IU grad Mark Cuban offers advice on entrepreneurship, AI to Indy audience

Entrepreneur, television personality and Indiana University alum Mark Cuban gives the keynote address at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress on June 4, 2025. (IBJ photo/Susan Orr)

In his younger years, when Mark Cuban wanted to research a new business idea, he headed to the library or the bookstore. Now, he turns to artificial intelligence tools like Gemini or ChatGPT—and he’s bullish on the potential these tools have to turbocharge the entrepreneurial landscape.

“It is the best time ever to be an entrepreneur,” Cuban told a standing-room-only crowd Wednesday at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress, which is taking place this week at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis.

Cuban, a 1981 Indiana University graduate, is among the country’s most prominent entrepreneurs. He is perhaps best known from ABC’s business-themed reality series “Shark Tank,” where he was one of a panel of investors who heard pitches from—and sometimes invested in—startup businesses. (His last appearance on “Shark Tank” was May 16 after 14 years on the program.)

Cuban, 66, has been involved in a host of other business ventures over the course of his career. He founded computer systems and software companies and invested in web-based services during a time of massive growth in the sector. He also is a minority owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA team, which he led as majority owner for more than 20 years .

In 2019, Cuban co-founded Costplusdrugs.com, which makes and sells low-cost versions of high-cost generic drugs. The company’s pitch is that it uses transparent pricing and eliminates middlemen to reduce the price of its pharmaceuticals.

 But in his talk Wednesday, Cuban spent much of his time offering guidance and encouragement for the other entrepreneurs in the room.

While cautioning that AI chatbots are not always accurate, Cuban said the tools can be enormously useful for things like researching a particular industry, workshopping business ideas or creating websites and marketing materials.

“Having that available to you allows entrepreneurs to extend their skill set in ways you never could before,” Cuban said of the AI tools.

Cuban also offered a range of other advice for the audience, on topics including:

• Dealing with fear: “Just realize every entrepreneur at some point in their journey, is terrified, afraid, doesn’t know what to do next, doesn’t know why things aren’t going faster, better, more profitably. That’s part of the drill.”
• The importance of building trust: “Be kind, be fair, be transparent, be open, be honest, because those traits are traits that AI doesn’t have. Those are traits that AI will never have. And you being able to communicate and connect and garner trust can and will be the difference between success and failure for your business.”
• Financial decisions: Cuban cautioned founders that accepting outside investment means giving up some control of their business. He also urged founders to focus on profitability rather than a grow-at-all-costs mentality. “Always think in terms of, ‘How do I stay alive [as a business]?’ And you have to be profitable to do that.”
• Business failure: Cuban said failure is part of the entrepreneurial experience, and the most important thing is to keep trying. “The only thing that matters is that you go for it.”

The Global Entrepreneurship Congress, which wraps up Thursday, has drawn about 3,500 attendees from around the world for four days of talks, workshops, networking and other activities focused on innovation and entrepreneurship.