Jason Calacanis: You and I live through a couple of bubbles. We've seen this movie before. Um and and this wave seems very different than do waves. So, let's talk about that. Are you concerned about a bubble? We're seeing bubbly like behavior. People...

Mark Cuban: It's not It's not the traditional dot bubble, right? Because back then there was companies going public getting crazy valuations and people are buying them and the stock would go up, you know, 50% 100% with companies that had no revenue, no traffic, no nothing. and you'd go get a cab back then and people would be talking about them. Yeah. And you don't you don't see that at all today. So, it's not a bubble that's going to impact most people in the room, right? Or most people um across the US, but it could just destroy a lot of VCs and a lot of funds and a lot of PE, right? Because they're going all in. I'm going all in.

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Jason Calacanis: It used to be that product managers for brokerages had to outperform the numbers, right, for, you know, the S&P or whatever. But now you got to outperform to keep the money coming in. You got to outperform the the fund next door. And they're all in anthropic and getting their outcomes and SpaceX and celebrating, but if hits the fan

Mark Cuban: Yeah. It really is like I've only done venture for just over 10 years and it is wild to watch so many people who deployed at the wrong time just out of business. They just invested at the peak and entry price matters and you and I have been in a bunch of deals together and we used to get to investing companies at 5 million 10 million as angel investors and then all of a sudden the request was 40 50 60 and the product's not launched and you're like how does this work?

Jason Calacanis: Yeah. And you know, and what's happening now is the market leaders, Google, etc., Meta, they're borrowing hundreds of million, billions of dollars.

Mark Cuban: Yeah, that's interesting.

Jason Calacanis: And there's already a private credit problem right now, right? So, you you you just layer on private credit like um Al Capital getting all the um refunds and then you you know, you have these huge companies that have cash flow, but there's, you know, they're they're spending all their cash flow on capex and then they're borrowing on top of that. bonds, right? That's planning for perfection

Mark Cuban: and that's going to be hard. And we're building these data centers and you know, if there's a price performance curve on AI that minimizes the power requirements, there's going to be a lot of data centers that are going to be turned into pickleball courts.

Jason Calacanis: Interesting. Because they just can't get the power turned on.

Mark Cuban: No, just the power just everybody thinks that okay, there's going to be so much more utilization and there will be, right? It'll just scale like everybody expects, but there's going to be breakthroughs in technological breakthroughs as well. Just like we saw fiber back in the day, it was all about putting in fiber. Then it went from 1 GB fiber to 10 to 100 gigabyte and then there wasn't a fiber problem anymore. There wasn't a bandwidth problem anymore.

Jason Calacanis: Quite the opposite. We had dark fiber that people used. Yeah. Pennies on the dollar

Mark Cuban: and just sitting there, right? And how is it not going to be the case that we don't get the same price performance improvements on the AI side and on the data center side?

Jason Calacanis: Yeah. And then with all the hate going against the data centers, I think that could be, you know, protecting them. And I mean, spending committing tens of billions of dollars for 10 20 years going out.

Mark Cuban: Yeah.

Jason Calacanis: I mean, nobody can predict that. Well, I mean, you're you you used the word pricing to perfection, I think, earlier in the conversation, and that's really what's happening. I mean, you have to have a thesis that we're going to put a hundred, you know, open AI, uh, hundred billion dollars to work and that's going to come back not just in revenue, but it has to come back in earnings,

Mark Cuban: margin dollars.

Jason Calacanis: Yeah. It has to be profitable.

Mark Cuban: Yes. and you just don't know, you know,

Jason Calacanis: and I'll tell you the other in terms the correlary for um bubbles, right? In this particular bubble, because it's so driven by private capital, there should be a lot more companies going public, not at the SpaceX level for not open AI, not anthropic, but the hundred million dollar um IPO.

Mark Cuban: Yeah.

Jason Calacanis: Because if AI does what AI knows, we all we we all know what it'll do in terms of disruption.

Mark Cuban: Yeah. Then you want to have um some sort of um currency that allows you to buy all those companies like you guys were talking about buying different legal companies. Yeah. Right. Well, if you don't have that currency, the stock is currency, you're going to have to go out and raise money to do it. And if anything happens, and that money is not cheap, that money is really, really expensive. versus if you go out

Jason Calacanis: and you do a hundred million dollar IPO or a $50 million IPO and you can you do a secondary or whatever as many times as you need if you're performing. But the minute that company that you're competing with that is a legacy business can't keep up or there's some other um company that has domain expertise that you need or data that you need like you guys were talking about.

Mark Cuban: Yeah.

Jason Calacanis: You want to be in a position to buy them.

