Mark Cuban (middle) has a plan. He’s using Open Source financing to help entrepreneurs get us out of the recession. What’s he thinking?
Open Source to Open Opportunities
Mark Cuban is causing quite the stir with his latest post, “The Mark Cuban Stimulus Plan – open source funding“.
Cuban, the high flying tech millionaire and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has outlined his plan to help entrepreneurs lead us all out of the recession.
His goal is to help businesses that “need a jump start” by providing funding, open source style. The idea is simple, post your business plan on his blog and he’ll choose the top ones to finance. There are, however, stipulations.
The Rules
Here are some of the criteria he’s laid out.
- It can be an existing business or a start up.
- It can not be a business that generates any revenue from advertising. Why ? Because I want this to be a business where you sell something and get paid for it. Thats the only way to get and stay profitable in such a short period of time.
- It MUST BE CASH FLOW BREAK EVEN within 60 days
- Everyone must work. The organization is completely flat. There are no employees reporting to managers. There is the founder/owners and everyone else
- You must post your business plan here, or you can post it on slideshare.com , scribd.com or google docs, all completely public for anyone to see and/or download
- see the full list here
Cuban writes,
“If its a good idea and worth funding, we want it replicated elsewhere. The idea is not just to help you, but to figure out how to help the economy through hard work and ingenuity. If you come up with the idea and get funding, you have a head start. If you execute better than others, you could possibly make money at it.”
Now that’s thinking out of the box. Kudos to you, you crazy Mark Cuban.
Photo Cred: eschipul