Ice Cube's Big3 basketball league files for SPAC to fund global expansion and new teams

classes, automate anything with AI agents, run trading strategies, risk management, money movements, and monitor markets with AI agents for investing on public. Our next guest is Ice Cube, the co-founder and CEO of Big Three. Welcome to the show, Cube. How are you doing?

Pretty good. How you doing?

We're doing fantastically. Thank you so much for taking the time. Um, get us up to speed on big three. Can you take us back in time? How did this get started?

Um, just as a fan wanted more basketball,

I missed I missed Kobe's last game. He scored 60 points.

I wasn't there. I was a little uh, you know, po because I wasn't there. M

so um I was like man it's it's a shame that there's nowhere else for this guy where I could see this guy play

and why and looking around there's nothing there no other pro um basketball you know

is around the world but not in the United States and so um and and and then you know being at the time 47 years going through 47 summers between basketball and NFL. You know, I used to have a I used to hibernate.

So,

you're like, I'm not I can't do this again. No baseball.

I don't have I don't have another summer in me.

And there's got to be millions of people out there just like me.

Yeah.

Uh that needs more hoops after the finals. You know, we have the we have the finals hangover. We we just we need more and um we found like a void in the industry because three on three was sitting there like

why isn't it professionalized? We looked at what FEA was doing

and it was very amateurish and we was like we can do 10 times 100 times better than what they doing with the game of three on three. And so me and uh my partner Jeff Quantinance,

we um we we just tried to figure out we spent a year trying to figure out how to professionalized three on three.

So what was the first step? Was it you built a deck? You made some phone calls. Are you calling athletes or investors or uh stadiums or locations? Like what's the sequence of events to actually get this off the ground? I mean, the first step was uh coming up with cool rules that were cooler than

what you see in three on three. And why, you know, why was the FIA game, why did it feel so like a backyard playground game

when we're trying to create a pro sport?

Yeah. So, um, it was just to build a better mousetrap, so to speak, and make our game, uh, more fun to play and fun to watch to make it bite-size where you can watch a big three game in a in an hour

where, you know, most games are three hours. So, those kind of things, uh, making a game faster. Uh, so rules was and we argued, you know, back and forth on, you know, the intricacy of the rules and and how we going to make our game, you know, great for the public to watch.

What was the most contentious rule or or what rule were you when you found it, you were like, "This is the secret. This is the rule that's going to that's going to make it work."

First to 50 win.

Yeah. meaning this was a sprint. No garbage minutes because there are minutes and and you know there's a 14 second shot clock though. So

you can't play around with the ball. You got to get a shot up.

Yeah.

So those rules that was to me every game

there's a winning shot.

Yeah.

You know there's always a game-winning shot in every big three game. And so to eliminate the clock was to eliminate lazy play and people just watching the clock. Oh, we got a big lead. Let the game let the time run out. No, you have to score 50 points. So, it's a allout sprint to the finish line.

Yeah. How did you think about uh marketing promotion of the league? obviously of deep roots in media broadly, but uh what did you think was going to be the key to raising awareness, getting attendance up, getting distribution in the modern era or through traditional channels?

I mean, we looked at a lot of leagues and you know what what fueled them? Uh you know, we we had to look at Vince McMahon.

Um Dana White.

Yeah. um leagues that had personalities that could, you know, evangelize the league to the public and and and show the public why they should be interested in professional three on three. and yours truly was the guy, you know, um passionate guy and

founder

have built up, you know, um decades of credibility

of, you know, I'm not going to steer you wrong when it comes to, you know, hopefully music and and movies and the things that I say are cool.

Usually, you know, people agree. So, um, you know, we had that and then it was, um, connecting with the history of basketball. You know, some of the greatest names, Dr. J been with the league 10 years. Clyde Drexler been with the league 10 years. Um, uh, Iceman, George Gervin just retired, but he was with the league eight years. Now he's in the front office in our Detroit franchise. Uh Gary Payeyton been with the league 10 years. Nancy Lieberman um eight years. Uh so it's been, you know, connecting with those great uh basketball greatness and having them endorse what we're doing, overseeing what we're doing, making sure we're doing it the right way so the athletes are um taken care of and you know, everybody's happy. coaches. Um, we want everybody to have fun with the big three and and make it an enjoyable experience.

