4. It must be profitable within 90 days.
5. Funding will be on a monthly basis. If you dont make your numbers, the funding stops
If these are true, unless you're completely poverty-stricken, why whould you need Mark Cuban? Perhaps we're talking large scale investments, but the whole emphasis on "sweat equity" suggests not.
11. If you do get money, it goes into a bank that I specify, and I have the ability to watch the funds flow and the opportunity to require that I cosign any outflows.
I'm reading this article as "if you can build a successful business in 90 days, I'll give you some cash, and then it's mine....sucker."
From the hip, I'd say it's a helluva PR opportunity, a chance to be in business with Mark Cuban (which some folks might really value), and would allow you to take a bit more of a risk than you otherwise might be able to.
Like YCombinator, I'd imagine selling him a bit of equity would increase your shot at success.
You can probably get a better deal from the SBA.
Sure, if you have a couple of billion lying around it is easy to tell other people how to solve their problems. But unlike say Warren Buffet I've yet to see him do something that commanded my respect.
I'd challenge Mark Cuban to follow his own plan, pretend he's broke for 60 days and then show that by his own measure he can make it work.
If he succeeds with that he'll definitely have me take him serious again, but I doubt he could and until that happens this is just another "I'm rich therefore I blog" addition to the S/N ratio.
Before Broadcast.com, he started a computer company (MicroSolutions) and ran a very successful hedge fund. After Broadcast.com, he bought the Mavs, started HD Net, formed a charity (Fallen Patriot Fund), actively invests as an angel and cofounded numerous movie production & distribution companies.
Broadcast.com was certainly lucky, but Cuban was already a millionaire long before becoming a billionaire.
He may be one of them.
He invested/owns/owned: IceRocket, RedSwoosh (which sold to Akami), Weblogs, Inc (sold to AOL) and the Dallas Mavericks.
I think he has proven himself.
It's just that Mark Cuban seems to attribute most of his wealth to Mark Cuban and a very small %age of it to luck whereas it most likely is the other way around.
Buying services, i.e outsourcing much of the work, is just a way around the no employees rule. Labour cost is probably the biggest chunk of most growing software startups' cost and that's excluded.
My conclusion is that it needs to a be rights based business. Buy rights to something, add value quickly, and resell the results.
In any case, I think the reason for his posting is just to get people moving. It certainly made me feel pumped up about the idea I got this morning!