Mark Cuban: Yes, that is forward thinking. Yeah. No one is forward thinking like that at all. And I'm like trying to tell my um my portfolio companies, go public, motheruckers. Go public. They just don't think that's the right thing to do.

Jason Calacanis: Well, and M&A is, you know, not to make this political, but you know, when you're an entrepreneur, you have to play the game on the field. M&A was off the table. Lena Khan had a certain perspective, which was we have to be like precogs in Minority Report. We have to predict who's going to be a monopoly in the future and stop them. Now, it's like, okay, consideration with to compete with China and everything else that's going on globally.

Mark Cuban: Four years of no acquisitions. I mean the people I talked to who are in corporate development were like we we've been told to stand down

Jason Calacanis: because it's not where we are but even so right it's you know with mergers and acquisitions at that scale fine but if AI does what we know it will do the companies that are disruptive don't have to be enormous companies.

Mark Cuban: No.

Jason Calacanis: So you don't want to have to always raise cash to go out there. insight like the

Mark Cuban: right because like back in the day back with broadcast.com we bought like five companies just for stock

Jason Calacanis: and then there was always a bigger fish to come along

Mark Cuban: which we were happy to you know because yeah

Jason Calacanis: yeah the famous collar uh if you were a clawed employee if you're at anthropic you're at openi is it uh time to start thinking about the collar trying to thinking about yeah pairing the

Mark Cuban: position you know I collared my stock because how rich do I need to be

Jason Calacanis: right

Mark Cuban: you know and if you if you're able to change your life. If I work for any SpaceX, any of them, whatever, I'd be like, you know, somebody put together a collar for me. Yeah. You know, because I just need to be protected, save part for my upside, but just cover my downside.

Jason Calacanis: Yeah. Um when you did it, you had to like um actually orchestrate that, right? It didn't exist as a product.

Mark Cuban: No, it didn't. So, I had to actually create an index of internet stocks. I had Goldman Sachs create an index of internet stocks that I thought sucked. And then I shorted that index because we and we had to follow all the laws and I just had to have that short in place until I was able to do a real collar in the market on my Yahoo stock. Yeah. And I lost tens of millions of dollars on that short. Yeah. But I made up for it.

Jason Calacanis: Yeah. I mean the one of the great trades of all time. Uh what do you think the the this wave of capabilities in AI? I'm sure you play with it because you've always been a tinkerer. So maybe what are you tinkering with and what do you think um is going to be the most world changing you know in the next 5 10 years for entrepreneurs for society where do you look at it and go hey let's work backwards yeah

Mark Cuban: okay so AI is a lot harder to implement than anybody expected

Jason Calacanis: for sure

Mark Cuban: right you know you can do an agent pretty straightforward right you can prompt away you know we cheated on tests we you know cheated at work you know did projects improved productivity 100x, right? All easy peasy. And we just assumed, you know, at the enterprise it'd be just as easy.

Jason Calacanis: It's hard.

Mark Cuban: Yeah. And it's terrifying. And not terrifying for employees because Dario and everybody saying 50% of white collar people are going to lose their jobs. Here we are two years later, they said within [clears throat] two years and you know, employment still growing, people are hiring, we need more AI literate people, right? So CEOs have no clue what is going on. None whatsoever. And that's not going to change, right? And so, you know, trying to explain to them that you need to add a hardness to, you know, all the there's no chance, right? And if you think about it from an AI perspective, if AI, we're talking about, you know, AGI and we're talking about taking over the world. If you can't you if you need to have forward deployed engineers

Jason Calacanis: that tells you all you need to know

Mark Cuban: about AI because by definition you should just be able to ask AI to do what I need you to do and ask and tell me how to implement it right yet here you have Microsoft hiring 6,000 people right you have anthropic open AI all saying they're going to deploy to these companies which tells you AI is hard and then you have um Alex Karp from Palunteer freaking out saying how can you give your alpha to these companies when in my opinion he's just saying they're doing what we're doing right we're we're all about forward deploy engineers at Palunteer and they're doing the same thing. Uh it it again it's a great insight because you can if you're using it as a search engine or you're making your little agent to you know go do your cron job. Okay fair enough. It's it's going to work. You need to be have a little bit of systems thinking but when you start putting into the enterprise and you know this is mission let's talk about the little bit of systems thinking because that's the second part and I'm not trying to on AI. I love it. I invest in it. It's going to be amazing. It's the most impactful technology that we've ever seen and may ever see. Right? But try going into cloud or or chat GPT and saying okay I just want you to do this search for Jason Calacanis investments and I want you to do report and I want you to email it to me every week.

Jason Calacanis: Yeah,

Mark Cuban: it can't do it.

