The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Cryptocurrencies, Smart Contracts, and the Streaming Industry — with Mark Cuban

Episode Date: October 21, 2021

Mark Cuban, the serial entrepreneur and investor, joins Scott to discuss Bitcoin, Ethereum, use-cases for digital assets, and where SEC regulations might come in. Mark also shares why he’s bullish on AI, offers his thoughts on stimulus spending, and explains why Robinhood may not be as bad as Scott thinks. Follow Mark on Twitter, @mcuban.  Scott opens with a prediction about the streaming wars.  Related Reading (No Mercy/No Malice): Stream On ’22 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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NMLS 1617539. Episode 109. The atomic number for my nerium an extremely radioactive synthetic element who has three thumbs and just came back from chernobyl this guy okay okay that's what we're working with go go go go welcome to the 109th episode of the Prop G Pod. In today's episode, we speak with entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban.

Mark is one of the main sharks on ABC's Shark Tank, and he's also the owner of the Dallas Mavericks. That's a pretty good rap. Shark Tank owns a basketball team. It's a good rap. It's a good rap. We discuss a range of topics, including the crypto space, potential SEC regulations, and the streaming industry. Okay. Okay. What's going on? Let's dial in with the dog. Let's let the tail wag the dog, and then the dog is going to wag this bitch we call a podcast. There's a lot happening in the streaming wars. Squid Game has helped Netflix cement its place as the global leader in content, and other streaming players need to bust a bold move in Marview before Netflix reaches escape velocity from the competition.

They had it to themselves, and everyone came in, and it feels as if Netflix is starting to sort of pull away again, or at least that's what I would posit. I would speculate. I would put forward. I would put in the bowl and see if you turn your nose up at it. We covered the streaming landscape in our newsletter, No Mercy, No Malice, which you'll find a link to in our show notes or by visiting profgalloway.com. That's original, isn't it? Prof Galloway. I came up with that myself. What a shocker. What a shocker it wasn't taken. Anyways, but today we want to talk about a big, bold move that we believe, we believe is going to happen, and that is we believe Comcast is going to acquire Discovery, the newly formed company that will also house WarnerMedia's golden child, HBO. I've always thought HBO is this incredible trophy asset that everyone from Apple and Amazon to someone out of the Gulf or somebody would say this is the ultimate sports team trophy asset, and it would go for a huge number.

Anyways, AT&T should have never owned it. We know that. And to its credit, recognized that and spun it to Discovery for a mix of cash and equity. But in order to ensure that they got the maximum price possible, there's something that is kind of the key here, and that is the new discovery will inherit AT&T's legacy shareholder base, which wants a dividend and isn't up for the growth, I don't imagine. And most importantly, see above the one key feature that no one's looked at, is that it is a single class of shares. Most media companies claim that they're so important that they need two classes of shares. What that really is is a family that decides that they don't want true corporate governance. They want this addictive substance called control

to maintain in their hands. And so they create two classes of shares where even though they may own only 10% of the company, they have 51% of the voting power. And it's not really democracy. It's not one person, one vote or one share, one vote. It's all the shares vote until it matters. And then the controlling shareholder gets to make the decisions. Why is this bad? Because whenever you separate authority from accountability, things come off the track. So, for example, the Ford family, I think, owns a very small percentage of Ford at this point, but they control the company. The Sulzbergers own about, I think, about 15% of the New York Times.

But when a thoughtful yet impressive young man comes in with 19 percent of the company, they don't listen to him. They don't listen to him. See above what happened to me from 2006 to 2008, where I took $400 million of other people's money and went into the street and literally set it on fire. Oh, that wasn't stressful. That wasn't stressful. My oldest son had had the poor judgment to come screaming out of my girlfriend. And just about the time I was losing a shit ton of money, other people's money, and including my own, fighting with a family who just kind of looked at me and said, boss, we're in charge. I don't know, how do we say this in the most Pulitzer tone? Go fuck yourself. Anyways, now what I'm here to talk about, you're going to have essentially probably the most important, some of the most important media assets in the world that could be acquired. Disney and Netflix are too expensive at this point. And if you think about where discovery might be, effectively, you're going to have this sort of mishmash of shareholders. And that is, you'll have legacy shareholders from AT&T that want slow growth, but a dividend.

And then the streaming shareholders that want growth. And probably at least once in the next three or four quarters, the company will provide neither. And that is it won't produce profits, but it won't show a lot of subscriber growth. I think the market is going to throw up and this thing is going to be in play again. And you're going to see HBO have a third owner in as many years. Discovering's first half revenue is up 12% from last year to $3 billion. That sounds pretty impressive until you realize it's just a fifth of Netflix's first half revenue and is still dependent upon advertising through its linear channels. So it's not really even apples to apples. Put another way, AT&T shareholders may still be in consensual

hallucination that you can have AT&T profits with Netflix-like growth. You can't. You absolutely can't. And the shareholders aren't ready for the staggering investments that are required to get to sort of a Netflix OTT-like growth in production budgets. And you're going to need this transition period that will likely involve some blood and some nausea. Specifically, the stock is going to get, in my opinion, volatile and get hit. And then who will, what will happen? What's the scenario? Discovery misses a quarter, as companies do. And the shareholder base realizes this is not the guy they thought they were marrying, and they bail. The stock takes a hit and invites a new older

suitor, a charming man. My mom was single for a long time, used to have strange men show up, and I'd be like, dad, are you my new dad? Just kidding, I didn't say that. But anyways, the inamorado here will be from Philadelphia. Inamorado, isn't that a great word? That means suitor. That means suitor. I did synonym search and pulled that word up and I'm very proud of it. Anyways, the new dude will be from Philadelphia, and he's rough around the edges, but he's rich. He can buy me a new Bane skateboard, right? Or give me money to go to the movies to get me out of the house and leave him and mom alone. Anyways, Comcast has the capital and the backbone.

