Cuban, who’s value $7.66 billion, instructed Wired’s Lauren Goode that he’s doing the “exact opposite” of getting a midlife disaster. As an alternative, he’s taken a large leap into prescribed drugs, an business he hasn’t had a lot expertise with earlier than.
He’s “more platforming for the next step,” he stated. “I don’t look at myself and think, ‘I’m a man of a certain age, I’ve got to change what I’m doing.’ No. It’s more like, I like to disrupt things. I like to play the game. I like to compete in business, and Cost Plus Drugs could be the biggest thing I’ve ever done.”
Mark Cuban Value Plus Medicine’ mission is to eradicate the intermediary within the pharmaceutical business, which Cuban diagnoses as being the main offender behind excessive drug costs. After a 2018 chilly electronic mail from a 33-year-old radiologist, Alex Oshmyansky, pitching a pharmaceutical startup, Cuban invested $250,000 to get it up and working. Nonetheless, Cuban invested “so much” inside simply two years that he ended up proudly owning the corporate, based on Wired.
Basically, Cuban’s firm sells medicine primarily based on the bottom worth of the drug, plus a 15% markup and $5 pharmacy service and $5 transport charges. That permits Cuban’s firm to nonetheless make margin with out being as costly as pharmacy profit managers. Right now, the corporate ships about 2,500 totally different medicine for varied circumstances, together with diabetes and epilepsy. It even carries contraception.
Cuban denies he’s pursuing this enterprise out of altruism, but isn’t actually in it for the cash both.
“I want to make it so it’s self-sustained. I don’t want to subsidize it the whole time. But I don’t need to make money,” Cuban instructed Wired. “Disrupting an industry that everybody hates, that’s fun. I’m getting emails and letters.”
Plus, Cuban has reveled within the optimistic response he’s gotten from prospects, highlighting one letter he obtained that stated, “You saved me $15,000 a year on my cancer medication. I would be dead if it weren’t for you.”
Mark Cuban stated he needs to purchase Fox Information and X
Though Cuban isn’t shopping for a Ferrari as he reaches midlife, he has larger issues on his wishlist: Fox Information and X.
He has beforehand lamented child boomers’ love of Fox Information, and was requested by Wired how he would repair that. His reply was to purchase Fox Information.
“If I had enough money to do it, which I don’t, I’d buy it in a heartbeat,” he stated.
However with a multibillion-dollar fortune, how might Cuban not be capable to afford the right-leaning information community? Basically, he doesn’t have sufficient money, and Fox Information’ present market cap is about $17.6 billion (although he was working off a $15.6 billion estimate in his Q&A).
“And you’ve got to pay at least 50% premium. So now it’s $22 billion,” Cuban defined to Wired. “And then you’ve got to make all the changes, so that’s another $2 billion. You can sell some things off. So maybe it’s $15 billion, $20 billion net. I don’t have $15 or $20 billion in cash sitting around.”
Wired then requested how he would repair “something essentially like propaganda,” and he replied that it’s too late.
What about shopping for Elon Musk’s X? “He wouldn’t sell it,” Cuban replied.
“I wish I could,” he added later. “There’s no reason for him to sell it.”
Fox and X didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.