How are you attracting new talent, new athletes? Because I can imagine if uh somebody who's in the NBA sees you calling, they're going to pick up, but uh at the same time, they might say, "Hey, I got a couple more years in me. I'm I'm not ready to move on." Uh what what has it been like building the talent pipeline? What's been, you know, awesome, we've had some of the greatest players to ever play the game come through our league. You know, far as first round picks, um, all stars, champions, you know, even Hall of Famers, you know, when you look at, you know, people like, uh, Allan Iverson playing in the big three. So, you know, we don't have a problem attracting the talent. The thing is, you know, we want to offer more. We we we have eight teams. We need to expand that. We need 12 teams. We need 16 20 teams. You know, we always have a pool of players who, you know, want to play in the big three but can't because it's a numbers game. So this is this is what you know you know this IPO is going to allow us to do is expand and to really um you know grow and have a bigger footprint which is more attractive to sponsors. Y

um you know what's holding us back is we only got 10 games. You know if we had 20 games or 25 like the NFL you know we could really expand um you know our sponsors. you know what we can offer to, you know, a platform broadcaster, media deals, you know, we just got to offer more of this good stuff.

Yeah. So, yeah. What else are you using the capital for as you scale the business? Are cities uh receptive to bringing new teams to town? Is it is it easy to get up and running if you have the if you have the the the capital to go and do a new team in a new city?

Without a doubt. you know, it's pretty turnkey cuz we owned all the teams. Yeah.

For so long, even 12, you know, so we were able to make that work. And,

you know, we're able to, you know, get new owners, you know, and and kind of walk them through and and help them get up to speed and then let them take over. Cities have been extremely receptive everywhere we go. They want the big three. You know, we've been to London, we've been to Toronto. You know, we see this as a global league. We want teams in London and Toronto, Mexico City, Puerto Rico. You know, we see this as not just, you know, stuck in the US, but uh we can expand um the league.

So, um sky's the limit. You know, we we want to shore up. We've been a lean and mean uh league, which has been great because we've been cost effective with how we operate, but we want to, you know, hire the best people to help us shore up the foundation of the league and, you know, really work on the growth of the league. uh you know we we talking some smart pe talking to some very smart people across the board and they're just in the wings waiting u for the opportunity to help us you know kind of exploit and take out the opportunities that's out there. Look, if you look at this, we can own three on three all over the world. Not only just at the pro level, but the youth level and have the playing three on three all over the world. Big three rules, big three colors, and the public can help us do it. It's an amazing opportunity.

Yeah.

Uh yeah. How what what's the team like today? You're

slated for a spa. Mhm.

Uh are you uh are you excited for the public markets for your first earnings call?

I am. Uh it's really about giving people who love sports and a unique opportunity that don't come around. You know, it's a once in a-lifetime thing. You know, if you look at the history of sports, it's been an exclusive club.

Yeah.

Uh and you got to be part of the club to get in. you know, here you just gota, you know, want to be part of the league in a bigger way than just buying merch or watching the game or, you know, you want to be part of the growth of the league and and participate on the upside when when we do, you know, uh start rolling downhill. Yeah.

Um if you look around,

nobody else is emerging. Nobody else has, you know, nine seasons proven that we have a great fan base and this works. We just got to add some fuel to the fire. Uh building that fan base. How important is it that uh players have personal social media presences? We were talking to Eli Manning about the the the intense pressure of young rookies in the NFL to start a podcast or start doing media or be in movies. You've obviously been in entertainment for years. Uh I'm interested in how you're talking to players about grappling those tradeoffs. Is there is there because of the nature of the league, is there more flexibility to go and build your own fan base and then bring them along for the ride?