You know, the Roberts family are billionaires. More than that, they're billionaires from Philadelphia, which means at some point in the past, they most likely have, I don't know, what's the term? Killed people. You don't fuck with billionaires from Philadelphia. Anyways, they likely already realized that their homegrown effort, Peacock, is just not working. It's like fighting Panzer tanks on horseback. And as exciting as Pam from The Office and Chuck Todd are, they can't compete with Jon Snow or The Mandalorian. It's just not working. Or even Wanda from WandaVision. So what's going on here? The streaming wars are really heating up. There's so much capital that's

gone into the US market. If you think about Netflix basically had Greenfield into kind of 2015, 16. Now the deepest pockets in the world are coming. And Netflix, which is arguably, I would argue, maybe one of the two or three best managed companies in the world right now, they really saw around the corner and they said, I know, let's build a 10,000 person strong creative unit in Madrid and start producing global content that's local. Local, what do we mean by that? We like to think in America that we're the home of innovation and everybody wants to see some American dude in tights and a cape roaming around the streets of Gotham, when in fact, people in South Korea love Parasite or they love dramas that feel like The Hunger Games, but are distinctly Korean and in the Korean language.

By the way, Korean on Duolingo or people learning Korean has spiked since the Squid Games. I don't know if it's because people want to do their own Squid Games or they're fascinated with Korean culture. But let's be clear, the South Korean creative community is really strong. And they haven't had the resources or the deep pockets of a NASDAQ-backed content company or a Hollywood-financed content company, but they want local content. And Netflix is doing an amazing job of making a massive investment. They saw that the U.S. is going to be overinvested, which drives down returns. Everything is an asset class. And when it gets overinvested, it drives down returns. The U.S. streaming market is overinvested. Everyone has a lot of streaming networks. There are 350 million people, 150 million households. We're running

out of households to sell streaming to, and it's massively overinvested. So Netflix recognized this about a decade ago, or at least five years ago, and has started making huge investments in what I call global content. So by far the most searched content in history, in history, is Squid Games. And what was their other big hit? Two of their five biggest hits now, one is Squid Games, the other one, Money Heist. And so we used to have, it's just ridiculous, we used to have the Academy Awards Best Foreign Film. Now we're just going to have Best Film. And guess what? It's probably, as was Parasite, there's a good chance it's increasingly going to come from beyond U.S. shores. So where are we? You have Apple and Amazon, who are kind of like rich kids who will always land on their feet. Basically, it's great to have dad be a billionaire. An example of that is Ted Lasso is a cute show, maybe even more than

cute, really nice. I'm enjoying it. But let's be honest, it's just not historic. And if it was on Hulu, it would have been this nice little cult series that would have gotten no traction. But because it's on a billion iOS devices, or specifically Apple TV+, is on a billion iOS devices, which, by the way, it takes three clicks to begin playing Apple TV+, content, Ted Lasso, on your iPhone. It takes 17 on Netflix.

It's nice to own the rails. It's nice to have really rich parents. Amazon's the same way. They've got unbelievable distribution. So they'll be fine. I think the dark horse here, actually, or the kid, the kind of the underachiever, the really smart kid who's just sort of understated and quietly

like killing it all the time. I think that's Roku. I think this is an incredibly interesting company. They went in and bought all the content. They're verticalizing. They went and bought all the content from Quibi for 10 cents on the dollar. Still might've overpaid, still might've overpaid, but they're kind of the little engine that keeps killing it and is now getting into content. I wouldn't be surprised if Comcast maybe goes after Roku. It just feels like they're the kind of underachiever, if you will. They're the humanoid or the person in Logan's run that supposedly made it out of that centrifugal thing where everyone blew up, which actually wasn't the case. No one made it out. Great movie, Farrah Fawcett's theatrical high point. Not that there were a ton. What was that guy's name? Michael York? He was dreamy. He was dreamy. Anyways, Logan's Run, look it up. Read the book. One of the first times when I was in high school, I read a book and then watched the movie. Anyways, you have Roku, you have Amazon, you have Apple, you have Netflix, which is, in my opinion, just so visionary, so well-run. Disney shows up, Disney Plus shows up like LeBron James, and that is they

have all the assets, best assets in the world. They're LeBron James in junior high school. This kid can dunk, has unbelievable strength, but the kid is still 13 and lacks coordination. Specifically, Disney has the premier set of assets and skills in the world between their cruise lines, their content library, their parks, unmatched assets and characters, and yet there's no coordination. It runs like, Disney runs like an ad for Salesforce or what Salesforce should do for Disney, and that is create connective tissue such that when I watch The Mandalorian over and over, they figure out that, hey, maybe I'm into Star Wars. And, oh, hey, maybe I have 14 or 11-year-old boys.

And, hey, maybe if they figured out a way to send me an email saying, do you want to come to Galaxy's Edge for the opening? I'd go, yeah, I'll pretty much do anything for that, including enter into a long-term monogamous relationship with Disney, not Plus, Disney Squared. For God's sakes, Disney Plus could have the most impressive recurring revenue bundle in the world. Oh, maybe I'd like to go on Star Wars themed cruises, but I don't know about them because you're not communicating to me. You're literally getting absolutely no signal liquidity. Bring in the, anyway, drives me crazy.

