Mark Cuban
Co-founder, Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company · 3 appearances on the record.
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founderinvestorentertainerauthor@mcuban ↗blogmaverick.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
He accumulated his initial fortune by selling Broadcast.com to Yahoo! in 1999 before becoming the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and an investor on Shark Tank. He currently focuses on lowering prescription medication costs through Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company.
42statements → 16claims → 9claims resolved → 67%fully supported → 3.98/5average certainty → 2.17/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 90said about them ↓
6 supported 1 partly supported 2 contradicted 7 not checkable as stated how the 16 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
1 prediction · 15 assertions · 4 opinions · 8 insights · 12 disclosures · 2 what ifs · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 16 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 9 are resolved, and 7 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.
The record, in short
What the tape says about how Mark argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.
Their most notable supported claim
Expressed certainty vs assessment result
weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet
How they sound: not measured why? →
We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Mark Cuban on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.
Everything Mark Cuban said on How I Built This that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
Cost Plus Drugs manufactures generic pills cheaper domestically than in Asia
“And so we can make generic pills here in the United States cheaper than what we can buy them for from India or China.”
Cuban: Vertically integrated healthcare firms and PBMs manipulate drug pricing
“The way the drug industry is now, the process that takes a drug, once it's been manufactured, put aside all their R&D and the development of the trials, Once that drug manufacturer starts making a drug, the process it has to go through to get to the patients i…”
Cuban: Drug manufacturers fear insurance company retaliation for supplying Cost Plus
“Part of the challenge is getting manufacturers to sell to us because they're afraid of the response they'll get from the insurance companies.”
Cuban: Mandating open drug distribution solves pricing problems better than regulation
“And when you hear all this talk about regulating prices of drugs by different politicians, they're not solving the problem.
They're creating different problems.
The reality is that the solution is, is trying to make sure that all these manufacturers sell not j…”
Cuban blames vertically integrated insurers, not manufacturers, for high insulin prices
“It's not the insulin manufacturers for the most part that are distorting everything.
It's the, these vertically integrated companies, not all are owned by insurance companies, but for the most part they are.”
Cuban: DAOs can align progressive and capitalist goals better than traditional unions
“There's these things called distributed autonomous organizations, DAO. Which I think can evolve to be the best of progressive goals of allowing workers to participate in all upside and capitalist goals where, you know, people who come up with great ideas using…”
Cuban: Feuding with NBA referees cost the Mavericks the 2006 championship
“And it set me off with a lot of those guys and probably cost me a championship in 2006.”
FDA $365,000 application fees are the primary barrier to domestic generics
“Our biggest inhibitor and why we haven't done it yet is all the fees that the FDA charges. So it's about 365,000 dollars to set up what's called an end on new drug application.”
Founders should ignore venture capitalists pushing top-line sales to avoid dilution
“What I'm going to tell you is to ignore your VC no matter what they say. If they tell you to chase sales, ignore them, because they'll be right in saying this is the only way to get huge, but you don't want to be in the position where you lose control of your …”
Cuban: Algorithmic content promotion is effectively an editorial choice
“Because when you're
Designing an algorithm or using AI and setting the goals of the AI that you've created, the neural networks you've created, you effectively are making an editorial choice to promote something.”
Cuban: Cost Plus Drugs prices are almost always lower than insurance copays
“All the complications that are introduced by these pharmacy benefit managers and the big companies that they are part of, we eliminate, and that allows us to sell our drugs almost always for less than the copay that you have for your insurance.”
Cuban: Cost Plus refuses to work with insurers that demand rebates
“Our mission is very straightforward.
We want to be the low cost provider of every drug we sell.
And with that definition, we can't work with an insurance company that
Is going to require rebates or anything like that.”
Cost Plus Drugs can switch robotics manufacturing lines in four hours
“We can change the drug we're making in a four hour period, you know, so we can make a one month or one year supply of something, then roll it over to another drug.”
Cuban: Cost Plus Drugs is working to expand into medical services
“And we're changing an industry and we won't stop just with pharmaceuticals. We'll, we're working to get into the medical side as well.”
Cuban has invested $100M+ into founders he has never met
“Believe it or not, I've probably invested over a hundred million dollars into people I've never met in my entire life from cold emails or cold calls or whatever it may be and done really well with those investments.”
