I don't think we're going to have a V shape where all of a sudden everything's back to normal. I don't even think we're going to have a Nike swoosh shape where we go down lower and then come back up over a little lower slope. I think it's going to be a struggl…”
Cuban claims the United States is not a top-three leader in robotics
“America is not the leader in robotics. We're not top three”
Cuban says he will never invest for a 1% or 2% stake
“You'll never see me invest to get one or two percent, because the company can't get big enough for me to get a material enough return to have it impact my net worth, just to be brutally honest.”
Cuban passed on Uber's seed round after negotiating valuation with Travis Kalanick
“And so I negotiated on valuation because I knew it was a great idea. I just didn't realize how big it would be going back to some of the earlier questions. You asked me, and so I said, here's what I would do, and he never came back to me, which pissed me off, …”
Cuban: The same qualities built Uber and got Travis Kalanick ousted
“So on one hand, those qualities for Travis are what built Uber. On the other hand, those qualities for Travis are what got him kicked out of Uber.”
Mark Cuban: Cost Plus Drugs charges a 15% markup plus $8 fees
“The goal for us is to take generic drugs and be very transparent in what our costs and operation costs are and sell everything at a 15% markup. And from there, we add a three dollar handling fee and a five dollar shipping fee.”
Cuban: 75% of underperforming employees know they are underperforming
“When somebody is not doing the job, 75% of the time, they know it, right? And, you know, the other 25%, those are the people who just love to create stress anyways, and then they try to tell you they're solving the stress, right?”
Mark Cuban rejects five-year planning, focusing on short-term business execution
“I don't look forward five years. I look forward a month. You know, I look forward two years, maybe in terms of what drugs are available or coming off a patent or that we can add, but I'm not like, okay, five years.”
Cuban buys crypto carbon offset tokens like BCT, Klima, and MCO2
“I mean, there's this, these crypto tokens I'll buy that are carbon offsets, BCT and climate and others, MCO two, and just, you know, to try to reduce my guilt.”
Cuban prioritizes cash flow over venture exit multiples when investing
“I want to make money off the cashflow from it, not to have to make money from an exit from it. Cause in exits, I can't control cashflow and profitability. I can work with the entrepreneur and have some level of control.”
Cuban compares Silicon Valley venture capital culture to old Hollywood
“I think they're like old Hollywood. So when you hear stories about old Hollywood, and everybody wants to be an actor, and even though they're working as a job, as a waiter, they're trying to get discovered. And that's the way Silicon Valley works. So no matter…”
Cuban says every 'fake it till you make it' founder failed
“Every single fake it till you make an entrepreneur who pulled me has failed.”
Mark Cuban: Cost Plus Drugs has no outside investors and is self-funded
“I didn't bring on any investors I'm financing it all myself”
Cuban: Cost Plus Drugs does not accept health insurance payments
“You can't pay using insurance on costplusdrugs.com. You have to, you know, put in your credit card and pay that way.”
Mark Cuban has invested tens of millions into Cost Plus Drugs
“It's, you know, it's tens of millions of dollars and growing.”
Cuban: Tolerating key employees' underperformance backfires 90% of the time
“So there's going to be times when you've got to bite your tongue because there's somebody that's in a position that you really, really need. And that, you know, honestly, that's, 90% of the time that's come back to bite me.”
Cuban: Cost Plus Drugs adds over 10,000 accounts per day
“We're adding 10,000 accounts Plus a day, and we're already past 50”
Cuban: Administrative expenses represent 21% of US healthcare costs
“Effectively about 21% of all health care costs in the United States are for administration”
Cuban lost money on the Mavericks by prioritizing winning over profitability
“Then I bought the Mavericks and we were losing money because I cared more about winning than making money.”
Cuban claims AudioNet was the only internet broadcasting company when founded
“When we started audio net, it wasn't like there was a streaming market. It was nice. It was nobody, not one single company doing what we were doing. And that was the exciting part because everything we did was the very first time it was done.”
Cuban asserts no company in history has succeeded without sales
“There's never been a company in the history of companies that's ever succeeded without sales.”
Cuban: Nobody will sell a product if the CEO does not
“If the CEO doesn't believe in their product enough to sell it, then nobody else is either.”
Cuban says an employee's primary goal is reducing their boss's stress
“And the number one guideline I give to people is can you reduce the stress of your boss or bosses?”
Cuban funded Travis Kalanick's Red Swoosh and profited from its acquisition
“I met Travis through Red Swoosh. I actually funded that, and so I kept him alive when he was about to die with his previous company, and to his credit, he busted his ass and got it sold, and we made money off of it, so I knew he was a good entrepreneur of”