Drives me crazy. Disney is LeBron. And then who else is in the system? Then you have Hulu. I don't know what the fuck's going to happen to Hulu. Maybe Hulu is kind of like, yeah, it's nice. It's amazing they got everyone to play together. Sort of a lesson for the pandemic. If you can get Fox and Disney and these guys to get along, maybe we should figure out a way for all of us to get along and try and figure out a way to cooperate, I don't know, on vaccines or sharing vaccines or on

health mandates. Call me crazy. Competitive advantages of species, our cooperation, which we've decided to put aside, which we've decided to put aside at exactly the wrong moment. Also, also a player, a player is going to show up here that we're not expecting. Who is it? Who's the new content player?

The swoosh. If someone had said, there's going to be a original scripted series 10 years ago, right? Someone coming up to you 10 years ago and said there's going to be an original scripted series about a football coach from the US who goes to the UK and coaches a Premier League team, and it's a huge global phenomena. And they said, all right, now you have to guess, is that content going to be produced by Nike or Apple? I would bet nine out of 10 people would have said Nike. Nike was producing the best content in the world with their commercials,

and O has some of the greatest assets in the world, specifically their athletes. Why the fuck are they, ESPN is putting out content talking about the dream season of the Bulls. I thought that shit was so boring. I know, maybe it's just not into sports, but everyone's like, oh, you got to watch it. The Last Dance, whatever it was called. Jesus, Snooze-a-rama. Anyways, Nike is going to get into content. They've also got a quarter of a trillion dollar market capitalization. They're running out of people to sell shoes to. They need absolutely to get into content.

By the way, they should kick Tim Cook off their board. What the fuck are they doing with Apple on their board? Apple's coming for their lunch. Wake up, Nike. Anyway, in sum, Netflix goes global. Disney grows into its content body. HBO ends up with a third owner in as many years. Roku takes off its glasses

and all of a sudden is the hot girl. Hey, oh my God, check out Roku. The swoosh shows up with sports content and Amazon and Apple continue to underwhelm, but eventually land on their feet as they were born into privilege. Stay with us. We'll be right back for our conversation with Mark Cuban to discuss the crypto space, investing, and why he's bullish on AI.

Hey, it's Scott Galloway. And on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series about the basics of artificial intelligence. We're answering all your questions. What should you use it for? What tools are right for you? And what privacy issues should you ultimately watch out for? And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life.

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And for millions of companies, that business is Shopify. Nobody does selling better than Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. With their Shop Pay feature, they can boost conversions up to 50%, meaning way less carts going abandoned and way more sales going. So if you're into growing your business, you want a commerce platform that's ready to sell wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling, whether that's on the web, in your store and everywhere in between. because businesses that sell more sell on Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash VoxBusiness, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash VoxBusiness to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com slash VoxBusiness. Welcome back. Here's our conversation with serial entrepreneur investor Mark Cuban. Mark, where does this podcast find you? I'm in Dallas, Texas.

Nice. I don't know much about kind of your upbringing or your background. Can you give us the cliff notes on Mark Cuban, kind of sub-25? Yeah. I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the South Hills. My dad did upholstery on cars. My mom did odd jobs, never went to college, and just was a blue collar upbringing. And my dad was always somebody who was like, if you want something, you're going to have to get it. He would take me to work. He did, you know, like I said, he did upholstery on cars. He's like,

this is what I don't want you to do as a profession and don't want you to have with your life. So you're going to go to college and we'll figure it out. And went to Pitt, dropped out of high school because they wouldn't let me take the senior level business classes. Started taking college classes at Pitt at night my junior year. Went there full time my senior year. They didn't have a full time business school. So I saw a list of the top 10 undergrad business schools and Indiana was the cheapest. So I ended up there.

And broadcast was a broadcast.com. That kind of changed everything for you, right? Yeah. I mean, my, um, actually things had changed before then. Um, when I got that to Dallas, I got a job at night working as a bartender and then, um, eventually got a job working at a software store. And as part of that, I taught myself how to code and nine months in, I got fired and started a company called Micro Solutions. And things just connected for me. And we became one of the very first local area network systems integrators way back in the 80s. And so I grew that to about 35, 36 million in sales, 80 employees, sold that for $6 million, netted after paying out to employees and a partner

about $2 million, started trading stocks and just crushed it, crushed it, and turned that into a hedge fund that I sold within 90 days and kept on trading stocks. So I sold that company in like 1990. And over the next five years, traded stocks, did well, as I said, made a lot of money. And then in early, early 95, a buddy of mine came to me, Todd Wagner, and said, look, you know, this new internet thing is happening. You're a networking and tech guy. There's got to be a way where we can listen to Indiana basketball down in Dallas instead of putting a radio next to a speakerphone. And so that's, you know, at that point in time, nobody was streaming. And that effectively was the start of the commercial streaming industry. Built that up where, you know,

we were the largest by far, it wasn't even close. Went public in 1998, had the biggest IPO in the history of the stock market at the time, and then sold it to Yahoo. Sold it for stock and then collared it, I guess I should include, so that when the internet bubble burst, I ended up doing fine and actually came out ahead. And so let's fast forward 20-odd years here. I'm being generous. Let's talk a little bit about... 18 years, actually.

