FULL INTERVIEW: Mark Cuban on Robots, AI, Self-Driving, and Advice to Students

**John Coogan** (0:00)
Good to see you, how's your 2026 going? We haven't talked this year yet. What's life like?

**Mark Cuban** (0:05)
I'm loving life, I got no complaints whatsoever.

**John Coogan** (0:07)
Yeah, that's amazing.

**Mark Cuban** (0:08)
Yeah, I'm loving life.

**John Coogan** (0:10)
That's great. Are you, so you're not disappointed about the rollout of ads in LLMs thus far then? Is that safe to say?

**Jordi Hays** (0:18)
How's it going in your year?

**John Coogan** (0:19)
Because when I saw the first ad, it was for the Wall Street Journal, and it was just a little little bubble at the top. Hey, you might want to check out the journal. Seemed innocent enough to me, but how are you feeling?

**Mark Cuban** (0:29)
I haven't seen it at all, so it hasn't ruined my life at all.

**Jordi Hays** (0:32)
What's your information diet? Because it's hard not to log on the internet and not start blackpiling these days.

**Mark Cuban** (0:39)
Yeah, no shit. So my first stop is a site called Memeo Random, which kind of gives me an update on all the what's happening in the world. My second stop is Drudge Report, because that gives me the hyperbole on everything that's happening in the world. And then after that, all the different newsletters and emails that I get, just that try to keep me up.

**Jordi Hays** (1:01)
How are you processing the flood of cold emails that appears to be thoughtful, but is actually AI generated? Because you are notorious for your response rates and getting back to so many people that have reached out. But it feels like maybe an impossible task now.

**Mark Cuban** (1:21)
No, I do what everybody else does. I bought a Mac mini. You did. Yeah, for sure. I'm still learning.

**Jordi Hays** (1:29)
So you're just like, you hit me with AI, I'll hit you with AI back right away.

**Mark Cuban** (1:32)
Right back, right? Because it's not even like the cold emails, because that's pretty obvious.
It's pretty easy to see. It's people subscribing me to shit. And the good news is Gmail has an unsubscribe button. So you just got to train it to hit the unsubscribe button. Then I just review it and all that shit. So it's still a work in progress, but at least I have a path.

**Jordi Hays** (1:54)
Well, the issue with us is that historically, if you had a podcast and somebody wrote you an email and said, hey, I really appreciated this moment where you're talking about this one thing.

**John Coogan** (2:03)
Totally. You're like, oh, they actually listen to the show.

**Jordi Hays** (2:04)
And then you could actually tell, like, hey, at least they press play and at least they found a moment. But now AI just does it instantly. So there's no way to clock whether somebody actually.

**Mark Cuban** (2:14)
Whether it's real or not, yeah. And that's okay, right? Because they're gonna, the response rates most likely will be so low. We're in that trial and error phase where people are like, we're gonna try it, see what happens, you know, maybe we'll get lucky and then they'll get bored and then it'll drop off.

**John Coogan** (2:29)
Yeah. Is owning a Mac mini a green flag for entrepreneurs these days? Talk to me about what you're seeing in early stage startups in this AI era. Like where are the interesting builders? What patterns are you seeing that are like, oh, I didn't think that this person would be going down the founder road, but they are now.

**Mark Cuban** (2:47)
Yeah. Agents for everything. Yeah. It's just because once you figure out how to do agents, then you can do them a little better than most other people, and then you can turn that into what would have been a SaaS business in the past is now, we'll create your own marketing team and we'll do all these different things for you that you no longer have to do and we'll charge you X number of dollars a month. That's it. And I'm seeing dozens of those, typically one for every industry you can ever possibly imagine.

**John Coogan** (3:14)
And are they growing revenue faster? Are they growing profit faster?

**Mark Cuban** (3:19)
Neither. They're just still trying to get some, just trying to get some traction at all.

**John Coogan** (3:24)
Yeah.

**Mark Cuban** (3:24)
You know, because if you're growing revenue quickly, you're probably not coming to me yet.

**John Coogan** (3:30)
Okay.

**Mark Cuban** (3:30)
You know, you're, because, you know, the marginal cost to start is so low and it's so fast and you're using the agent. So if they can get anybody to give them a credit card, you know, or sign up or, you know, now there's a little bit of a battle to use USDC for payment, the payment rails, you know, to make it so that, you know, just give me your wallet and that's, you know, it's going to end up being a scam. And a lot of people are going to get ripped off there. But, but I think the real thing right now is agents for vertical verticals and trying to turn that into replace all your employees so you can start up or you can cut costs.