If you book an interview with Mark Cuban, you know you’re going to get a full-throttle talk with an entertaining, provocative entrepreneur. The kind of guy who can end a two-day media + technology conference with a bang.
Mark Cuban Vs. the World: The Full Code/Media Interview (Video)
He’s the kind of guy who can end a two-day media + technology conference with a bang.
Asa Mathat
Peter Kafka covered media and technology, and their intersection, at Vox. Many of his stories can be found in his Kafka on Media newsletter, and he also hosts the Recode Media podcast.
And that’s what we got from Cuban when he closed out the Code/Media event last week. Now you can watch what everyone there got to witness: A wide-ranging, thought-provoking chat with a billionaire who seems to fuel himself by staking out positions that run against the conventional wisdom.
Cuban still insists, for instance, that YouTube is an underwhelming asset for Google — which will surprise the billion-plus people who use it, the new constellation stars that have been born there and the advertisers that are increasingly interested in the world’s largest video site. (YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley has a different perspective, which led to an entertaining Twitter dust-up this weekend).
And while much of the tech world thinks net neutrality is a no-brainer, Cuban disagrees: Proposed rules to regulate broadband will “fuck everything up,” says the guy who made his fortune building (and selling) a Web video company.* Then again, he may not be that concerned: Asked to name his favorite stock bet for the next five years, Cuban picked Netflix, a full-fledged net neutrality fan.
You want more? You get more:
- Cuban on why he doesn’t want Wi-Fi in big sports arenas, like the one where his Dallas Mavericks play.
- Cuban on why the future of TV is still TV, not the Web.
- Cuban on what it’s like to be a TV star, courtesy of ABC’s “Shark Tank”, in 2015.
And a lot more.
This is the first full interview video we’ve published from Code/Media. We’ll be running one of these a day for the next few weeks. There’s about 30 minutes of this, so enjoy.
* Cuban’s net neutrality and YouTube comments led to a high-energy (but civil) post-show debate featuring Cuban and former YouTube executive Shishir Mehrotra. I wish I’d documented that one, too.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
