Cuban, who’s price $7.66 billion, advised Wired’s Lauren Goode that he’s doing the “actual reverse” of getting a midlife disaster. As a substitute, he’s taken an enormous leap into prescribed drugs, an trade he hasn’t had a lot expertise with earlier than.
He’s “extra platforming for the following step,” he mentioned. “I don’t have a look at myself and suppose, ‘I’m a person of a sure age, I’ve bought to vary what I’m doing.’ No. It’s extra like, I wish to disrupt issues. I wish to play the sport. I wish to compete in enterprise, and Price Plus Medicine might be the largest factor I’ve ever achieved.”
Mark Cuban Price Plus Medicine’ mission is to get rid of the intermediary within the pharmaceutical trade, which Cuban diagnoses as being the foremost perpetrator behind excessive drug costs. After a 2018 chilly e mail from a 33-year-old radiologist, Alex Oshmyansky, pitching a pharmaceutical startup, Cuban invested $250,000 to get it up and operating. Nonetheless, Cuban invested “a lot” inside simply two years that he ended up proudly owning the corporate, in line with Wired.
Primarily, Cuban’s firm sells medication based mostly 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. At this time, the corporate ships about 2,500 completely different medication for numerous 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 wish to make it so it’s self-sustained. I don’t wish to subsidize it the entire time. However I don’t must earn a living,” Cuban advised Wired. “Disrupting an trade that everyone hates, that’s enjoyable. I’m getting emails and letters.”
Plus, Cuban has reveled within the constructive response he’s gotten from clients, highlighting one letter he acquired that mentioned, “You saved me $15,000 a 12 months on my most cancers treatment. I’d be lifeless if it weren’t for you.”
Mark Cuban mentioned he desires 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 sufficient cash to do it, which I don’t, I’d purchase it in a heartbeat,” he mentioned.
However with a multibillion-dollar fortune, how may Cuban not have the ability to afford the right-leaning information community? Primarily, 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 also you’ve bought to pay at the very least 50% premium. So now it’s $22 billion,” Cuban defined to Wired. “And you then’ve bought to make all of the modifications, in order that’s one other $2 billion. You may promote some issues off. So possibly it’s $15 billion, $20 billion internet. I don’t have $15 or $20 billion in money sitting round.”
Wired then requested how he would repair “one thing primarily like propaganda,” and he replied that it’s too late.
What about shopping for Elon Musk’s X? “He wouldn’t promote it,” Cuban replied.
“I want I may,” he added later. “There’s no purpose for him to promote it.”
Fox and X didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.