Cost Plus Drugs is building a robotics-driven pharmaceutical plant in Dallas
“We're, you know, I mentioned we're spending a lot of money on a plant here in Dallas, and it's going to be driven by robotics so that we can go through and take any, a given pill and manufacture one year or two years worth of supply switch it over to another p…”
Cuban: If starting over, I would easily become a multimillionaire again
“Could I become a multi-millionaire, millionaire again? I have no doubt, because I would work hard enough, and I, and look, and I don't mean that to sound disrespectful. There's a lot of people who work really hard but in sales, you know, knowing what my sales …”
Mark Cuban says prioritizing sales over margins is the biggest startup mistake
“The biggest mistake startups make is chasing sales over margin dollars and profits.”
Mark Cuban warns major retail shelf space does not guarantee product sell-through
“So many companies have, you know, people just get all excited thinking, okay, this is validation. If I get into Target, if I get into Walmart, if I get into Whole Foods, That's validation that this is great, and they presume that being on their shelves is goin…”
Cuban: Kids care more about brand perception than actual skincare efficacy
“Kids typically aren't going to have the credit cards and they care more about the brand and what it looks like and how they're perceived than even the actual skincare, right?”
Mark Cuban warns overseas factories secretly add markups to every sourced material
“Because I guarantee you there's markup, they're adding markups to every step of the way.”
Mark Cuban reveals Shark Tank portfolio company Beatbox Beverages sold to Anheuser-Busch
“One of my companies Beatbox Beverages, that just got sold to Anheuser-Busch, a Shark Tank company”
The other half of the tape: Mark Cuban's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 86 times in 26 episodes on How I Built This. 4 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Guy Raz 54Cynt Marshall 15Chip Gaines 4Adam Grant 3Melissa Butler 2Jamie Siminoff 2Gina Davis 2Aaron Krause 2
Statements about Mark Cuban, by other people (4)
Nouri spent $25K negotiating with Mark Cuban before walking away
“In the end, we spent, like, 20, 25,000 dollars on the negotiations, and I really wanted to make it happen, but I wanted a deal that basically let me still run the company the way I wanted to, and I couldn't get that deal, and I had to walk away.”
Mark Cuban would have seen huge returns on his Stasher deal
“He would have been clicking his heels.”
Marshall: Mark Cuban gave full authority to overhaul Dallas Mavericks leadership
“Oh, I was definitely supported by Mark. I mean, he wanted to see some changes. He did give me free reign to make the leadership changes that needed to be made. Some people didn't think that was going to happen. And he said, no, do what you need to do.”
Marshall thought Cuban's job offer text was her kids asking for money
“And then on February 21st, 2018, I started getting all these text messages. And actually, I thought it was one of my kids. I have four kids, so I thought it was one of my kids looking for money. So I handed my husband the phone and said, one of the kids need m…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
2026 21 mentions in 9 episodes 2 per episode
- Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge
- Bogg Bag: Kim Vaccarella. The $100 Million Business She Almost Abandoned
- Advice Line with Daymond John of FUBU
- Beautycounter: Gregg Renfrew. She Built Beautycounter to $1B… Then Got Fired From Her Own Company
- Square: Jim McKelvey. He Lost a $2,000 Sale, Then Built a $10 Billion Company
- Spinbrush: John Osher. The Electric Toothbrush That Sold for $475M
- Netflix: Reed Hastings. “We’re Not a Family.” The Provocative Idea That Helped Build a Streaming Giant
- HOKA: Jean-Luc Diard and Nicolas Mermoud. The “Clown Shoe” That Became a $2B Bonanza
- 1 more episode that year, every mention in 2026 →
2025 8 mentions in 4 episodes 2 per episode
- Magnolia: Chip & Joanna Gaines. From House Flipping to Household Name
- Advice Line with Troy Carter of Atom Factory
- SkinnyDipped: Breezy and Val Griffith. The Flourishing Snack Company That Almost Failed
- Exploding Kittens: Elan Lee. How cat-themed Russian Roulette changed game night forever
- every mention in 2025, scene by scene →
2024 3 mentions in 1 episode
2023 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2022 1 mention in 1 episode
2021 13 mentions in 4 episodes 3 per episode
2020 37 mentions in 5 episodes 7 per episode
Appearances (3)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| Advice Line with Serial Entrepreneur Mark Cuban | Jan 29, 2026 | 21m |
| HIBT Lab! Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company: Mark Cuban | Jun 16, 2022 | 21m |
| Serial Entrepreneur: Mark Cuban | Dec 5, 2016 | 19m |