Business

We’re halfway through the first season of Compound Interest, our show about the big but often subtle ways that the world of business and finance is changing. In each episode, we’ll pick up a business or industry — smart rings, robotaxis, health insurance, cloning — and poke: Why does it work the way it does? How are the incentives changing? What’s the next opportunity or danger?

Here are some of my favorite recent conversations; and we have a great lineup for the back half of the season. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and reply to this email with suggestions for who we should have on!

Mark Cuban is coming for insurance

Mark Cuban has left Shark Tank, given up control of the Dallas Mavericks, and poured more than $100 million into his prescription-drug startup, which is taking on pharmacy middlemen. Now he’s coming for health insurers.

The billionaire is working on an alternative to employer-run insurance plans, he said. His project — its skunkworks name, “The 10 Plan,” taken from the percentage of customers’ income it would be capped at — would replace insurance premiums with personal contributions into bank accounts that can only be spent on medical bills. The idea grew out of Cost Plus Drugs, his pharmacy startup that sells prescription drugs (mostly generics, though it’s working with TrumpRx to add name-brands straight from big drugmakers) at a flat 15% markup. Cuban says the company is “about breakeven right now,” hasn’t taken outside investment, and that an IPO is not part of his plan.

“I’m rich as f*ck. I don’t need the money,” he says.

John Arnold on the 24/7 casino economy

Philanthropist John Arnold has spent his post-Wall Street career tackling broken systems — criminal justice, infrastructure, higher education. His next target, he says, is the explosion of online gambling.

He worries it has turned a tolerable-when-contained societal release valve into a frictionless casino — with potentially harmful effects on young men in particular. His message to state officials who have legalized new types of betting: “You have a lot of lobbyists coming into your office every day talking about the benefits, but somebody needs to talk about what the negatives are,” he said.

Can tiny homes fix America’s housing crisis?

Tiny homes, prefabricated and dropped into backyards across America, could solve two great shortages in the US economy: housing and cash-generating investments.

The CEO of Samara, which spun off in 2022 from Airbnb and makes apartment-sized housing units that fit in people’s backyards, said the easing of zoning regulations and an appetite among investors should make tiny homes a financeable asset that gains in value over time. Banks “understand the mortgage of the front yard very well. We’re trying to create a different asset class” in the backyard, Mike McNamara said.

For now, Samara is providing the financing itself, offering to lend 100% of the cost of a unit if the main house has enough equity built up. “We love it as an asset class,” he said. So will Apollo.

Why Oura is running toward Washington oversight

The Oura ring has become a calling card for elite wellness-maxxers. But the company’s CEO sees its future in the less-glamorous world of medical devices.

“We’re already in the healthcare business,” Tom Hale said. Oura’s customers have expanded beyond what Hale calls the “chronically well” or “healthy, wealthy” crowd into people managing chronic illnesses and trying to get pregnant (or not), and health insurers looking to manage costs.

“Increasingly we’ll be providing information that will be used in clinical settings,” he said. “In that case, [wearables] need to be regulated. We’re headed that way and I think it’ll be a pretty interesting future.”

Can cloning woolly mammoths be profitable?

When asked how much revenue there was in bringing back extinct animals, Ben Lamm doesn’t hesitate: $1.7 trillion. Add in the ability to protect sensitive ecologies and map the evolution of species and diseases, the CEO of biotech startup Colossal said, and it’s “insanely profitable.”

It’s less Jurassic Park than you’d think — Colossal has no plans to build a theme park for dire wolves, which it successfully revived last year to the frustration of some pedantic biologists. Instead, the money will come from where it always does: selling services to big companies and governments. Colossal is working with the Emirati government to protect native species, licensing its gene-editing technology to other biotech labs, and sees promise in mining its treasure trove of elephant DNA for clues about cancer prevention.

Lamm also hinted at some classified bioweapons work for the US government “that may not have made it into a press release.” Even in the buzziest and most futuristic corner of tech, B2B still reigns.

Next week, we’re talking to Mark Lore, who built Walmart’s e-commerce business and now wants to fill your plate, fridge, and oven — and come test your blood?

It turns out part of launching a show is going on other people’s shows to hype it, so I’ve had a fun media tour of my own over the past couple weeks. A few of my favorite conversations: 

• TBPN, where I tried unsuccessfully to get them to tell me how much OpenAI paid to buy them;
• Alex Kantrowitz’s Big Technology on what exactly OpenAI is up to with TBPN;
• From the Desk of Anthony Pompliano  on whether I’m worried AI will take my job;
• Morning Brew for a deep dive on private credit;
• Mike Pesca’s The Gist on AI and Veblen goods.