Cuban gave a fascinating talk...
Here are some of his more interesting points:
1) He says if he was a young person today, he would study Biology, Math and Computer Science.
2) Following those lines, he believes the "next big thing" is personalized medicine. He went on a long tirade against our current system of one size fits all medicine and how the only distinctions between individuals is how many milligrams to take of the same pill. He says he has his blood drawn quarterly to act as a baseline that he can compare to if he ever has a medical problem. He believes the highest capability of the internet will be monitoring health and allowing doctors to work/observe remotely.
3) He says that sales is the most important skill a person can have and advocates anybody starting their career gets a job that requires them to sell. He says if you can sell, you will have a job forever.
4) Strongly against net neutrality. He says any counter argument is one based in misinformation. He thinks that there is a consumer demand and need for "fast lanes" in the internet, but there will always be enough bandwidth.
5) Pro Obama-care. Cuban is generally a libertarian but he says once we as a country decided that everyone is entitled to healthcare (ie. hospitals can't turn emergency patients away) that we all need to buy in to universal healthcare as a right and the government needs to regulate it. He compared it to taxpayers funding homeland security because we don't want to walk around worried about terrorists.
6) Indiana U should not fire Tom Crean.
7) Shark Tank films one deal at a time, it's not multiple contestants in a day. He said good deals take a few hours of recording and are then edited down to 10 minutes. Cuban and the other investors have the opportunity for due diligence and can pull out of the deal after the fact.
8) He requires weekly status reports on all his companies. He demands that bad news be listed first, because "they don't need my help with the good news"
9) He doesn't take meetings or phone calls, only communicates by email.
10) He will go to a meeting if you're writing him a big enough check. And he will wear whatever the person writing the check is wearing, be it a suit or speedo.
11) He wanted to buy the Cubs for cash, but required a face to face meeting with Sam Zell to negotiate price. Zell wouldn't take the meeting.
Overall Cuban was an awesome guy and great presenter. Really inspirational listening to him today.
