MARK CUBAN

The American businessman, film producer, TV personality and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, 65, is back to compete for investments in burgeoning businesses with his fellow

sharks—Barbara Corcoran, Lori Greiner, Robert Herjavec, Daymond John and Kevin O’Leary—when season 15 of

Shark Tank (Sept. 29 on ABC) premieres. More than 800 deals have been made on Shark Tank to date—from Scrub Daddy to Bombas—and this season promises to introduce more great inventions that just need an investor.

This is your 14th season. What keeps you coming back?

What keeps me coming back is every time somebody says they’ve started a business because they’ve watched Shark Tank… It happens so often. We’ve been on so long, you get kids in their 20s and 30s saying, “Yeah, we watched you in high school and that’s what got me into business.” Or “I watched you when I was ten years old”— making us feel really old—“and that’s what really got me excited about business.” So, knowing that every show gets seen in so many classrooms, by so many families, that’s why I continue to do it.

When you invest, is it the product or the person that’s more important?

Sometimes there’s an entrepreneur that’s just so good that, OK, maybe I ’m not as excited about the product or service, but I just really believe in the entrepreneur and think they can take it somewhere. And then sometimes, it’s just the product. I’m like, “This product is so good even if the entrepreneur sucks, I’ll be able to make it work.”

And, actually, there’s a couple of those this season coming up. There’s one where the entrepreneur’s just insane and then another one where the product is one of the best things I’ve ever tasted. I just look for something that makes me say, “Why didn’t I think of that?” or “This is just so excellent that I’ve got to do it.”

Do you have an instinct that tells you whether somebody would be a good or bad entrepreneur? Or something that gives you a clue?

I really look to see how excited and connected they are to it. When they come on, obviously, they’re rehearsed, and they’ve got their spiel that they do to entertain. But you can typically tell if they honest-to-goodness love their product and have really dedicated themselves to it. Plus, we get to do due diligence after the fact, so we get to confirm it. The reality is we’re not going to get them all right.

What’s the best and worst investment you’ve made from

Shark Tank? I don’t want to throw anybody under the bus. But the best, I’ve had some really good ones. BeatBox Beverage is an alcoholic wine beverage and they came in and I bought a third of the company for $1 million. They just did a fundraising where they were valued at $200 million, which I was really happy about. Then, also, their sales have just been exploding, just going right through the roof. That’s why they’ve been able to raise money and who knows how big they’re going to be.

Another one is Dude Wipes. They’re just crushing it. To their credit, they haven’t had to raise any more money at all. They’re well past the $50 million in

sales and revenue levels. I’m just so proud of them. There’s been some really good ones that have been really exciting.

There was a CNN story that you might leave Shark Tank. Why leave if you’re enjoying it so much?

Really because my kids are teenagers. Up until my oldest went off to college this past summer, we always could work our schedules together. My two daughters went to the same school, my son went to a school that basically matched its schedule to my daughters’ school, so whenever we did something over the summer, I could just say we’re filming Shark Tank this part of June and once it’s over, we’ll all do something together. But now that my oldest has gone off to college, she likes her own schedule, doesn’t care about my Shark Tank schedule. My middle’s about to do the same thing in about a year. It comes down to just being able to get family time together over the summer. That’s super important to me and it just gets harder.

Talk about your decision to invest in something like Cost Plus Drugs that might make money but helps so many people by making their medications more affordable.

I’ve been so blessed. My next dollar is not going to change my life. It’s not going to change my kids’ lives. But in starting a business like CostPlusDrugs.com with Dr. Alex Oshmyansky, we have a chance really to change people’s lives. It’s insane that here we are in 2023 and there are still people that must choose between medication and rent and food and day care. That’s just not right. There are so many distortions in the way medications are priced that we felt by starting Cost Plus Drugs, we could change that. We’ve had that type of impact with so many people.

I’m used to people mentioning the Mavs and Shark Tank, I’m used to people saying hi or whatever because of those. Now, I’ve had people walk up and just hug me, and cry because we’ve saved somebody or them and their family hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars a month, and that’s just changed their lives. Just to be able to do that, that’s something special. That, to me, other than my family and my kids, that’s something I want to be remembered for.

You’ve said that you consider yourself lucky. How does luck affect success?

Luck impacts scale. Did I think I could be successful enough to support myself and live a life where I didn’t have to worry about every bill like I did when I was in my early 20s? Yeah, I did. Hard work and effort, learning, selling, the character traits that I look for in Shark Tank entrepreneurs, I think I have those. It got me fairly far. But to have a “B” next to your name, that’s luck. Nobody, if they’re being honest, can say, “You know what? I’m going to work hard enough to be a billionaire.” No, to get that scale, to get to that level, it takes a lot of luck.

What do wish you had more of?

Time. It’s one thing we can’t get back, right? You get to a certain age, and we all start to realize that we’re mortal and we start to gauge our mortality. It’s scary. But that’s life, right? Father time is undefeated.