There you go. I'd love to get your thoughts or your sort of meta view on the collision between markets and assets and payments that is crypto. You're starting a company or launching something called Fireside. So give us the meta view of your viewpoint on cryptocurrencies and what Fireside will be doing. Well, Fireside is completely separate. Think of Fireside is more of a tactile content creation platform. So if we were doing this live and we had an audience, obviously, then they would be able to hit a clap button and you and I would be able to hear clapping when when the audience was responding to something we said or silence if they weren't. Because one of the challenges of doing something like this is that you don't have any real feedback. You think you know a lot of people and you can't read the room. That's the best way to put it. And that's what Fireside solves. It allows you to read

the room. And then you can simulcast that into any number of platforms and simulcast out to the world. So that's what Fireside Chat is about. Crypto is a completely different beast. Crypto reminds me of 1995 when we started AudioNet, which turned into Broadcast.com and the streaming biz. And it's not so much about all the tokens and all the trading and all the frenzy that's going on. That reminds me more of the internet stock market. But what's interesting to me about crypto is the actual networking platforms themselves and the ability to connect with smart contracts. So what we see with the NFT explosion and the explosion of the digital collectibles market is really a byproduct of smart contracts, which are just programmatic in a language called Solidity, for the most part,

or compatible languages, which allow people to create applications. And the low-hanging fruit for those applications right now is NFTs. But you'll be able to, you know, if you think of NFTs as a proof of concept, we'll be able to take that into any number of applications. And you're seeing that with decentralized finance, which effectively is personal banking. You'll see it as, you know, with textbooks, you're a prof and you've written textbooks, right? I mean, you look at what's happening in the textbook industry over the years, you know, they're so expensive and they have to be because there's no opportunity to participate in all the resale. And so if you turned any of the Scott Galloway textbooks into an NFT, then after I took Scott's class, I would be able to resell it as an NFT,

and Scott would be able to earn a royalty because that's part of the smart contract. And you can set that royalty to 5%, 10%, 25%, or 50%. And every time that textbook was sold to future students taking your class, you would earn that royalty as opposed to now where they go online, send it to a used bookstore and you don't participate at all. It sounds like whenever I speak to someone such as yourself that is up to speed and smart and has insight around crypto, it feels like a giant buy signal for Ethereum. Go ahead. I agree because, you know, the buy signals come from the application. So let's take Ethereum out of the equation. What is going to drive utilization of crypto? It's 100% the applications. And so if you look at NFTs and you look at DeFi, decentralized finance, you'll buy Ethereum if the DeFi you're doing is on the Ethereum network.

You'll buy Ethereum if you're buying NFTs on the Ethereum network. If you're buying them on the Polygon network, if you're buying them on the Solana network, that's where you'll buy those tokens. And so it's the application that drives demand for the tokens because you need the tokens in order to participate. And so right now what's happening, we're in this death war between blockchains. And so they're all copying each other, just like websites copied each other, you know, back in the day with the internet. So you'll see Solano launching NFTs and actually paying people to come in and put their NFTs out on Solano. You'll see, you know, Polygon, you'll see Cardano, you'll see Palm. They're all doing the exact same thing and trying

to replicate the applications. And that's a sign that there's going to be challenges and not all these blockchains are going to survive. And it's really going to be the applications and the innovation that are going to drive it, just like has happened in the early days of the internet. So is it you, you have said that you think sort of Bitcoin is kind of the reserve currency of crypto or the safe haven. Do you think it's a small number of players, a consolidation? Do you think it shifts? I think it's a store of value just like gold, right? I think the Bitcoin maxis, the people who eat, sleep, and breathe Bitcoin and think it's going to save the world, they believe that it's a reserve currency and that when fiat crumbles for whatever reason, that Bitcoin will slide right in as the white knight. I don't see that at all.

I see, you know, if you look at how people perceive gold and how gold is sold, it's sold as a hedge against the apocalypse, right? It's sold as a hedge against inflation, but it never acts as a hedge. And when there's things that look really bad, like a pandemic, it doesn't really respond. And I think Bitcoin is the same way. Both Bitcoin and gold react to supply and demand. And the more people that are selling Bitcoin, the higher the price is going to go. Supply and demand, as you know, is undefeated. And it's, you know, Bitcoin is purely a supply and demand play.

I'm curious, what's your take on Coinbase? Is it Amazon and it's the ultimate marketplace or is it AOL? Does it eventually get kind of like starched out of existence? Too early to tell. Yeah, too early to tell. It really depends on how they respond to everything. I mean, AOL stayed a walled garden and that hurt them. Amazon opened up to third parties and Amazon really is, you know, what Amazon does better than anybody is eat their own dog food and commercialize it. And so if we see Coinbase creating new products and rolling them out and opening it all up, OK, then we'll take one viewpoint of Coinbase. If they continue to have everything inside their walled garden, it creates another perspective. But Brian Armstrong is smart. And so he's seen all this as much as we have. So I'm sure he's, he's paying close

attention and to, to how his customers are reacting. So where are you investing in crypto? Are you investing in the, the kind of the big three coins or, or, uh, the picks and shovels? Mostly in application. So I own a lot of Bitcoin. I own more by a factor of almost three Ethereum. I own Polygonmatic, but I bought, you know, a lot of the climate token to BCT, which is a token that represents carbon offsets. And so they're trying to create a market, a fluid market for carbon offsets that's easily tradable and easily placeable on a balance sheet. So by buying some of the Klima in order, by investing in this company and their tokens early, in order to make them tradable, I have to go and buy effectively 5 million tons of carbon offsets in order to trade them. And to me, there's still a lot of uncertainty associated with it. But worst case, I'm buying a whole lot of carbon offsets. And that's not a bad thing.

