Shark Tank is nothing without its beady-eyed, razor-toothed, man-eating aquatic hosts. Since season two, Draymond John, Barbara Corcoran, Robert Herjavec, “Mr. Wonderful” Kevin O’Leary, and Mark Cuban have been manning the board seats, tearing apart aspiring entrepreneurs, pitching yet another breakthrough in golf course urination technology. Now, that school of five, their bellies filled with chum made of flop sweat and flailing business school dropouts, is set to become four. In what amounts to the greatest shift in power in hotel room television consumption since the advent of impractical jokes, Mark Cuban, one of the Tank’s most powerful and renowned sharks, is leaving Shark Tank.
Cuban, who first appeared as a guest host in season two, will call season 16 his final bucket of hapless inventor guts. “It’s time,” he said in a recent appearance on the Showtime podcast All That Smoke. Though he’s loved sending “the message the American dream is alive and well” if you can create the right socks-based subscription box, Cuban is proud that he and his fell sharks have “trained multiple generations of entrepreneurs that if somebody can come from Iowa or Sacramento or wherever, and show up on the carpet of Shark Tank and show their business and get a deal.” It’s really that easy.
“That’s what happens, right?” Cuban asked, ignoring the cold realities of Shark Tank as a viable business opportunity in an increasingly volatile and hostile marketplace. “Now we’ve got people coming on saying I watched you when I was 10 years old. I’m like, fuck. But we’re helping them, right?” Cuban, who is worth $6.2 billion, added. “I’ve invested in, I don’t know how many hundreds of companies. On a cash basis, I’m down a little bit, but on mark-to-market meetings, the companies are still in operation. I’m way up.”
This might be Cuban’s final lesson for all Shark Tank viewers and future entrepreneurs: Be a multi-billionaire, get out while the getting’s good, and have a nice life.