Without a doubt. You know, when we set to build the big three in 2016,

Yeah.

we wanted to do things better than the other leagues. you know, the other leagues, they lean into their sports, but you know, music and culture, you know, kind of is is is kind of like a byproduct.

Yeah.

But here it's the perfect intersection. You know, there's sports, which we take extremely serious, the game,

but we also understand that there's culture, um, music, and this is an intersection of that. Mhm.

Uh so we want to do we want to have more fun than the other leagues. We want our fans to have more fun.

Yeah.

With the gang.

Um and so we want to do things a little different. We want to create more of a festival, more of an interactive uh experience with the fans and the and the uh players and the coaches.

Yeah.

Um and we want to do things that like I said, other leagues are not doing. You know, there's nothing stopping us

from doing

last year.

I want you to be really honest with me. So, John is 6'8,

never had a run in basketball, but I'm wondering if if there's a way that he could walk on. If there's way

Yeah. What does it take to

What does it What does it actually What does it actually take? He's got

Are there open triyouts?

He's got at least at least, you know, a few thousand people that really want to see him ball

for sure. Um,

any way he could walk on? Maybe like a celeb shot.

Well, you know, we definitely can have him in our celebrity game.

Okay.

You know, there might be better to do a podcast or game.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. We can get Rogan in there.

No, we we have a If you invited to our combine, you know, I know some people that might can get you in there.

Okay. I'm not even Yeah, I'm not really asking for like, you know, an easy way in. I just want him to have a chance. I think he has what it takes to be a I think

it's not easy. No,

getting to the, you know, going through the combine, you know, you got over a hundred

guys, you know, maybe 120 guys going for like 23 spots. So,

and they and they've mostly played basketball before, unlike me.

Definitely. You know, they played all over the world. I think I'll be at a disadvantage.

They played all over the world. Yeah, you need to come. Just come, you know, kick it with me on the front row.

Yeah, I think I'll be in the stands. Actually, now that I think about it, that's probably my owner.

My ideal an owner might be more suited for me.

Yes. Yes.

But, uh, it'd be fun. It'd be fun. Um, I I you mentioned sponsors. You mentioned the the revenue ramp. I'm interested in how you've been, uh, thinking about prediction markets, betting sites. We saw last year like every league was sort of are they going Khi, are they going Poly Market, DraftKings? Have you solved that puzzle? Are you still thinking about bringing uh those markets into the league in some way? Is there demand for that? How have you how have you personally sort of grappled with the last year of like the rise of prediction markets? Yeah, I mean we uh we've been talking to them all seeing which one is ready to be, you know, a real partner with the big three. You know, you can you can definitely uh

you know, I guess gamble on on those sites or or have fun those sites with the big three, but we want to, you know, be a part of it um in some way, shape or form. Uh but it got to be the right partner and the right commitment.

Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Jordy, do you have anything else?

No, this was great.

Yeah, this is fantastic. Very cool journey. Congrats on the on the progress the the the S4 filing and the Spack merger with Graph Global Group. Uh I'm sure it'll be a a huge a huge run ahead of you. I mean, amazing

public company CEO,

multiple, you know, years and years of hard work to get here. Years and years of hard work ahead of you, but we're extremely optimistic.

Do yourself a favor. Yeah.

Buy to O N T. Okay, thank you. Thank you.

Not financial advice though.

Not financial advice.

Have a great one. We'll talk to you soon.

See you.

Have a good one. Goodbye.

