All Roads Lead to Rome: On Paper, Shark Tank’s Mark Cuban and Elon Musk Are Rivals but in Practice They Have the Same Strategy to Boost Productivity

All roads may lead to Rome, but when it came to boosting productivity, Mark Cuban and Elon Musk found themselves heading down the same lane. On paper, they played for different teams — Cuban was the tech-savvy entrepreneur turned Shark Tank star, while Musk aimed for the stars (literally) with SpaceX and Tesla. 

Yet, their approach to squeezing maximum efficiency from their ventures was eerily aligned. Both ditched conventional rules, embraced bold risks, and streamlined decision-making like pros.

Mark Cuban and Elon Musk: Rivals who ditched meetings for emails and fast-track productivity

Mark Cuban and Elon Musk might seem like they’re playing on rival teams, but when it came to productivity hacks, they were reading from the same playbook. Cuban, the billionaire Shark Tank star, made no secret of his disdain for one thing: meetings. 

He preferred tackling 700 emails daily over sitting through what he called “long and tedious and boring” conference room marathons. 

Cuban revealed in an interview with Vanity Fair,

Now, you may think that’s a lot, but I’d rather do 700, even 1,000 or more emails, than sit in long and tedious and boring meetings.

This wasn’t a new mantra for Cuban. Back in 2010, he labeled meetings a “waste of time” unless a deal was closing. His rule? No agenda, no outcome, no Cuban. He told Inc.: 

Meetings are a waste of time unless you are closing a deal. There are so many ways to communicate in real time or asynchronously that any meeting you actually sit for should have a duration and set outcome before you agree to go.

By 2014, he’d gone a step further, dodging lunch invites unless they came with a check. He said (via Inc),

I’m not big on ‘Let’s go eat lunch’ meetings. The only way you’re going to get me for a meeting is if you’re writing me a check. Same with phone calls — they’re a waste of time.

Elon Musk, no stranger to cutting the fluff, followed a similar path. At Tesla, he encouraged employees to walk out of meetings the moment their input was no longer valuable. For Musk, wasting time was the real offense, not leaving early.

Even actor-turned-investor Jared Leto joined the no-meetings bandwagon. His secret to getting things done? “Just f—ing working.” Dinners, lunches, and breakfasts are all hard pass.

Not everyone agreed with this anti-meeting crusade. Experts argued emails weren’t always the answer, citing miscommunications. Cuban, however, stood by his inbox. For him, email was the ultimate productivity tool, shaving hours off his day.

Call them rivals, call them renegades – Cuban and Musk weren’t reinventing the wheel. They just ditched the unnecessary detours. Productivity, for them, was all about staying in the fast lane.

Mark Cuban calls out X, backs Bluesky, and shakes up healthcare and AI

Mark Cuban doesn’t sugarcoat. At the Fortune Brainstorm Tech Dinner in Vegas, he straight-up called X (formerly Twitter) a “sh*thole” and crowned Bluesky his new hangout. He revealed, 

It’s my favorite, follow me on Bluesky. I answer a lot more questions there than on Twitter. Twitter’s a sh*thole these days.

Cuban wasn’t just throwing shade at social media. He dove into healthcare, calling out its inefficiencies. That’s why he launched Cost Plus Drugs in 2022. His game plan is simple: Transparent pricing and low margins. 

There’s nobody who looks at the healthcare system or the pharmaceutical industry and says, ‘Wow, that’s well-run. It’s just the way you want it. It’s great for us. We love participating in it…We thought that if we could create a company, limit our margins, publish all of our pricing and price list, then maybe we can have an impact.

Then came AI and the NBA. Cuban backed AI as the future everywhere. For the NBA, though, it’s all about digital views. Mark Cuban’s always ahead, always real, and always leaving a mark.

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