Mark Cuban (Dancing with the Stars, Bad Teacher) is ready to close the chapter on his time on the well-known ABC business series Shark Tank. During an interview with the Showtime podcast entitled All The Smoke, Cuban sat down with hosts Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson to reveal that season 16 will be his final one, according to Deadline. The reality TV show by Mark Burnett (Coupled, The Bible) is presently in its 15th season.
“It’s time,” Cuban said. He first got his start on the show as a guest during Shark Tank’s second season. He then became a regular shark the next year and has been very popular on the show since.
“I love it because it sends the message the American dream is alive and well,” Cuban said to Jackson and Barnes. “I feel like in doing Shark Tank all these years, we’ve 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 going to inspire generations of kids. That’s what happens, right? Now we’ve got people coming on saying I watched you when I was 10 years old. I’m like, f*ck. But we’re helping them right? 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 meeting, the companies are still in operation. I’m way up.”
Cuban was asked during the interview how he scopes out a good investment on Shark Tank. His response was, “I just listen to them. You can just tell. Body language matters, the harder they have to try to sell, the worse the deal … when someone walks in Shark tank, you can tell if they are trying too hard. I have this rule: the longer the back story, the worse the deal. The minute you start telling me how hard it was for you, it’s hard for every motherf*cking entrepreneur, tell me about your business, tell me why you are going to be successful.”
“I look for ideas like, damn, why didn’t I think of that,” Cuban added.
ABC still has yet to confirm his leave; however, an insider on the series said Cuban has previously brought up leaving the show.