You know, more startup founders should do that. You know, you get somebody coming on from a data bricks or a a base 10. They should say just throw out the ticker, throw out the invest in the private markets. Why not? Why not? Uh um there there's some more uh there's a debate about this cyber security news. The Pentagon is treating a rash of freezer malfunctions that affected refrigeration and freezer units at commissaries that serve several US military bases in August as a suspected cyber attack. People are saying IoT was a mistake all along. A lot of people are just asking the question like how are the refrigerators connected to the internet at all? That's sort of crazy. Of course, you might want to see the the the system like is like I want an alert on my phone if the uh refrigerator is not at the right temperature. So, uh officials said that they've been in touch with French counterparts about a similar attack that hit more than 350 French supermarkets this uh earlier this month uh on a at least six on base commissaries were affected in late August per Reuters review of the base's social media posts. In at least one case, the cooling unit's temperatures were raised overnight rep reporting in resulting in spoiled food. Could be script kitty could be a a true cyber attack from a geopolitical rival. Uh crazy crazy times. But overall, I was listening to Sam Alman on Cheeky Pint this morning and uh he said he was uh he was he was sort of pleasantly surprised by the progress around uh the PHP exploit and the fact that the industry responded so quickly and so effectively. Uh what do you think, Jordy? What are you laughing at? GR says, "But John, my refrigerator needs Wi-Fi cameras and a two terbte a month data usage limit."

You got to be able to tweet from it for sure. Now, return to the the old thing, the ice box. You want the You want the gentleman stopping by in a in a gas powered vehicle to deliver you a cube of ice that you will use to refrigerate your milk. Maybe there'll be a comeback in Milkman. Maybe that's maybe that's what happens here. Uh did you see that uh Wheel Gotchell and Man I don't I don't actually I'm not familiar with this firm but a very large wall uh law firm it's gone bankrupt.

It's on the cover of the Wall Street Journal. Yes, I saw it. Uh

can you pronounce it?

Storied law firm we'll go Shawl to close. I just kind of steamrolled that one. Let's see. Um

uh Turner Novak says, "I'm genuinely curious. How does a law firm go bankrupt? They literally just sit at computers and charge people 1 to 10,000 per hour to do things that AI is now automating. No offense at all. There's a lot of expertise required to do this. How does that not print money? John Woo followed up and said, "It's confusing why a multi- a major multi-billion dollar uh law firm is going bankrupt. So I talked to a bunch of lawyer friends about why we could suddenly be insolvent. Unintuitively, law firms are basically fixed cost businesses. Revenue comes from a concentrated core group of rain makers. Let's give it up for rain makers. Those rain makers carry the whole business while the rest of the business basically drags a word I'm not going to say. Junior partners are rain makers in training. They can't yet bring in huge loadbearing dollars. Interesting uh placement of loadbearing. Um everyone else associates back of back office staff com uh comprises one gigantic fixed cost center. Not to mention basic overhead like offices, revolver, interest, etc. The problem with law firms in particular as opposed to other advisory businesses like banking, consulting, accounting is that the clients are inherently portable. So any partner can take their team and clients and leave. Doing so deleverages the rest of the partnership because a small number of partners carry most of the revenue while leaving behind fixed costs. Once there's a crisis of confidence, it no longer makes sense for partners to stay because they're now getting underpaid in profit share relative to their revenue potential. If they were to leave for a mega firm like Kirkland, they'd be properly compensated for their earning potential instead of being saddled by rising fixed costs as a percent of revenue. There's not much IP or brand moat in a law firm. Clients follow partners and the process of crafting exceptional judgment is mostly in partners' heads. And lastly, the partners are the equity in the firm. Law firms have no terminal value. So when the partners leave, it's as if a huge chunk of the firm equity walks out the door. TLDDR law firm bankruptcy is basically a crisis of partner confidence and the resulting departure spiral saddles anyone remaining with the gigantic fixed overheads of running a billion dollar business. So

good.

To be clear, this is not a bankruptcy. I think that I think that's why there's a lot of confusion on the timeline about this. They're just winding down the operations. It's more akin to like a a venture capital firm not raising the next fund. It's not that they went bankrupt and uh had some sort of you know balance sheet issue. It's just that they don't want to continue with the current firm structure. Those lawyers will diffuse to other firms, start their own practices, do all sorts of stuff. But uh it's not it's not bankruptcy like they're not going they're winding down the firm. uh which is still surprising like it's on the front page of the Wall Street Journal,

but they're working with uh restructurings.

