Jim Kendall retweeted
Profit isn't the only signal. Feeling great about helping people. Changing people's lives. Helping your country. Putting people in a position to succeed. To enjoy their lives. People get to pick their own motivations. If they are fortunate, they will reach those goals.
That's the beauty of capitalism. People get to choose the reward that motivates them.
Entrepreneurs can choose to make as much money as possible. Or not. They can choose to make enough money to focus on using their most valuable asset, their time, to not have to work at all. They can choose to make money to help people.
But. Every entrepreneur that wants to reach their goals needs people. People to work for them, buy from them, sell to them. Even the person in the basement with nothing but AI, needs to connect to humans to reach their personal goals.
Capitalism works. But not for everyone.
Where Capitalism fails people, Capitalism isn't the problem. It's the people that put profits above all else that are the problem.
If you put your personal net worth or cash flow above all else, you may make insane amounts of money, but you will suffer the greatest indignity. You will be hated. Your time will not be your own. You will never experience the joy that comes from helping others.
No one is born knowing where their life will take them. We get to do our best, in our circumstances, to try to enjoy our lives.
Capitalism allows us to try to get there. Capitalism allows people who have achieved those goals to help others. Capitalism allows us to choose our own personal path.
Unfortunately, we don't all get there. But we get to try to choose the path we want.
The signal is personal choice. Not profit.
Mark. Do you hear yourself?
You say government doesn't have to make a profit, and that is true. It is the whole problem. Profit is the signal that tells a producer he created more value than he consumed. Government has no such signal, which is why it cannot know whether anything it does is worth doing. That is not a friction AI removes. It is the absence of the one piece of information AI would need.
And everyone else in your plan does have to make a profit. The researcher who spends ten years on a molecule that may never get through the FDA. The engineer who designs the scanner. The company that risks capital on a manufacturing line. The doctor who borrowed three hundred thousand dollars for the right to work ninety hour weeks. The nurse. The hospital that has to keep the lights on. Every one of them has to take in more than they put out or they stop, and when they stop, the care stops with them. Government not needing a profit means nothing if the people who make the thing still do.
Then there are the people whose money you intend to run through the Treasury. They earned it. They need it. And they have a right to it that does not depend on whether your commission has a good use in mind. A government that doesn't have to make a profit is a government that only has to take, and the taking is the part you keep leaving out of the pitch.
You know all of this. You built Cost Plus on exactly these premises. Publish a price, earn a margin, let the customer decide. You just refuse to grant the people who make medicine the same thing you granted yourself.
Jim Kendall retweeted
This is very important
Jim Kendall retweeted
NEW podcast episode is up!
"Lucky #888 — My Tour of Designing Luck in China, Japan, and Korea"
For episode #888, I couldn’t resist going down a rabbit hole about the number eight. Join me for a nerdy tour of China, Japan, and Korea, including a million-dollar license plate, disappearing hotel floors, a casino room designed around one gambler’s birthday, and much, much more.
Please enjoy!
Jim Kendall retweeted
CVS is splitting into two companies in a major reversal of the mergers that created its $117 billion healthcare empire cnn.it/4z45oWd
Jim Kendall retweeted
This guy realizes the biggest gap in our life: Constructivism vs Real World.
Either you allow someone else to construct your reality and tell you how to live and what to think, or you take action and responsibility, and face the real world out there in all its terror and beauty.
Jim Kendall retweeted
Now we'll finally learn what's in the Epstein files. Mike Johnson is no longer in a position to shut down the House in order to prevent votes on measures to force their release. It's time. It's past time.
Jim Kendall retweeted
For @nytimes, Callie Holtermann asked members of Gen Z what it's like to look for a job right now, and one feeling came up again and again: it's like staring into a void. Applications disappearing without a reply. Interviews conducted by chatbots. Rejections arriving two minutes after applicants hit submit. As one person summed up what so many are feeling: “Could someone please just give me a chance?”