Jason Calacanis: Can't do it. And then it says, "Okay, would you like for me to do an an agent that gives you alerts and then you say, "Sure." And then you have to know how to program because it either gives you a JSON file or it gives you, you know, code and it comes out slop.

Mark Cuban: Yeah. And then you have to correct, right? You have to reiterate, you know, if you want to say, you know, hey, let me load a picture in and you tell me if I'm hot or not or is this girl hot? What should I say to her? You know, or business versions. Great. Yeah. Right. But AI is not going to, you know, take away 50% of the jobs. There's just so much it can't do that regular people need it to do. Yeah. Right. Now, does that create opportunity? Enormous opportunity. Yes. Right. So, like I'm an investor in Loveable and we were here this morning talking and um

Jason Calacanis: Anthony was saying that Anton was saying that um they people are using Lovable to create 770,000 applications a week. a week.

Mark Cuban: Yeah. Right. And that only 30% of their business is in the US and only um 20% is engineers. And what's happening is entrepreneurs to answer your question about where it's going, right? If you're an entrepreneur, like he was saying before, there were there's no better time to be an entrepreneur. He's he nailed it, right? Because that's where AI is the most impactful. No matter where you are in the world, they have big utilization in Brazil, India, right? If you're in France, US, wherever, you know, like I gave I gave it um a prompt like I said because I wanted to see what it would take. I was like, "Okay, we're going to create an imaginary company that has a button that can record 24-hour video." And then I wanted to be able to send it to me every 24 hours, and I want you to create a patent and a business plan and tell me what um licensing or whatever I need. 12 minutes.

Jason Calacanis: Wow.

Mark Cuban: Like there just No, we've started tons of businesses.

Jason Calacanis: Yeah. Six months to get a prototype, 12 months to launch it.

Mark Cuban: Yes. and then you have to and then I ask for a bill of materials and the source companies like the basic stuff to be that the blocking and tackling stuff that every company has to do at, you know, when you're setting it up and early in its life cycle. Done.

Jason Calacanis: Done. And even if it's wrong, so what? Because the one thing you and I both know and and everybody in the room should know, every single motherucking business plan ever written in the history of business plans

Mark Cuban: is wrong.

Jason Calacanis: Of course. Yeah. It's a it's a thought exercise that at least gives you some sort of direction you're going

Mark Cuban: guideline and a template for you, right? But it's wrong.

Jason Calacanis: So what if the AI is wrong? if the model was wrong, you know, because it's you're going to learn and you're going to iterate, but it's still

Mark Cuban: again all this talk about taking white collar jobs is ridiculous when it can't even do the basic, right? And you have to have like you said a programming mindset. Yeah. in order to be able to iterate and figure it out. And like even you would think if AI is advanced as we want to believe AI is right now all the errors that we get when we ask it to do a project it would learn from all those errors and even have hey I'm Claude you I I see you have a problem with this right and it failed on these three attempts let me just tell you what 97.6% six% of the other people who ran into this did, right? And then it would fix it for you would tell you. It doesn't even do that. It just says failed, right? Or it says whatever. You know, again, AI is amazing. And particularly for programmers, it's game changing. And when you have a narrow data set like code or legal, tax, it's magic and it's just math, right? Basic data, right? But when you wanted to do when normal people anywhere in the world want to use it for normal stuff, great. You start a business, great. But if you want to start getting advanced, it's like figuring out PowerPoint used to be or Excel, right? You always have to have your Excel expert, you know, or your PowerPoint in your company.

Jason Calacanis: Yeah. Or whoever that you knew, right? or there would be companies built um I even invested in like a company that slides share that all they did was have PowerPoint templates that you could download and redo. AI is not even that advanced for, you know, once you get to the second level. And so that creates so much opportunity for anybody to walk into a small, medium size, even large business and say, "Hey, I understand AI. I have a basic computer background or better." And so all these fails that you're running into across your your your company, big or small, I can help you fix them

Mark Cuban: because what AI can do once those issues are fixed,

Jason Calacanis: Yeah.

Mark Cuban: But even better, if you're thinking as an entrepreneur to start a business, those things will eventually break. Agents get bored, right? and they drift because as the underlying um large language model starts to change, the way it was originally programmed doesn't match what the the large language model turned into, right? You see what I'm saying? And so you and you even wrote something about this, right? Where it's taking more people to manage all this stuff.

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Jason Calacanis: I'm trying to get the whole firm to be AI first. And even with young people, it's like one group embraces it and, you know, they they solve, you know, I don't know, let's call it five or six really pressing issues. The other group is, you know, not embracing it. And the the difference between those AI first employees and the non AI first employees, the gap is like, whoa. It's almost like when we got into the industry and somebody knew how to use the office suite in a PC and then somebody else was like on legal pads. It's like that much of a difference. It's so

Mark Cuban: people who are AI literate.

