Mark Cuban on Disrupting Healthcare, Trends in AI, and Randomness

Village Global Podcast

Mark Cuban (@mcuban) joins Olga Serhiyevich (@olgaserhi), head of investor relations at Village Global, on this episode. Takeaways:
- In the US healthcare system the interests of patients, providers, and payers are not aligned. This drives many of the problems in the system today and is part of what inspired Mark to get involved in trying to disrupt the system.
- Mark started Cost Plus Drugs to try to address some of the pricing issues with prescription drugs in the US. The company's pricing is completely transparent and shows their costs along with the exact fees they charge. He says that they do zero marketing and their growth comes from earned media and referrals from their existing patient base.
- Mark advises founders not to try to optimize the current healthcare system but rather to work outside of the system to bring about real change. Working within the system can bring change around the edges but commits you to working inside a system that is already broken in the hopes that an incumbent player might buy you.
- Every pitch deck that Mark sees now has an AI angle to it. He’s gone deep on the field over the last several years and says that when a person digs into many of these pitches the companies are using off-the-shelf large language models and have little defensibility.
- Precision medicine is one of the most exciting and scary emerging technologies. Mark says that in the next 50-100 years we will be able to compile all the variables that drive how our bodies and minds work and AI will be able to create a precise simulation of our bodies and how to treat them to improve our health.
- One of Mark’s favourite sayings is that “life is half random.” The conditions around a person are continually changing and contribute greatly to a person’s success.
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