Comments on: I Take Issue with Mark Cuban’s Open Source Funding Plan

By: John P.

John P. — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 05:08:01 +0000

Absolutely Aaron. He is asking people to literally “open source” their entire plan. He wants all the details put out in public. If you were to put an idea out in the public domain and label it as “open source”, it means that I’m free to run with it as well.

Now, I’m not including things which are so complex and brilliant that they take time to really develop because the 3 months to profitability rule really excludes that sort of stuff right off the bat.

But let’s say that we had an idea for a cheap, easy to produce widget that we could make money on immediately. Well, if it’s that quick and easy, it means that anyone else reading that post could do it too. And if they did, you’d have absolutely no defense against it because you literally “open sourced” the idea.

Make sense?

John

By: Aaron Hall

Aaron Hall — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 04:28:24 +0000

I fail to see how Mark’s plan would “forego the ability to get patent protection, copyright, or any other sort of valuable intellectual property.” Would you care to elaborate?

By: Jan

Jan — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 13:20:01 +0000

So maintaining someones selfesteem is more important than actually doing the job right……… I wont hire or work with you.

By: Walter Jeffries

Walter Jeffries — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 23:11:21 +0000

So… care to put your money forward and offer a loan to help a business expand? Our family farm is looking to setup inspected on-farm meat processing for our Certified Naturally Raised pastured pork. We sell to white table cloth restaurants, coop food stores and individuals throughout central Vermont with weekly deliveries. We already make the money, we just would like to keep more of it by doing the slaughter and butchering ourselves and more importantly we would like the work done right.

We’ve been taking commercial meat cutting classes and working with the USDA & Vermont Department of Ag since last spring – they’re very encouraging and eager for us to move forward as there is such limited processing capacity in Vermont. We will be razing an old shed to use the foundation as a location for our facility this spring.

I haven’t posted to Mr. Cuban’s blog (yet) as I’m not done polishing our business plan. I’m perfectly willing to open source, to share our business plan. In fact, if you read my blog you’ll find I do a lot of sharing what I know about what we do. I’m a firm believer in how sharing information can help all of us. I would love to see more small slaughterhouses and butcher shop scattered across the nation. Finding processing capacity is a major hurdle for farmers and local food gives consumers better quality and more food security.

Mark Cuban’s offer looks interesting. I agree the time frame is tight for most businesses. For us it is okay as our processing facility will immediately start saving us money over what we currently already pay out.

As to the advertising limitation, hey, that’s his rule – it is his money so no big deal. Frankly, advertising isn’t producing something and that is one of his points.

The banking limitation is quite reasonable. He appears to want to control the spending of the startup or expansion capital so it isn’t wasted on frivolities. Smart. That is not the cash flow of the business, it’s the revolving loan, capital investment or such.

I wouldn’t worry about people stealing ideas. Ideas are a dime a dozen. I come up with ten good ideas a day, several before breakfast. The key is implementation. A business plan is not a magic formula. It takes skills and other resources to turn ideas into products and then to sell them. Mr. Cuban’s thought of stirring the pot of ideas is actually a pretty good idea. The implementation will be interesting.

On the employees issue, I see where he’s coming from – we need more people doing things, making things and fewer people sitting back and managing. Small businesses don’t have the depth of personnel to be wasting it on management. I like a flat organization. Everyone works. Everyone produces. That’s how we run our farm.

Can you make a better offer? I’m looking for a loan and can pay interest plus excellent pastured pork. I have excellent credit and have always repaid my loans, both business and personal. Let’s get this going. Help small businesses and boost the economy. Be a hero.

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs & Sheep
in the mountains of Vermont
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/blog/

By: Armen Shirvanian

Armen Shirvanian — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 20:36:08 +0000

I am glad that you made that comment. I was thinking along the same lines when I saw his idea put out there. It didn’t follow the descriptions I have read about how to empower other people to work and thrive, including the important point that when you delegate or provide someone with ability, it works heavily against productivity to then put limits on their functions. It is not far from someone partially delegating a task to another, and then going back and saying “You didn’t do it completely right, so I will correct what you did.” That is not beneficial for the esteem of the person being delegated to, and curbs enthusiasm.