For decades, entrepreneurial success has been measured in familiar ways: revenue, growth, valuation, market share and, eventually, the size of the exit. A new documentary series executive produced by Mark Cuban is asking viewers to consider another measure. How to Change the World, a new 10-part documentary series from World Within Studios and Religion of Sports, turns its cameras toward social entrepreneurs tackling difficult problems in their communities through business, innovation and unconventional thinking. The series premiered September 10 and is being released free on YouTube, with a new episode arriving each week. For Cuban, who spent more than a decade evaluating entrepreneurs on Shark Tank, the project represents an interesting evolution of a familiar question. Instead of simply asking whether a business can become successful, How to Change the World asks something bigger: What can a successful business actually accomplish?
A Different Kind of Entrepreneur Takes Center Stage
How to Change the World was created by World Within founder Rostam Zafari and co-founder Dylan Mulick after years spent exploring social entrepreneurship and the people using business to address problems that traditional institutions have struggled to solve. Each episode follows a different entrepreneur or organization, but the companies aren’t selected simply because they are growing quickly or attracting large investments. Their stories are built around the impact they are having on the communities and problems they set out to serve. The first episode follows Coral Vita, founded by Sam Teicher and Gator Halpern, which is working to restore threatened coral reefs. Their story became even more personal after Hurricane Dorian devastated Grand Bahama, where the company had established a coral restoration farm. Rather than leave, the founders and members of the local community rebuilt while continuing their efforts to protect an ecosystem increasingly threatened by climate change. Other stories move in dramatically different directions. Chicago CRED works with people at the highest risk of gun violence, creating employment opportunities and attempting to interrupt cycles of violence. Another episode examines a Lakota-founded renewable-energy company. Different businesses. Different communities. Different problems. But the question connecting them is essentially the same: Can entrepreneurship create value that extends beyond the company itself?
Watch: Mark Cuban Returns to TV with How to Change the World
In this recent WFAA report, Cuban discusses his involvement with How to Change the World and the new series’ focus on entrepreneurs trying to solve meaningful problems. Coming after his long tenure on Shark Tank, the project puts Cuban back in familiar territory—entrepreneurship—but approaches it from a noticeably different direction.
Mark Cuban is returning to TV with a new series
Mark Cuban’s Role in How to Change the World
Cuban serves as one of the series’ executive producers alongside Rostam Zafari, Dylan Mulick, Geralyn Dreyfous, Gotham Chopra and Victor Buhler. His involvement is particularly fitting. Although millions of viewers know Cuban from Shark Tank, his career has been defined by repeatedly looking at established industries and asking whether there is a better way to do things. That instinct goes back to his earliest technology ventures. Cuban built MicroSolutions before selling it to CompuServe and later co-founded Broadcast.com, helping pioneer internet audio and video streaming years before streaming became part of everyday life. Yahoo! acquired Broadcast.com in 1999, making Cuban one of the defining entrepreneurs of the early internet era. He later applied an equally unconventional approach to professional sports after purchasing the Dallas Mavericks, emphasizing technology, fan experience, organizational culture and customer service as he helped transform the franchise into an NBA champion. More recently, Cuban has turned much of his attention toward healthcare through the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company, challenging traditional prescription-drug pricing with a business model built around greater transparency and lower costs. The industries change, but the pattern is remarkably consistent: identify something that isn’t working particularly well, question the assumptions behind it and determine whether a different business model can produce a better result. That philosophy fits naturally with How to Change the World.
What If Success Isn’t Just About the Exit?
For years, the language surrounding entrepreneurship has celebrated scale. How quickly is the company growing? How much capital has it raised? What’s the valuation? Can it become a unicorn? What will investors make when it is acquired or goes public? Those are legitimate measures of business performance. How to Change the World isn’t arguing that companies should ignore them. A business that cannot sustain itself financially will have difficulty sustaining its impact either. But the series adds another question to the equation: What changed because this company existed? That can mean rebuilding coral reefs, creating economic opportunities, reducing violence, expanding renewable energy or developing an entirely new approach to an entrenched problem. It is a subtle but important shift. Profit and purpose don’t necessarily have to compete with one another. Entrepreneurship can create financial value while also solving problems that matter. And that may be particularly relevant to a generation of entrepreneurs and employees increasingly interested not only in what organizations sell, but also in what those organizations contribute. Cuban’s involvement in How to Change the World reflects a broader way of thinking about entrepreneurship—one that doesn’t abandon traditional measures of business performance, but expands the scorecard to include the problems a company solves and the impact it creates.
Business Leaders Join the Conversation
The series broadens that discussion by bringing in perspectives from some of the most recognizable voices in business, investing, culture and public service. Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz appears in the series, as does NYU Stern professor and entrepreneur Scott Galloway. Other contributors include Acumen founder Jacqueline Novogratz, Our Place co-founder Shiza Shahid, climber and philanthropist Alex Honnold, Humans of New York creator Brandon Stanton, former White House chef Sam Kass and former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. Their inclusion helps prevent How to Change the World from becoming a simple collection of inspirational founder stories. Instead, the series places those stories within a broader discussion about capital, leadership, ownership, innovation and what businesses owe to the communities in which they operate.