I know what rejection feels like. My second book was rejected by 37 publishers. By rejection 25, I had run out of money, and I remember walking, depressed, down St James Street in London and seeing a Barclays Bank. I walked in and, armed with nothing but a lot of Greek chutzpah, asked to speak to the manager and asked for a loan. Even though I had no assets, the banker, whose name was Ian Bell, gave me one. It changed my life, because it meant I could keep things together for another 13 rejections. And then finally I got an acceptance.
So many of today’s applicants are describing a search where the human never appears. How can we find our humanity, our shared connection, around these tough moments?
To everyone who has experienced rejection — and at some point, we all do — what’s your advice for Gen Z job-seekers? I’ll be reading and responding in the comments.
Read the piece here: nytimes.com/interactive/2026…
Jim Kendall retweeted
The only country that has ever taken my unlocked phone and laptop into a back room for hours is the US, not China.
Readers asked how I secured my devices for a week in China. Full write-up: the real risks, what I did, what I skipped, what was overkill.
fabricegrinda.com/my-digital…
Jim Kendall retweeted
I'm in Vienna and “Infinite∞” is live in the bookstore at the @GDruckerForum! Come by and say hi! 👋
infinitecompany.ai
Jim Kendall retweeted
It's a great question. Here is my answer
I don't give a fuck about my net worth. I have enough. My family has enough.
My next dollar can impact other people's lives a lot more than mine.
That's why we started CostPlusDrugs com
That's why I did Shark Tank for 15 years.
That is what drives my investments
I look for ways to have an impact.
I pay my taxes.
I don't care about moving up on the Forbes 400
Still my @mcuban quote
Multiple roommates. Ramen noodles. Near public transportation. Respect to the people who do whatever it takes.
I worked as a bartender. Bar-back. $2.15 an hr plus whatever tips got shared. Worked at a retail store. Never had benefits at any job.
Had 5 roommates in a 3 br apt. Ate lousy food out of cans and ate a ton of peanuts and shit food at happy hour. Had credit cards ripped up. Etc.
But I learned a ton. Taught me what was right and wrong about running a business by watching my bosses and their bosses
Yeah I know. It was much easier then, when inflation was 15 pct and national unemployment was 10 %. I know I was fortunate when I finally got fired from the store, and had to start my own business with zero cash. Bill collectors everywhere.
Even luckier when I found my first customer so I could pay my bills
But I recognize it’s so much harder today.
Which is why I respect the people who are willing to do what it takes to get started
First we have amalgamation and then the disintermediation commences.
Seems to often be the ebb and flow of commerce and $ $ made and lost in each cycle @mcuban
Jim Kendall retweeted
Mark Cuban's advice for young people boils down to "there's gonna be two types of companies: those who are great at AI and those who have gone out of business."
"And then there's two types of people in how they use AI: those who use AI to learn anything, and those who use AI so they don't have to learn anything."
"And if you're one of those people who uses AI so that you can learn anything, and you realize what type of companies and problems aren't being solved by AI, don't be shy to just talk to your AI."
"And I say this not just to kids, but to 50 60, 70-year-old entrepreneurs. The biggest challenge right now with entrepreneurs using AI is the comfort level of talking to your AI... there's still a lot of hesitancy."
"Just like back in the day, those first spreadsheets, people still had their 10-key adding machine, and they would check it to make sure the spreadsheets were right."
"So when you ask me, is there one thing I truly believe, it's everything. Everything will change. This is the greatest transitional technology we have ever seen, and I've been around for all of them, right? This blows them all away."
@mcuban @julesyoo @eriktorenberg
Mark Cuban scaled Cost Plus Drugs from about 100 generics to roughly 4,000 at a flat 15% markup, forcing incumbents to change prices in ways decades of policy never did.
He thinks AI could transform healthcare, but it won't fix opaque prices and broken incentives on its own.
Mark sits down with a16z's Julie Yoo and Erik Torenberg to discuss what he's learned building Cost Plus Drugs, why trust is its core product, and how greater transparency could put pressure on healthcare costs.