Jason Calacanis: Yeah. What when did they run into a ceiling?

Mark Cuban: Well, you know, it's what I'm seeing is a lot of tool hopping which I it's a good question because they started with openclaw. They started building it. It got brittle.

Jason Calacanis: Wait openclaw. Who's openclaw? Anybody using Hermes agent? Okay, there you go. Who's on Claude Co-work? And then, oh, whoa. And Perplexity Computer, anyone? Okay, interesting. Those are the four that people have been bouncing around on. And what I decided to do is I was just like, "Hey, token max it. You You can each spend a couple thousand dollars a month. I don't care about that. I just care about the gains." And they all wound up um going from Open Claw. All the agents started breaking. It's hallucinating. It's like too frustrating. They started using Claude Co-work. Okay, great. Um, but kind of limited. And they started using lovable and they built intranets for the venture business that no venture business would spend a half million dollars and 12 months building an intranet. Like you' just be like, I'm going to put it in notion, Google Sheets, whatever.

Jason Calacanis: And then they just started building more and more software. I have two or three people who are building software that I would say five years ago we would have spent maybe two or three million dollars a year building this with that outsource company.

Mark Cuban: You just would not have done it

Jason Calacanis: which means we wouldn't have done it right. You would just bought the SAS application that did it

Mark Cuban: and then we would have tried to like shoehorn it into a SAS app and customize it. It wouldn't have worked. We would have given up.

Jason Calacanis: But how are you going to manage it now once they get there? Well, you know, again, to your company, Lovable, which man, congrats on that investment because that company was going to go out of business four times. And I told Anton, every time they say you're going to go out of business, you add 100 million in revenue. 600 million in revenue. And four times, 200 million, 300 million. Oh, yeah. It's going to be absorbed into the frontier model. The rest of the world, right? I mean, I've got lovable, I've got synthesia.io that was the first investor in

Mark Cuban: nice

Jason Calacanis: 10 years ago, maybe that that are just that's just killing it, right? I've got AMI, which is Yakun's world model. Yeah, we haven't even talked about world models versus LLM and Transformers,

Mark Cuban: Yeah.

Jason Calacanis: Nothing's going to be text and pictures in 10 years, right? And but what's going to drive it? And like people say, well, AI is so smart. It's going to change everything. I'm like, "Okay, if you tell AI, if you show AI a video of a two-year-old on a high chair with a sippy cup, the a the two-year-old knows if you push the sippy cup over the edge,

Mark Cuban: Yeah. mom's going to come running

Jason Calacanis: and the AI's the kid's going to start laughing."

Mark Cuban: AI's got no clue what's going to happen.

Jason Calacanis: None. Right. Would you ra if you're at a corner blindfolded and you have to cross the street, would you rather have a video? Would you rather have your phone with AI or would you rather have a CNI dog?

Mark Cuban: Yeah, dog. I'm taking the dog every time.

Jason Calacanis: Of course. Yeah, it's not ready,

Mark Cuban: right? Yeah, it's not ready. So, just think about how far we have to go. Yeah.

Jason Calacanis: You know, and all this huge opportunity though. I mean, the world models are crazy because you have videos available on YouTube and just we we have the world there. So, it's not enough.

Mark Cuban: It's not enough. they have to wear gloves and you're now they've got people in Manila like doing recipes. So I invested in the company matter.com and they're launching satellites just to take and they do specttography where they take um use the satellites to take videos of everything underneath them and use a spectrum. I don't even understand all the in order to be able to convert it into a world model that will provide algorithms that other world models can use. Yeah. Right. There's just no way that the the future of AI doesn't include video.

Jason Calacanis: Well, I mean, it's it's a a huge part of it. And as the inference and and the the back to the buildout of these data centers as we wonder what's going to happen, people wanting to use more tokens and then these world building and video,

Mark Cuban: man, that takes a magnitude more tokens. Video like if I'm going to be wrong on the data centers, it's going to be because of video.

Jason Calacanis: Yeah. Right. and role models and robotics which is all related. Yeah.

Mark Cuban: Yeah. I mean and robotics, you know, it's related but we still got a long way to go.

Jason Calacanis: Yeah. Uh health, you look great, by the way. I don't know what's going on. You got the red. What do you got? Reat tie. What's on the menu here? What's off the menu?

Mark Cuban: Follow me on Instagram. M Cuban. I just I'm eating better. Not

Jason Calacanis: I mean, you look better now than 20 years ago.

Mark Cuban: Oh, I appreciate that. Thanks. Tan helps too, right?