Watch: How to Change the World Official Trailer
The official trailer offers a broader look at the founders, communities and challenges featured throughout the 10-part series. Rather than focusing on celebrity entrepreneurs or billion-dollar valuations, the series gives cinematic attention to people attempting to build sustainable solutions to difficult real-world problems.
How To Change The World: Season 1 | Official Trailer | World Within Studios (2026)
Why This Conversation Is Particularly Timely
The series arrives at an interesting moment for business leaders. Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing how organizations operate. Entire industries are being disrupted. Employees are reconsidering what they expect from employers. Consumers have unprecedented access to information about the companies they support. At the same time, leaders are being asked to balance growth, innovation, technological transformation, workforce expectations and social responsibility. That creates an environment in which the old definition of successful leadership can feel incomplete. A company may be profitable and still fail to adapt. It may innovate technologically while solving the wrong problem. It may grow quickly without creating lasting value for customers or communities. The entrepreneurs featured in How to Change the World offer another model: begin with a problem worth solving and then determine how innovation, capital and entrepreneurship can be used to address it. That’s not philanthropy disguised as business. In many cases, it is simply entrepreneurship applied to problems that have traditionally been considered too difficult, too complicated or insufficiently profitable to solve.
Mark Cuban Is Putting That Philosophy Into Practice
Cuban’s current work in healthcare provides a useful real-world example. Through Cost Plus Drugs, he has focused on a notoriously complex industry by asking an unusually straightforward question: why can’t consumers know what prescription drugs actually cost? That approach reflects the same problem-solving mentality at the center of How to Change the World. Rather than accepting an established system simply because it is established, Cuban has argued for greater transparency, competition and accountability. In September, he also participated in a series of discussions examining the City of Dallas health plan, focusing on healthcare spending, claims transparency, contracts and whether employers have enough information to understand where their healthcare dollars are actually going. The specific issue is different from the entrepreneurs featured in the documentary, but the underlying mindset is similar: look closely at a complicated system, identify where it isn’t working and ask whether there is a better way to build it. That may be one of the most useful lessons for business leaders watching the series. Innovation doesn’t always begin with a breakthrough technology. Sometimes it begins with refusing to accept that a familiar problem is unsolvable.
From Shark Tank to How to Change the World
There is also something fitting about Cuban’s involvement in this particular project after concluding his long run on Shark Tank. On Shark Tank, Cuban became famous for rapidly evaluating entrepreneurs. Did they understand their numbers? Did customers actually want the product? Was there a competitive advantage? Could the business scale? Was the founder someone he wanted to work with? Those questions still matter. How to Change the World adds another one: If the business succeeds, who benefits? It represents a broader way of thinking about entrepreneurship without abandoning the fundamentals that make businesses sustainable in the first place. The most interesting entrepreneurs may increasingly be those capable of doing both—building organizations that perform financially while creating products, services and solutions that leave something better behind.
What Mark Cuban Brings to Business Audiences
As a keynote speaker and fireside-chat guest, Mark Cuban brings decades of firsthand experience identifying disruption before it becomes obvious. His perspective spans entrepreneurship, artificial intelligence, healthcare, technology, investing, sales, marketing, customer experience, professional sports and organizational leadership. But the thread connecting those subjects is his willingness to question conventional thinking and look for opportunities hidden inside industries undergoing change. That perspective is particularly relevant now. Executives are trying to understand how AI will reshape their companies, where innovation should be prioritized, how quickly organizations should move and which assumptions about their industries may no longer be true. Cuban’s career offers an important reminder: disruption rarely waits until everyone agrees that change is necessary. Leaders have to recognize it early enough to do something about it. And as How to Change the World demonstrates, the next generation of entrepreneurial opportunity may not simply come from creating the next enormous market. It may come from recognizing enormous problems that are still waiting for someone to solve them.
A Broader Definition of Winning
Mark Cuban has spent much of his career talking about winning—winning customers, winning markets, building competitive advantages and outworking the competition. How to Change the World doesn’t reject that competitive mindset. Instead, it expands what winning can mean. A successful entrepreneur still needs customers. A company still needs revenue. Innovation still has to work in the real world. But perhaps the final scorecard can include something else: whether the organization made a meaningful difference because someone was willing to build it. For today’s leaders, that may be one of the most important ideas in the series. Purpose doesn’t have to replace performance. The challenge is finding ways for the two to reinforce one another.
Book Mark Cuban for Your Next Event
Mark Cuban brings audiences a rare combination of entrepreneurial experience, technological foresight, candid business insight and firsthand experience disrupting established industries. From pioneering internet streaming and transforming the Dallas Mavericks to investing in entrepreneurs, challenging prescription-drug pricing and exploring the possibilities of artificial intelligence, Cuban has repeatedly demonstrated what can happen when leaders question assumptions others take for granted.
Mark Cuban can be booked through Speakers.com for select corporate events, leadership conferences, association meetings, executive programs, keynote presentations and fireside conversations. His perspective on entrepreneurship, AI, innovation, disruption and the future of business gives organizations an opportunity to hear directly from one of the most recognizable and unconventional business leaders of his generation. Contact Speakers.com to check Mark Cuban’s current speaking fee, availability and booking information for your upcoming event.