And I think if this can become a liquid market, it makes it really easy. So, you know, while all the arguments are, will you put Bitcoin on your balance sheet? Well, let's put some BCT or some Clima on our balance sheet because that's our easy way to buy carbon offsets. And if you think about as an asset class and regulation, do you think the SEC needs to come in and there needs to be more clarity and more regulation, or they should just stay the heck out of the way and kind of let a thousand flowers bloom, so to speak? Yeah. I was just watching Succession last night. That's where I heard that. But I think for stable coins, they absolutely have to come in because stable coins

has taken on a definition of it being pegged to the dollar, when in reality, there's a lot of derivatives and variables associated with every stable coin. They may be pegged to the dollar. They may be algorithmic. They may be misleading and saying they're pegged to the dollar or having dollar or cash equivalents and not having those. And because there's just so much money there, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars in stable coins, if one of these was a potency scheme or if one of them was just a fraud, that would create some significant instability. And so I think they're going to have to regulate there and just say, look, if you are saying you're pegged to the dollar, you have to have a dollar and you have to confirm and conform. In terms of Bitcoin, I think they can leave it alone,

just like they leave gold alone. It's just a store of value. Same with Ethereum. And I think from there, and I'm not trying to say, okay, these guys are safe and the others are not. I think from there, it really comes down to what each application or what each network does. Because they're all, this is not, when you talk about crypto, it's just not one unified environment where everybody's exactly the same and there's just different branding. They're all different in their own way and they all have a different sales pitch in terms of how they can be used. And those tokens sometimes represent a share of revenue. They represent a share of transactions through liquidity provisioning. There's just so many variances

that I think we'll get to the point where it's like pink sheets and over-the-counter stocks, OTC stocks, which are basically unregulated other than having to file some basic regulatory balance sheet and income statement paperwork. And then you'll have the NYSE and the NASDAQ blockchain tokens as well. So that if a token provider, whatever the platform, wants to really be considered authentic and well-vetted and audited, then you pay the money to list on the equivalent of the NASDAQ or an SEC-approved platform. And if you choose not to, you're a freedom fighter and you don't think you should have to, then you go unlisted and it's buyer beware. So let's switch gears. You're obviously, you were sort of an early pioneer in

streaming. Curious to get your thoughts on the current market, OTT, winners, losers, any thoughts around the biggest players, who you think will surprise the upside or the downside, and then we'll talk a little bit about kind of sports and streaming. Sure. Content's content. And there are certain companies that have great feel for content. You know, there's the Marvels slash Disney, there's Netflix, there's Showtime, there's HBO, and those companies know how to create great content. And what's changed with the streaming world right now is that you just need a lot more of it in order to get and retain subscribers. If you look at Disney and Netflix, they started at different times, but their

approach was the exact same, where it came down to archives, right? Who has the greatest size library and who has library with demand? Netflix went out and bought all this under-monetized content and built this huge library that got people started on Netflix. Disney had their huge library and was able to implement that for their streaming initiative. And they both attracted a ton of users. And whether it's those two or Hulu, et cetera,

whoever has that great feel for producing content and producing hits is going to survive because the greatest challenge is the seasonality and churn. And whoever does that will gain new market share. But I think the leaders are so good at it that I don't think any of them are going to really stumble per se. And it feels as if sports, I mean, while the big guys or the biggest players have dipped their toe into sports, it's taken longer than I would have thought. I would have thought by now that Amazon would be broadcasting March Madness or the Super Bowl. Do you think that's coming?

I think eventually, but you have to look at the incumbents and why, you know, the importance of sports to their platform. Then you're broadcasting, you know, it's declining. Like Shark Tank is winning the ninth in the demo, 18 to 49, but overall viewing is down 21% across the board. And sports really, particularly football is what's keeping people on the platform. And so there almost is no amount that they won't pay in order to keep sports because they need to keep their subscribers year round. And that's the beauty I think that we'll be able to offer eventually to these platforms. So some of the platforms, maybe it's Amazon that maybe doesn create a hit. I think that's where you're going to start to see the big streaming platforms over the next few years say, you know what, maybe it's worth it to outbid the traditional linear platforms. And that I think could not only

lead to us being on those platforms, but the demise of even greater demise of the linear platforms. And when you think about looking back, or actually, I would just love, I think of you as more of like, you know, you're obviously an entrepreneur on a sports team, you know, media mogul with Shark Tank, but I think of you as a commentator, and I'd love to get your, just your, you have a kind of a fresh take on stuff. I'd like to throw just some stuff at you and get your kind of headline news. So, the supply chain, call it the constipation in the supply chain. What do you think are the ramifications there? Are we missing anything? No, I think it's short term, not short term, it's medium term, right? Because it's painful

in the interim when it happens. Look, there was no planning for what happened. And a lot of companies didn't expect the demand that they got. And, you know, a lot of shipping and transport and logistics company didn't expect it and dialed down. And we got the exact opposite response and demand. And that's a conflict and that's hard to scale. You know, as people who talk to entrepreneurs all the time, you and I, what's one of the things we say all the time? You can be a victim of success. You know, if you're not able to scale and meet demand, then you're going to have challenges. You may lose customers. And typically, you might raise your pricing. And that's what's happening in the supply chain as well.

You know, they dial down and now they're a victim of their own success. But the market will take care of that. You know, there'll be alternatives. There'll be different locations for manufacturing. We'll see automation deal with it as well. So it's not fixing the supply chain problem isn't just about fixing the supply chain. It's introducing new ways to be productive so that you limit your exposure to the supply chain. You've been mentioned often as a potential political candidate. What are your thoughts around America's response economically, politically to the pandemic? I think economically, well, politically put that aside. I mean, it's just, it's all a shit show.

And so there's no way to defend it or discuss it in normal terms. But economically, I think, you know, spending was the right thing to do. I mean, I think, you know, the the stimulus payments were the right thing to do. I think some of the protections were the right thing to do. It's unfortunate it became a political football. But right now, if someone in March 2020, when the stock market collapsed and everybody was wondering what was coming next, if someone would say, OK, it's going to be 18 months, but we'll be down under 5% employment, GDP growth will be at 6%, we'll have some inflation because companies made mistakes in supply chain.