Jason Calacanis: The tan. But I mean, you you look thin and fit and and listen, we're getting up there now. We're not kids anymore. Um, this is definitely going to help uh AI all the work being done.

Mark Cuban: I mean, and I use it too like I invested in a company called Open Evidence. Yes. Yeah. Which is for medical, right? And um I used it and like I have two I have one supplement I have to take because my iron levels are low and I have to take this one medication. And I was taking them at the same time and couldn't understand why I was having problems. I run it through open evidence and I said, "Here's everything I'm taking. Here's everything I'm eating." And they're like, "No, you got to do this. You know, when you get up to pee at 3 in the morning, take this medication. When you get

Jason Calacanis: Getting old sucks."

Mark Cuban: Yeah. Right. [laughter]

Jason Calacanis: I was I was right there with you last night. What's going on?

Mark Cuban: What's going on? Right. Um and so, you know, but it's for health. It's going to make a huge difference, but it's not going to replace doctors.

Jason Calacanis: No. But I mean, it is pretty amazing. I don't Are you on Whoop or your Apple Watch?

Mark Cuban: I watch. Yeah.

Jason Calacanis: Yeah. I mean, the Apple the the Whoop plus getting your blood test, just self-directed health care with AI, man, you're going to get some early wins and then when you do go talk to your doctor.

Mark Cuban: No, you have it right there, right? My blood tested, you know, now is three to six months. Right. And I've been doing it for 10 years, so I know all my trends.

Jason Calacanis: Wow. So, you were doing it before function and superpower and all that.

Mark Cuban: Yeah. Like I you could go look up Mark Cuban blood test on Twitter, right? X and I would get into it with doctors like 8 10 years ago and saying you're going to need this for your benchmarks and um but it's only going to get better.

Jason Calacanis: Yeah. And it's going to be really interesting. We had this big data moment and it was like okay yeah we're storing all this data but we didn't have any intelligence against it now. That's incredible when Apple is now putting that data. They're doing studies. I don't know if you've been invited to studies on your Apple Watch. I'm like well this is going to get very interesting. Whoop! Just added blood panels. So now your sleep data, your steps, your heart rate, your respiratory EKG plus your blood work.

Mark Cuban: Then if you can get your diet into it as well.

Jason Calacanis: Yeah. That's what I watch has in eye health, right?

Mark Cuban: Yeah. So yeah, you're just going to get smarter. Yeah. You know, and that'll make your doctors able to be smarter because 95% of medicine is guessing, you know, because you can't. There's no way a doctor can memorize all the new that happens every single day. You just can't. But a doctor using these tools having, you know, the empathy and the ability to communicate and the ability to see. Right. Because again, there's you can't see. You know, you could have doctor, you know, why am I bleeding? You got a blood looks like you got a gunshot wound, right? AI is not going to tell you that, Dwayne.

Jason Calacanis: Um when we look at the opportunity here, it's going to be a lot of change. A lot of talk about wealth disparity in the US. Uh Invest America, our friend Brad Gersonner, and our friend Michael Dell, another great Texan, and uh thanks for welcoming me. I'm enjoying my time in Texas. I mean, it's great. I love Texas, man.

Mark Cuban: Texas is fun. It's kind of like the heat's kind of like this, though.

Jason Calacanis: Yeah, the heat. We have air conditioning.

Mark Cuban: We do have air conditioning. there's a record number of air conditioners coming from China to Europe this summer. You know, I looked at what companies installed them and everything.

Jason Calacanis: Oh, you always got to trade. You always got to trade.

Mark Cuban: I'm curious, but there's no real sold out. They're all being shipped here from China at the moment.

Jason Calacanis: Um, but really interestingly, you know, feels like entrepreneurship, which has been our shared passion for many decades. Hey, investing another shared one, giving people access to public markets, invest America. We have this dueling narrative, socialism in America, capitalism, and it feels like this is the in our lifetimes. You and I are close in age. This is the most fevered we've ever seen it. I mean, we have states, maybe not since the 60s or 70s. I I missed that. I was born 1970. You were born, I guess, 1943.

Mark Cuban: 23.

Jason Calacanis: 23. I always joke he's my brother, you look good for 1923, but you know it's this is pretty polarized and and what's your take on the the socialist?

Mark Cuban: There there's two things here. One, all the DSA stuff is local, right? It's really easy to be mandami and in New York when you have a budget, you get to control it and it's local, right? You got elected, you just do and you have to balance the budget and you'll see it in Michigan and wherever else. I don't think it's going to be gamechanging. But the more important thing is the people who are doing this are the people who are best at social media, right? You know, because the algorithms drive how people vote in the United States. I I can't speak for the rest of the world more than anything else. Whoever controls the algorithm controls, you know, the election in many cases. Trump knows how to use it. And what what do Mandami, you know, what what is unique about Mandami relative to Trump? He's what, 31, 32 years old? His whole adult life has been Trump. and social media. He studied it and the two together. And the kid the guy in Michigan, same thing. So if if you're good at AI, I mean at um algorithm, you know, driving algorithms, whether it's flooding the zone or, you know, like Trump's saying, they're eating cats and dogs.