Yes. But that's but that's not it's not bankruptcy. It's like it's like every partner has a different stake on the equity. There is value there and how you decide where that goes. That's the that's why you bring in a restructuring firm. Uh it's not that it's like in the hands of creditors like the the I believe the partners will own the the assets. Uh I would be very surprised if it's like their I mean I don't know. Amend and pretend says great succession planning by the greedy boomers

just shut down. What does that mean?

No, I mean like you know one read on this is that uh the the the

the partners the rain makers

like the the the sort of legacy partnership probably had a ton of exposure still.

Yeah.

And um if you're a rain maker and you feel like you're saddled with all of these

um legacy basically owners of the firm, it make it could make a lot of sense to bounce.

Yeah. I mean that happens all the time in in hedge funds

and and this is happening real time with like

various venture firms where you have young partners that are that have effectively been retired that are still

and they might pull out millions and millions of dollars every every year in uh in fees and that fee stream is not exactly being handed over to the next generation on any short uh time scale. So the great uh the great investors are moving on and starting their own firms. Um, what else is in the timeline? Let me tell you about Figma. Agents, meet the canvas. Your AI agents can now create and modify your Figma files with design system context. Um,

we got to talk about uh Snowflake. Oh, yeah. And bricks.

Uh,

what's going on?

Pretty crazy exchange.

We've had both of these folks on the show. Um, so, uh, Ben Horowitz posted something about, uh, just a blog post about Data Bricks. Data Bricks is, uh, an incredible company. Obviously, Lee is just is

future Hall of Famer, hands down.

He basically said, "My boy wicked smart."

That's what he said.

Um, and uh, Shridar says, "Release all the numbers. Does 80% year-over-year become 65% when you remove pass through inference? What does it become when you remove AI natives? And how much of of it is from one-time software license versus a service transition?

Uh ask for a bunch of other metrics. Curious people want to know. PS. Oi, happy for your success. The world is big and lifelong. Um and of course, so so basically

I wish I was private.

Yeah. So, uh data bricks has the benefit. Yeah. Data Data Bricks is an incredible business and has the benefit of being able to selectively release numbers and not doesn't have to report things quarterly.

They don't have to release any numbers leaks. They don't have to release anything. They're probably saying leaking. Yeah. Yeah.

Um and uh yeah uh

Shar is is is I think probably genuinely curious, right?

Totally. Yeah. It's actually good point.

There there's part of that, but it but it came across as um

Yeah. as uh you know antagonistic you that's definitely one way to put it. Ali responds and that and says I don't think we should fight the two companies are complimentary since you're not doing this AI stuff. Shots fired. I really think Snowflake should consider getting its AI tokens through data bricks. You can get both cheap open source models as well as Frontier from our platform. It all goes through Unity Gateway which has smart routing budgets and access turning it into an app. Uh you can even use Omnigen which with any harness including Coco which is Snowflake's harness. Most of our customers use this to reduce token spend 30%.

Yeah.

Last few months while token count went up. Genie lets you then track manage that spend all your financial.

This is so elite. This is so elite. If you're if you're in a little uh a little spat on the old Twitter, get Salon. Uh I love it. Uh, but I think you are right about your take that he's like just genuinely curious because Snowflake is at almost all-time highs. It's a $15 billion company. It's not down over the last week. It's not down over the last month. It's doing fantastically. It actually rebounded very very significantly since uh like mid last year. And so uh the business has been doing fantastically. The low was was uh $120 a share April 10th of this year. It's up at $320 a share. So, every once in a while you will see a a private markets company lamenting what's going on in the public markets or vice versa and it's kind of motivated by uh the the the valuation shifts that are happening in one or the other. This doesn't feel like that. But it is funny that Holly is just pitching. I love it. Uh anything else on this? Yeah. I mean, I thought I thought for for people wanting this to be a Drake versus Kendrick, this was relatively tame and

Yeah, it could have gotten a lot dirtier. They could have taken the gloves off, throw them down, start fighting. But uh oh well, maybe next time we can

Goodart says, "Generous. I was asking