But I think we'd all take that. Yeah, we'd take that trade. Do you think there's any concern that we bailed out everything and everyone and, as a result, didn't give the kind of opportunities to a younger generation that you or my generation got, whether it was a dot-bomb or 2008? You could pick up stuff on sale. Nothing's on sale now. Everything's just gone up in price. No, it's the exact opposite. I think it's the exact opposite. I think Gen Z in particular, and to a lesser extent, millennials are so in tune with what's going on around them and

communicate so well with each other and share ideas with each other that they're aware of the crypto explosion, right? It wouldn't surprise me. And actually, there's a company that I advise called Civic Science that does a lot of online polling. And I asked them to see if there's any correlation and causation between the 3% of people who quit their jobs in August and the explosion in cryptocurrency valuations.

Because we may not be seeing people with appreciable assets in the stock market, but we are seeing people with appreciable assets in crypto. And if you just look at the communities that get built, we saw it some with Wall Street bets, but there's even bigger and stronger communities built around low-cost crypto. And you're seeing millions and millions of people who are investing because it's really simple and easy and far cheaper and simpler than investing in stocks. And so I don't think we fully understand the impact that crypto has had. I mean, we're talking about globally a $2.5 trillion market cap for crypto. You know, that's real money. It's global. And we don't know how much

of that is US-based. But, you know, just based off anecdotally interfacing with people and online and in real life, it's not a small number of people that have invested in It feels like it's sliced down. I was trying to think of a ratio, but you're right. I mean, Apple and the top three or four companies, it's relatively small, but the point of entry is relatively low. And I think that's what's changed considerably. Robinhood's done a lot of good, contrary to what I think a lot of people think with the gamification. Because the only, in my opinion,

the only way we're going to close the gap for income inequality isn't so much by trying to take a hammer and smash everybody down, because there's no efficient way to get that money down to people who need it most. But it really is about creating or enabling appreciable assets to the people who don't otherwise have anything. You know, and I think if we look at it as an economic question, the marginal cost for the most valuable, appreciable assets and the assets

with the most upside stocks, and let's say crypto, the marginal cost to create any of them is zero. And, you know, it's not infeasible that particularly for a Gen Z, they're starting to understand that this is a wholesale change in how to create wealth and that you can participate in token drops. And you can even go to Coinbase.

And just by going through all the educational programs, I did it just as I was learning some of this. And now I've got like $3,000 or $4,000 worth of crypto that they gave to me for free. That's in my Coinbase account. And so kids are realizing this. And so, you know, we've got to understand this as a country and enable it even more. And so, you know, we require social security numbers to work.

We should require digital accounts for everybody. You know, we needed to do, you know, when we did the, when we gave everybody checks, it was hard to give millions of people their checks. That's just crazy in every which way, shape and form. And, you know, you can, you can say a lot of bad things about Robinhood and their peers, its peers, but it enables at a very, very low cost for anybody, whatever the minimum age is, 13 or 18, whatever, right, to use Bitcoin terminologies, but fractional percentages of an S&P 500 index fund and just give everybody some, you know, at birth, you know, or there's just so many different ways. And obviously I'm hypothesizing all this, but getting appreciable assets into the hands of people with a digital account that they're, you know, that's created for them when they are born, changes the whole dynamic of how people accumulate wealth and

starts to change the conversation on income inequality. Coming up after the break. If you look at the top 10 market cap companies in the world, you know, what separates them is their ability to use AI. They're great at AI. We literally have bifurcated into an economy of companies that are great at AI and everybody else. Stay with us. Support for this podcast comes from Klaviyo. Thank you. email, SMS, and more, making every moment count. Over 100,000 brands trust Klaviyo's unified data and marketing platform to build smarter digital relationships with their customers during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and beyond. Make every moment count with Klaviyo. Learn more at klaviyo.com

slash B-F-C-M. Support for this show comes from Indeed. If you need to hire, you may need Indeed. Indeed is a matching and hiring platform with over 350 million global monthly visitors, according to Indeed data. And a matching engine that helps you find quality candidates fast. Listeners of this show can get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash podcast. Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and say you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. So go back, go back 30 odd years. You're Mark Cuban coming out

of the University of Indiana. Talk a little bit about the certification or the skills that you would suggest to young people, recognizing there's no one size fits all, that you would suggest or you would pursue and what industries you would be looking at investing your own human capital in? Today? Yeah, advice to your 22-year-old self. Yeah, so coming out today, AI, AI, AI, crypto, crypto, crypto. So what do you mean by AI? Artificial intelligence can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. But the ability to understand all the different flavors of artificial intelligence is going to be critical. If you look at the top 10 market cap companies in the world, what separates them is their ability to use AI. They're great at AI.

We literally have bifurcated into an economy of companies that are great at AI and everybody else because AI is hard. And 99% of the time when people talk, discuss AI, you know, and they discuss algorithms, they're talking if this, then that in a spreadsheet, as opposed to, you know, and they discuss algorithms, they're talking if this, then that in a spreadsheet, as opposed to, you know, deep learning models and neural network models that are basically become black boxes where the people who are creating those models don't even know what the output's going to be. And trying to understand how to make these things and do these things is how business is going to be done. And so you don't have to be a computer programmer to be good at AI, but you have to be curious and you have to invest a lot of time. It's not

necessarily difficult, it's just time consuming. But I ask this question sincerely. The only example of AI I can think of is the Netflix recommendation engine that says I should watch episode two of The Queen's Gambit and three, two, one. Distill it down to specific applications of AI and then how you prepare, like, what does that mean? What do I do with that as a young person? Do I get into STEM? Do I figure out ways to apply AI? Do I try and go to work for a tech company where I can get more data and then figure out a way to use that data to make the product better? I mean, a recommendation engine obviously is one thing, but, you know, going through a, with machine learning, which is more linear, let's just say historically, if you were

