Meet the Genius Who Convinced Mark Cuban to Sell Drugs

When Mark Cuban announced the creation of the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company, it really did change things for a lot of people—you can regularly log on to Twitter and see people telling Cuban about how a drug that once cost them hundreds or thousands for each refill is now a more manageable price.  But I don’t think anyone had really gotten to know the company’s CEO, Dr. Alex Oshmyansky, until Will Maddox profiled him for our October issue.   It turns out, he’s actually a genius, and at first his school thought he needed special-needs classes, but it turned out he just understood Russian more than English, and he was actually really good at math. Really good. Will’s story looks at what happened between elementary school and CEO, and how the company came to be.   “It took three interviews with Dr. Alex Oshymasky until he mentioned, offhandedly, that he started college when he was 13,” Will says. “I had asked him about his background and knew a bit about his professional life before he became CEO of the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company, but this little biographical nugget sidetracked the entire interview and fundamentally changed how I viewed his story.”   Read more