Jason Calacanis: Yeah. It's just attention.

Mark Cuban: Yeah. And it's just, you know, defining the algorithms because whatever you search for, you get more of. And if they can get you to search for what they're saying and get show your interest, then you're going to just get mandami 24/7. Yeah. And you'll get the positive sides of mandami. Or if you happen to be on the other side of the aisle and you are, you know, looking at stuff that's counter than that, you'll get more of that. We don't like but one other piece I think is starting to change that and that's the large language models. M the thing that I think will save us as a world more than anything else in terms of um information availability and reducing the information asymmetry as it applies to politics are large language models because large language models have to be as literate or and literal and honest as they possibly can.

Jason Calacanis: Truth seeking.

Mark Cuban: Yeah. Truth is a better way to put it. Yeah. So they they have to seek truth otherwise you'll lose trust in them and the last thing you know claude open AI needs is well you know they're lying their ass off about this for

Jason Calacanis: yeah their currency is getting you the correct answer and the correct knowledge social media's currency is keeping you engaged right it's two different missions

Mark Cuban: totally different missions right and so you're not going to get rid of social media but I think people as they become more uncertain with their politics are going to go more and more and more and more to large language models and say, who should I vote for? And the large language model is going to come back and say, well, what do you think about this? What are your interests in this and da da da? And they'll give you honest answers. Yeah. And if you ask it, hey, what's a reasonable immigration policy? It'll give you a reasonable immigration policy, which is like, yeah, maybe shut the border and do a point-based system like Canada, New Zealand, whatever it may be, right? I've done the same thing and it's impressive.

Jason Calacanis: Very impressive. You know, my favorite troll now is like JD or, you know, AOC will, you know, they'll come out with whatever their craziness is on either side of the aisle. And then I'm like, ECRock, please vet these claims. Be as objective and factual as possible. Check your work. Show your sources. And then it just replies to them. So, I've been just totally trolling Steven Miller. Um,

Mark Cuban: oh my god.

Jason Calacanis: Who, you know, he's like anti-immigration. I'm very passionate about like legal immigration and recruiting great people because you need them. We need them.

Mark Cuban: We need them. every cuz you're running a basketball team. Every time you get Dirk Nisky, somebody else doesn't have him on the team. You get Jaylen Brunson, he's not on the Mavericks anymore. Now he's on the Knicks. You know, like

Jason Calacanis: Well, that's why we come to these things in Europe, right? Yes. Because great talent, right? Smart people. Obviously, you guys are geniuses for being here, you know. Um but but at the same time, there's a different vibe in every European country and India and the whole rest of the world, right? And I think you're starting to see some entrepreneurs leave us to come here and that's scary and hopefully, you know, large language models seeking the truth will help educate people away from what the algorithms tell them.

Mark Cuban: Yeah, I think it's like important. You optimistic now? Um, it's been pretty chaotic, but we're seeing such great progress. you're optimistic about let's start with America and then we'll go to humanity. Yeah.

Jason Calacanis: Yeah. No, I mean, you know, like every country, we have our issues. Um, ours just happen to be kind of insane. Um,

Mark Cuban: it is pretty wild.

Jason Calacanis: Yeah. Um, [laughter]

Mark Cuban: but the good news is, you know, we have term limits for our president.

Jason Calacanis: Yeah. And it seems like 12 three terms is going to be the one for president. I mean, you're going to run. I mean, I hope you do, man. I would love to be your press secretary. That would be a We'd have so much fun.

Mark Cuban: We'd have fun.

Jason Calacanis: We would have fun. Well, if he decides to run for a third term, then I'll run. But he's

Mark Cuban: Yeah. Okay, that's good. That's breaking news. I mean, I uh honestly like, um, if you think about what we need, I think, in leadership, executives who can, I think, you know, who are like post money, post needing to make a living. Um, that no I'm not gonna even go there.