They also explore why drugs designed for your DNA could cost close to nothing, the football field-sized drug plant his team shrank into tractor trailer-sized pods, his plan to make generics in Dallas for less than he pays manufacturers in India, and why every company will either be great at AI or go out of business.
0:50 Cost Plus beat decades of policy
3:15 111 generics to 4,000 drugs
5:00 A drug plant shrunk to 5K sq ft
5:55 $20M drug factories in a trailer
8:10 Hospital deals with zero denials
9:50 Why health plans are rigged
14:05 1,335 pages no human can check
18:35 "Where are they f**king me over?"
22:45 Making drugs cheaper than India
26:50 Why you still need entry-level hires
31:45 Nonprofit hospitals must offer aid
35:55 DNA-matched drugs for near $0
39:30 Why AI will mean more doctors
48:00 Mark's plan: "bye bye insurers"
52:25 Why AI labs' ads are useless
56:35 Get good at AI or go out of business
YouTube: youtu.be/5UWDUD6qaM4
@mcuban @julesyoo @eriktorenberg
Jim Kendall retweeted
Mark Cuban on a16z this week: "AI is not smart. It's book smart maybe, but it's not street smart... You've got to have somebody there who guides it."
That's the clearest way I've heard it put and as a Broker/ M&A advisor that should mean something to you.
ChatGPT has no idea you've closed 40 deals in your town or that every accountant in the county knows your name. That's street smart. AI only knows what's been written down.
So when an owner asks it about selling, it answers from whatever it can read. If your experience isn't written anywhere it looks, you don't exist to it.
A few places this shows up:
• An owner asks, "What's my HVAC business worth?" The answer cites whoever has published a clear guide on valuing HVAC companies.
• A spouse asks, "How is a business sale taxed?" Same thing. The broker who answered it in plain English gets mentioned.
• Someone asks, "Who are the best business brokers in Columbus?" AI pulls from directories, reviews and articles that name you.
None of this is guaranteed. AI changes how it picks sources, and nobody controls it. But you can make it much easier for it to find you, by writing down what you know in the places it reads.
Cuban sat with the head of a food company and asked ChatGPT to build a competitor to his best-selling cookie. Three minutes later, the CEO saw how easily someone could go after his number one product.
Brokers can run the same test.
Open ChatGPT and type what your next seller would: "Who's the best broker to sell my [industry] business in [your city]?"
If someone else's name comes up, that's your three-minute moment. That's who your next seller hears about first, before they've ever heard of you.
Mark Cuban says the lack of AI adoption in organizations means the "trillionaire in the basement" entrepreneur is coming:
"You have to be able to understand as a CEO and in the C-suite how all those things impact your company. Once you get a good grasp on that... you can just find new ways for things to happen that benefit your customers or create new opportunities."
"And that's the brilliance of AI, right? AI is not smart. It's book smart maybe, but it's not street smart. It's not entrepreneur smart. You've got to have somebody there who guides it and helps it."
"But until you have a C-suite that understands how it works, it's gonna be very difficult for that organization."
"I literally sat with the head of a consumer food company... I'm like, 'Okay, well, let's do this. Let's take your number one product, your cookie, right? And I'm gonna ask ChatGPT to create a competitor...' And in about three minutes he was like, 'Oh, s**t.'"
"There's no better time to be an entrepreneur than right now. There will be the trillionaire in the basement."
@mcuban @eriktorenberg @julesyoo
Jim Kendall retweeted
A stronger Canada-EU alliance will deliver more choice and lower costs for families. New export markets for businesses. Greater opportunities for young people to live, work, and study where they want.
Jim Kendall retweeted
Canada and the EU are working towards the deepest possible partnership — short of full membership — with Canada becoming the European Union’s first Associate Member.
Today in Montréal, we took a major step forward with more than twenty new measures that will create greater affordability, opportunity, and sovereignty on both sides of the Atlantic.
pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releas…
BOOM
Live from Montréal: Prime Minister Carney makes an announcement to strengthen Canada’s AI digital sovereignty. Tune in: ow.ly/pJb251028k2
ALT Text: Watch Live. Announcement.