looking at investments, you know, biology, whatever it may be, you kind of tend to work with people who have a good feel, right? An innate feel for that industry. So you're, you know, you're in marketing, right? What makes a good marketing projection or what makes a good marketing choice? And you'd point to people and said, well, this person, you know, only knew, he knew only 50% of his marketing, his advertising work, didn't know which one. Well, there's some people who knew which half worked. That's changed now where you can start inputting almost an unlimited number of variables and look to see what works. And so we've gone from field

to data mining, if you will, where AI will be able to look for, using machine learning, be able to look for commonalities and spit out things that otherwise we would never see. But in terms of how you get there, the best place to start is, you know, just try applications yourself. Like when I wanted to learn more, I literally got the book Machine Learning for Dummies. And I put, you know, I got my, you know, warmed up in my Python and the PyTorch and all the different things, the tools you need, and put together a little database of NBA players and all these different parameters.

What's their wingspan? What's their height? How did they do? And here's my definition of success. And then I put in some rookies to see, okay, who do I think we should draft? Now, it didn't do a very good job because I wasn't really willing to go through all the iterations to optimize it, but it gave me a great understanding. I went and looked at a YouTube video on how to create a neural network, a three-layer neural network using JavaScript. Didn't have a lot of utility, but it made me understand exactly how it works. Then, you know, I was able to apply all these things. And so what I say to all kids in school, coming out of school, whatever it may be,

you know, be curious, be curious about AI because it's changing every day and love to learn because the greatest skill you're ever going to have is not only being curious, but having a thirst for knowledge that encourages you to go out and learn these things. Because if we're not keeping up every single day, we're falling behind. And when you're in a world where it's changing rapidly, every day is an opportunity. And the more you learn, the better position you'll be in. Now, not everybody's got that piss and vinegar in them to just dig in and spend, you know, 10 straight hours putting together, you know, a little machine learning model. But, you know, for kids who really want to get into it, science is great, STEM is great, but those are all just, you know, feeders for

curiosity and learning. And if you love to learn, you're going to be great in AI. I feel like that, people always talk about curiosity and grit. And I feel like these are things that you kind of have or you don't, or they're more fundamental than the classes you take. You have three kids. What advice do you have for parents in terms of, we struggle with this a lot around here,

trying to instill a sense of grit when quite frankly, I always say if I had what my kids have, I wouldn't have what I have. Exactly right. It drives me crazy. It's really difficult because I want them to live the same life I live and want to afford them the opportunities. And then I think, am I really doing them a disservice?

Do you have any, what advice would you give to dads or more broadly, just parents out there around trying to instill that sense of curiosity and grit in your own kids? Get on TikTok first. Get on TikTok first. You've got to be on TikTok. You've got to be on TikTok because you've got to understand how they're consuming information.

And same with YouTube. So I'll give you a quick example what would change my approach 180 degrees. It used to really bother me that my oldest is a reader, but my 15 and now 12-year-old weren't readers. And I'm like, how else are you going to learn? How else are you going to learn? Then I got on TikTok because I like to get on all- I've seen you on there. That was horrifying. I saw you on TikTok dancing with your daughter. And I'm like, oh my God, this medium has jumped the shark.

Jumped the shark, right? But it wasn't so much that. So I had this conversation with my son and one day he came to me and we're talking about something. I'm Shark Tank. I'm like, you don't watch Shark Tank. He goes, well, somebody put it on TikTok. And he's like, I had a question about gross margin. I'm like, you know what gross margin is? And I'm like, what's gross margin? He goes, it's the difference between your cost of goods sold and your sales price. What's left over is gross margin. He goes, it's the difference between your cost of goods sold and your sales price. What's left over is gross margin. And I'm like, where did you learn this? He's like, TikTok. I mean, you learned that on TikTok. And then I started asking more questions and he answered them correctly. I'm like, okay, I was wrong. It's not that you can't learn on TikTok. It's just that I didn't know you could learn on TikTok. And just like my parents were worried about me finding the

Playboys and reading things and, you know, that I shouldn't read and all this and that. Sure, there's going to be stuff on all platforms that are concerning and it's really hard to protect your kids against it. But at the same time, parents, I think, need to understand how kids learn today because it's different. It's changing professional sports. How a 27-year-old consumes information is night and day different than a 20 or 21 or 22-year-old because that 27-year-old was just, you know, hitting their stride as Instagram was becoming popular and TikTok wasn't even there. The 20 and 21-year-old, they're Instagram and TikTok natives. And that's

all they've ever known with their friends. And, you know, all the, you know, you and I can talk about the same song and the same movie. They talk about the same TikTok video. And if you don't understand that world, and if you don't understand what's out there, you're going to have a hard time understanding what ticks for your kids. So we're going to have a hard time understanding what ticks for your kids. So we're going to do a lightning round here. First thing that pops into mind, and these are questions that just pop into my mind. So last piece of content you absorbed that kind of struck you. Succession last night. I was like, please don't let my family ever be like that. Yeah, I love that show too. I hate all of them and want to have sex with all of them at the same time.

Yeah. What piece of content kind of changed your life? When I was 16, reading The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. It just showed me that people can be an individual. Now, that doesn't make me, you know, an Ayn Rand, you know. Conservative, right. I get it. We get it.

Acolyte or believer, but it really motivated me. You're the good Ayn Rand, you know, conservative, right. I get it. Acolyte or believer, but it really motivated. The good Ayn Rand. Um, and then what about, um, thing you'd want to change most about yourself? Thing you're working on. Just being a better listener. Cause I've always been go, go, go, go, go, go, go. Um, and, and with three kids, I've got to go, go slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow. And that's hard for me. A moment where you thought you couldn't get out of the ditch. I guess I had a really close friend die a couple of years ago, and that was really painful

and really difficult for me. And then my dad died not long after that. So that was a tough period. At this biggest person who had the biggest influence on your life? My dad. Yeah, it's not even close. Yeah, what was it about that? Was it time? Was it his discipline?