Jason Calacanis: Well, and then maybe who are doing it for love of country and maybe some amount of civic pride or

Mark Cuban: No, I get what you're saying, right? And it's just like, you know, in the US, what the Democrats don't know how to actually do anything, right? You know, they know how to take whatever happens and extrapolate that to the end of the world and the end of democracy, right? Yeah. But and the Republicans on the other hand, you know, do crazy right? like they don't care about the people in the country. They don't you know there's no connection to people. There's no empathy and so you know we're but um in the short term but I think as we get past this next the midterms and the next presidential election I think we'll get back to normaly. I think we'll get I think people wanted and you know the thing that has been really eye opening for me having lived in New York, California, now Texas. You know, in Texas, we're spend half as much money per sometimes less. I think it's two and two 2.2 times as much is spent on each citizen in New York. Uh and uh we spend half as much, right? $67,000 per person. They spend like 14 or something 12 to 14. And uh quality of life's better. But on the flip side, New York contributes more to the federal treasury, right, than Texas does. And you would think it should be the opposite, right? just because of the business and how things are run. So there are trade-offs.

Jason Calacanis: Yeah. But it's it's changing. Like what do you think about all of us moving to Austin and like Texas? You got smart obviously for obvious reason particularly you know like the wealth tax sheet is just dumb dumb crazy.

Mark Cuban: They tried it here. Everybody work and they did it for about two years in France. Did they? Yeah. I don't know. But you know when Elizabeth Warren first proposed the wealth tax and so I found and she said well we have these models and everything. So I found the economist at UC Berkeley and I said, "Would you share your model with me or at least tell me about it?" He goes, I'm like, "Was it more than one year?" And he goes, "No, it was just one year." I'm like, "Did you do any behavioral analysis to see how people would respond to the changes?" Yeah. No. And so, you know, whether it's Mandami, Elizabeth Warren, whether it's California, it's it's showmanship more than reality.

Jason Calacanis: Yeah. And I think people are forgetting that people are mobile, you know, like uh US. [clears throat] Yeah, in the US it's pretty extraordinary. You got Travis Sachs, myself, Elon, just a bunch of folks have all of a sudden just shown up.

Mark Cuban: I was there first. You were. I remember talking to you about it. And the thing that's amazing to me is, you know, in California, they won't let you build anything. And then we go to um I come to Texas, I buy a ranch, and I asked the guy like, "Hey, can I like put a solar farm in here?" He's like, "On your ranch?" I'm like, "Yeah, here." He's like, "Oh, son, it's your ranch. You can do that." It's like can I can I like build like trust me in the cities themselves. Try doing that in the city of Austin.

Jason Calacanis: I mean but just outside of it you build and housing prices have gone three years in a row housing prices and rents have gone down. When you build a company in Austin now and I'm sure it's like that in Dallas and Houston and San Antonio when I have founders move there the entire pressure is released. People can own a home. And I was like wow is that why do people still go to Silicon Valley? That like drives me p.

Mark Cuban: I think if you're a first-time founder, nothing better in terms of soaking in it. But when you're a second time founder, soaking in it, but what they don't tell you, the it is, right? Yeah, it's tough. I think second time founders have now realized if I build it in Texas or Nevada or Florida, I'm going to just all the talent's going to come in Silicon Valley just sets people's heads so wrong. Yeah. Right. So whether it's Travis, Mike, by the way, I've known Michael Dell since we were 22. Yeah. And I used to do business with him way back when. Um, but just the in Texas it's just like build your company and go. In the valley it's like so are you series A? Are you series B? Are you series C?

Jason Calacanis: A lot of distractions. Yeah. 25 years I've been waiting for my Knicks to win a championship and you played a significant role.

Mark Cuban: No, the Spurs significant [laughter] role. [clears throat] They should have kicked your ass.

Jason Calacanis: And why didn't they why didn't they?

Mark Cuban: I think it was coaching lack of experience. Yeah. You know, cuz you're up, put aside the 29, right? You're up in the fourth quarter of every game. WBY throws it into the back of some guy, misses two free throws. Dear Fox goes the wrong way.

Jason Calacanis: Lot of mistakes.

Mark Cuban: Yeah. And you would be talking about firing Mike Brown. [laughter]

Jason Calacanis: I mean, it it was a we were concerned when he got hired and getting rid of Tibs. Oh my god. Tibs. But JB was the real deal, right? Was my Indiana boy OG, right? He you know, he saved you guys. So,

Mark Cuban: yeah. Uh and you had Jaylen Brunson. Yep. Um he left and that was kind of destiny. His family wanted to come. That's what he wanted. I mean I could show you a text where his agent, you know, text me. He says he wants his own team. He wants his own team,

Jason Calacanis: right? Yeah. He was ready to go before. And I I texted or emailed you and I said, "What's the story of this is what we're going to base the franchise on." You said he's really good. He's the real deal. You know what I love? He's a great guy. That's the best part about JB. He's just really a good human. I I was there uh for the fifth game, six rows behind the bench. That's cool. And man, I I just cried. I just cried. It's been so many years. And you got your chip, too, with Dirk. Yep. It's so amazing how sports plays such a role in so many people's lives. Yeah. Especially now look at the World Cup.

