“It’s easy to write about what the government or other people should do with our/their money,” says entrepreneur Mark Cuban. But it’s harder to come up with your own course of action. Cuban’s new economic stimulus plan is to fund promising business plans posted to an “open source funding environment.”
While many people object to publicly sharing their business plan, Cuban’s idea is not just to help one business owner, but to help the economy. Good ideas would be replicated or even improved on, said Cuban, but winners of his funding would have a head start. Cuban (owner of the Dallas Mavericks and Chairman of HDNet) was also not too worried about plans being shared, knowing that businesses success is mostly driven by sweat equity: “those willing to make the effort will be the real winners.”
The initial 1,400 comments confirmed two of his long-held beliefs of those who are or would be entrepreneurs: 1) “95% of people are dreamers who really don’t want to do the work,” and 2) “…the American Dream is still alive and well, even in these tough economic times.”
See the rules for posting your idea to The Mark Cuban Stimulus Plan, the innovations ideas posted so far, and the four current winners.
March 12th, 2009 at 9:45 pm
Excellent idea with promise, similar to that of Richard Branson’s small business lending initiative but with a focus on technological delivery. The idea takes traditional free market function and applies the latest technology; similar to Ebay.
In the past capital had to intelligently and personally managed to be preserved. The rise of the government debt market, along with heavily regulated and promoted big banking, negated this necessity for individual investors. It’s time for investor to put effort into their investments and do their home work, and ideas like this could help immensely to bring about economic recovery.
April 5th, 2009 at 1:33 am
The Open Source model, once derided by the likes of Microsoft’s founder as anti-American and anti-business, seems to be showing up everywhere.
First they ridicule you, then ….