What was it about that relationship? No, it was the opposite. It was the encouragement and the fact that, you know, he put no limits on me. He was always, I couldn't do it, Mark, but I know you can. And don't ever let anything stop you. And just if you put in the work, anything is possible.

I think we should leave it there. Mark Cuban is an entrepreneur and investor. He's one of the main sharks on ABC Shark Tank, and he's also the owner of the Dallas Mavericks. Best-selling author, multiple patent holder. In 2006, Mark established ShareSleuth, a research and investigation site. Yeah, you don't have to go through all that. They can just Google me if they want to. Okay, fine. Well, hold on. Just shut the fuck up. It's my pod, Mark.

Mark gives back to the community that promotes his success through the Mark Cuban Foundation. The foundation's AI Boot Camps Initiative hosts free introduction to AI Boot Camps for low-income high schoolers starting in Dallas. Mark also saved and annually funds the annual Dallas St. Patrick's Day parade. I did not know that. That means you like alcohol. Anyways, the largest parade in Dallas in a city institution. He joins us from his home in Dallas. Mark, thanks for your good work and stay safe. Thanks. Appreciate having me on, Scott. I really enjoyed it. hurt and immediately have sort of a knee-jerk reflexive reaction to almost anything based on who says it or where I see an opportunity to dunk on someone. And some, I've become sort of the

living embodiment of Twitter and I don't like it. Is that true? That's probably not true. It's probably a bit of an overstatement. But we have a tendency to kind of shoot and ask questions later. And I'm fascinated by what's going on with the Chappelle controversy around transgender rights and transphobia. And I think it's a lesson for us. I think this dialogue is really important. And that is there is a conversation that needs to trans or that there are certain schools in certain states where a boy or a girl can decide they're gonna go through transition and ask for hormones

and their parents don't have to be notified. I think that is a conversation worth having around if there are any downsides there. I think it is a conversation worth having around the use of terms and pronouns and what role that plays and whether language should be so tightly and religiously protected that medical journals aren't allowed to use the term woman or man. I think that is a conversation we should have. And just bringing up the

conversation, if you're a non-trans person, can often get you labeled as the enemy or a TERF. I don't think that is a productive dialogue. At the same time, we have to recognize, or I think we should recognize, the trans community has taken a tremendous amount of bullshit or absorbed a tremendous amount of bullshit and hate and hostility because a lot of people, just as they thought about gay people or just as they thought about people of color, don't have as much interaction with them and quite frankly, just aren't as comfortable with them. And as a result, have an easier time discriminating against them. And this is a community that has endured violence and discrimination and has not been able to pursue the American dream like most of us. And if you think of the American dream, simply put,

is the ability to pursue liberty or life liberty in the pursuit of happiness. And if you think of the American dream, simply put, as the ability to pursue liberty or life liberty in the pursuit of happiness and be who you are, be who you truly are and afford the same generosity and protections and liberties as the rest of us, the trans community has not had that. It feels like there is a need for both sides to acknowledge that we should move to dialogue before destruction. And I feel as if the ratio is totally out of whack. I think there is a moment to shame people. There is a moment to disagree. I think there is a moment to say that is an out of line thought, but we have a tendency to basically say, okay, you've said this or you haven't surrendered to my narrative. You're the enemy. Netflix,

we're going to go after you. Dave Chappelle, we're going to go after you. The trans community, we're going to go after you and make you look stupid or paint you in the worst possible light and continue this cycle of discrimination. That's not how a country moves forward. Progress is a function of conflict and debate. Let's have the conflict, let's have the debate, but let's be civil and let's move to dialogue, not destruction. Let's have 80%, 90% dialogue and 10% destruction. And I think there's a lesson in this for all of us. And it's something I'm trying to learn from. When I see Rand Paul say something, I immediately think, oh, that's fucking stupid. I don't even think about what he said. I think about the fact he said it. So I'm

like, okay, that must be really stupid. And I'm immediately against it. And that's not the right viewpoint. I immediately moved to destruction. I need to think about dialogue, even if it's a dialogue I have in my own mind around what is he saying? What is he saying? It's important to have these conversations and create an environment where we value dialogue and don't move to destruction. Our producers are Caroline Chagrin and Drew Burrows. Claire Miller is our assistant producer. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe.

Thank you for listening to The Prof G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We'll catch you next week on Monday and Thursday. Or the fact that Chuck Todd still hasn't invited me on Meet the Press, I would fucking kill it on that program. I would kill it, literally. And who do they have? I mean, some of the people that are on Meet the Press, I would do so much better.

And I'm ready. Put me in, Chuck. Call me. Call me. You have my cell. You have my cell. By the way, Chuck Todd claims he's from Miami. He's not. He's not. And I don't even think Chuck is his name. I think his name is Alistair,

and he's from Maryland. And him and his wife, Emily, raise labradoodles. And I think it's time for him to come out and tell us his true identity. Support for the show comes from Alex Partners. Did you know that almost 90% of executives see potential for growth from digital disruption with 37% seeing significant or extremely high positive impact on revenue growth in Alex partners, 2024 digital disruption report. You can learn the best path to turning that disruption into growth for your business with a focus on clarity direction and effective implementation. Alex partners provides essential support when decisive leadership is crucial. You can discover insights like these by reading Alex Partners' latest technology industry insights, available at www.alexpartners.com.

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