Mark Cuban - owner of the Dallas Mavericks, venture capitalist, serial entrepreneur and now angel investor has gone out on a limb and introduced a concept he calls “open source funding”. I REALLY love the idea. He wants to see all pitches that meet 13 basic criteria that he has drafted under one condition: you have to publicly post your business plan on his blog or put it up on slideshare or Google docs and link to it from a comment on his blog. Either way, Mark wants the “world” to see peoples business plans and he clearly points out that if HE isn’t interested in it, someone else who is reading might be.
When I first saw Mark’s post a few days ago there were already over 600 comments. Today the comments have climbed to over 1200. If you skim the comments; all are not pitches, some are critisims of Mark for 1) not being interested in seeing deals where revenue is from ads and 2) asking people to post business plans or ideas publicly instead of sending them in email.
I respect Mark for sticking to these two criteria because I agree that revenue from ads is a very tough business to actually make work without extremely viral, original and frequent content. Secondly, you can tell that Mark thinks ideas are free without execution; a point I’ve written about a few times and totally agree with. Most people worry about somebody stealing their idea, but I say who cares, it doesn’t matter. If you really are passionate about something then you need to execute on the idea instead of telling Mark Cuban that “I’ve been thinking about doing X for a couple of years”. I can tell you this…the probability of Mark Cuban or any other angel guy trading you cash for equity on a deal that you have been executing is much greater than them giving you cash for equity on “an idea”.
- Entrepreneur Rant - Wannabe entrepreneurs (WEs); please understand that you have no skin in the game until you actually do something…execute on your idea, and then you can get someones attention if you need help. Without any execution WEs have 0 leverage with angels, VCs, Mark Cuban, your rich uncle or whoever is assuming all of the risk in your deal. No one owes you anything. By executing on your idea you will start to learn so much about what is right and wrong with your idea. You will get valuable feedback from your users/customers. If you still need cash to grow, take your questions and challenges to an angel guy then and watch their interests perk. That’s almost guarunteed to get you a meeting (at least an email) as long as your deal is in their sweet spot. I realize angels and VCs go in on deals that are at the paper and spreadsheets phase, but my rant is to help entrepreneurs increase their chances of closing a round by bringing angels and VCs real problems instead of theory and ideas. You gain leverage (value) as an entrepreneur by trying to prove your business idea, not by wishing someone with cash would take a chance on you. - End Entrepreneur Rant-
I’ve said this all before, and got off topic in the rant, but my point is that we absolutely need more Mark Cubans during this economic shit storm. Two posts that you should go read right now along the same topic are Fred Wilson’s post on When Greed is Good and Howard Lindzon’s rumor post on Twitter filing for an IPO. Both are solid reads beyond these two posts. Fred and Howard know what they are talking about and have the portfolios to prove it. It’s nice to have guys like them be so transparent with their business; it helps me in running mine, and I’m sure others feel the same way.
Hustle and momentum are words I’ve been thinking so much about lately as I start to gain some traction in a few areas of my life.
Hustle is a word that as a child I heard from my coaches on the baseball field; even through high school our coaches taught hustle.
I liked to always think about it as getting your ass in gear….get there, make the play, stretch a double into a triple, coming back from a 3-0 count and striking the batter out, making plays when they aren’t there, not letting failure be an option…etc
Momentum is the product of mass and velocity. It has direction and magnitude.
You automatically have momentum when you hustle.
I really wish hustle and momentum were taught at a young age as they relate to life. Some kids probably get taught some form of it; but I don’t think near enough kids do. There should be hustle and momentum class all the way through high school that teaches going after what you want in life and not sitting back and taking what it gives you.
Everyday I appreciate these two words more and more as I understand and see the impact they can have in someone’s life. Hustle and momentum put things within reach; they make things real, they eventually provide.
I beleive that the amount of hustle in each one of us is directly related to what we have today and what we want tomorrow. I think in many cases if what we have today is too big….there might not ever be much hustle. Why? Because what we have provides enough comfort to not let our hustle kick in to get what we really want.
This isn’t true in all cases; some people have a lot; but their wants are so much greater that what they will ever have that hustle becomes their life.
I think hustle has to be your life to really be successful in business. Bottom line.
I’m not talking about just making it; I’m talking about killing it. To kill it, you have to hustle.
Once you understand hustle; and are determined to win; you must gain and sustain momentum. It’s so crucial to sustain once you have the slightest bit of traction. It can make or break you.
Opportunities are all around us; they are everywhere. The question is, what do you want? If you had that figured out, I doubt you would be reading this. Most of the people who would ever read this are full of ideas and hungry for something; but do they really know what that something is?
If you had one thing that you could hustle for the next 5 days, what would it be? Could you write it in 140 characters or less a la Twitter style? If not, you probably aren’t hungry enough yet.
Am I hungry enough yet? I’m getting there very quickly. I’m there.
The reality is that the world is just as full of distractions that it is opportunities. These distrations add little or no value at all to your life, much less your goals or what you are hungry for. Make concious efforts to eliminate distractions from your life and focus on opportunities.
Take care of you and yours; no one else is going to.
Guy Kawasaki tells us all how he wants to be pitched. I love how he calls BS on so much. This is good to watch if you will ever be looking for capital for your startup.
You’re probably only interested in these if you are into tech startups. A friend passed me this link to a series of “Startup School” videos which was hosted at Stanford.
My favorites were David Heinemeier Hansson who is a founder at 37Signals and also Mark Andreesson who founded Netscape and Ning.
Here is the Hansson video, but you can see all the others there too.
I feel the urge to share a really basic concept that works.
If you have ever thought that it might be fun to make a run at an idea or concept on your own; trust me, I know, there are a million things running through your mind….
Most common are how and where do I start? Regardless of your idea, I bet I’m right here.
Here are 5 quick ways to get things moving that all focus on one concept.
START NETWORKING TODAY
1. Find people that are working and doing things in the niche that you are interested in and offer to buy them a coffee or lunch. Tell them that you know that their free time is limited, but you have some ideas that you would like to run by them for 15 minutes. You will be surprised. They might ask you for a short statement to expand via email, but this is good, it shows interest. Just be ready when they ask. Close with “where do you want to meet for lunch”
2. Google this phrase “-insert your city name here- small business”. More than likely the first 10 results that Google returns are good resources for you to dig in on. If not, click the ‘Next’ link at the bottom of the page, some haven’t figured out SEO yet. :)
3. Use social networks like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc to start finding groups of people interested in the same things that you are.
4. Start a blog and write about your ideas. It’s free. Tumblr, Wordpress, Blogger are all options. Also, start participating on blogs that you are interested in. No random shallow link baiting crap either…add some value to the conversation.
5. Realize that you are not the only one in the world with ideas and aspirations to do something, and that acting on your instincts will quickly separate you from the masses.
In a web startup this translates to ‘Release Early, Release Often’, meaning - get something out there that you can alpha and that your investors can see. It’s important not to focus on perfection early; being perfect early can bite you in the ass.
Remember to have fun along the way. It’s all a bit overwhelming, but my definition of entrepreneur is doing something that you are passionate about and have fun with.
Hope this helps. Feel free to light up the comments.