Mark Cuban: I mean, it's just like sports has just changed everything. And you know, like I've been to four World Cup games in Dallas and I hate soccer football. Right. I hate it. But just the whole scene, the vibe, the energy, you can't beat it. It's like going to a Knicks game, going to a Mavs game. Same thing.

Jason Calacanis: Yeah. And the NBA is it is it peaked? Did It sounds like

Mark Cuban: It's hard to say. I mean, you know, for fans, no, cuz I mean, it just grows on social media, you know. I I went um I was walking in Paris and there was a basketball store, you know, and it had Wimby jerseys and Go Bear jerseys and everything and so I mean it's just growing globally.

Jason Calacanis: Yeah. It is Webby the real deal.

Mark Cuban: Yeah. He's got he he got humbled though. Yeah. Which is good for him. It's like Durk in 2006 got humbled and came back better. We'll come back bigger, stronger, better.

Jason Calacanis: Yeah. It's amazing how he went from this like incredibly I don't know. There was a there was a magic about him to no he's a villain and he turned into a villain because it was New York and it was 50 some years right and just the circumstances and you know San Antonio thought they had in the bag everybody it's like I went to Indiana University right and if anybody here follows college football in the states like we were the ultimate underdog we had not had you know we had not won 10 games we had we beat more top 10 teams last year than we did in 100 plus years of the program and so that that just changes is people's attitude. You've were very much involved in rule changes and we're going to get on AI next, but it's just great to talk to you about this since we're both such super fans of the NBA. Seems like the rule changes, the apron and um you know how punitive it is has created a lot more parody uh in the league and nobody knows who's going to win like

Mark Cuban: well because you have to break up your team, right? Because at some point, OKC will have to break up their team. That's why they collect all their draft assets because you can't have three max players. No.

Jason Calacanis: And if one of them turns out to be hurt or not what you expected,

Mark Cuban: then you're in deep, right? And so the second apron is just a complete game changer. And you have to be so much better at putting together a team than you were before. And you have to get lucky. Like the Spurs have went beyond a rookie contract, you know. Um the the OKC has got you know Hatchet on a rookie contract. He's not on a rookie contract any longer. So they have to be even more careful. And so it it really changes the strategy behind building a roster.

Jason Calacanis: So we we're going to see back to backs or any more

Mark Cuban: no chance. No. I

Jason Calacanis: No chance. maybe back to backs, but not a what do they call when you have three the three Pete. Three feet. Yeah. No more feed. can be back to backs like you know um if Jaylen Jay Williams um Jayd Dub hadn't gotten hurt for OKC I think they would have beat um San Antonio and I think they would have beat the Nets I was worried about them versus the Knicks I knew we could beat the Spurs but I was concerned about

Mark Cuban: I did not know you could beat I knew

Jason Calacanis: we beat them two out of three of the games of the year we spanked them I knew it would be like a I I said Knicks in six it was Nixon five

Mark Cuban: you guys barely beat the Hawks and then

Jason Calacanis: Oh come on now we we we were tweaking the offense and we Just had to get Cat to buy in us points. Let's talk AI.

Mark Cuban: Let's talk AI.

Jason Calacanis: Um, but it is so great to be a champion. God, it was Where's your ring? They didn't give you

Mark Cuban: I They didn't yet. No, I'm going to get at the ring circle. [laughter]

Jason Calacanis: I, you know, I always was like, man, I got to follow Cubes and get, you know, a piece of You always told me you wanted to buy a team. I always wanted to get like a, you know, piece of the Knicks. And now it's like my net worth doing great. the value of the team disconnected from reality. I mean, my only chance is to call like Elon and be like,

Mark Cuban: part about um the valuations is it's not driven by attendance. It's not driven by wins or losses. It's driven by subscriptions to streaming services. And it's going to be interesting to see because it used to be we looked at ratings, TV ratings, and people said the NBA was underperforming versus everybody else. Now, the Knicks play, obviously, there's some pinup um demand there, but what really matters is the number of subscribers Peacock gets, ESPN gets. It's the ratings sales, but it's more subscribers.

Jason Calacanis: I mean, I literally had to subscribe to like I think one or two more services.

Mark Cuban: Well, that's the whole point, right? And did you keep them is the question.

Jason Calacanis: Yeah, I'll keep them. Sure. I mean,

Mark Cuban: but there will there'll be churn. If there's churn, who knows what happens with valuations. If there's not, valuations keep on going.

Jason Calacanis: Wow. So crazy. All right, listen. There's your 45 minutes with Mark Cuban, the one and only.

Mark Cuban: I'm going all in.