This article was published on September 3, 2010

Have a great idea? A chance to put your best “face” forward and “ping” a billionaire.


Have a great idea? A chance to put your best “face” forward and “ping” a billionaire.

Mark Cuban.  Brilliant, entrepreneurial, and in need of something.

For those unfamiliar with Mark Cuban, here’s a brief, emphasizing brief, overview of the last 10+ years of his life.  Cuban, who along with Todd Wagner, started Audionet, combining their mutual interest in college basketball and webcasting.  This venture grew into what would eventually become Broadcast.com, acquired by Yahoo! in 1999 for $5.9 billion in Yahoo! stock. Currently, Cuban is the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, of Landmark Theatres, and Chairman of HDNet.

Brief.

Now Mark Cuban wants to talk to you, and unfortunately, not me.

In a post on his blog, Blog Maverick, which I highly recommend following, he writes the following:

“If you develop Social Games I want to talk to you. Im looking to invest in  games,  developers and projects

Im looking for consumer and corporate applications. I’m not looking for knockoffs of existing games/apps. I’m also looking for physical products that have integrated social gaming components . My preference for all the above is that they run on or  integrate deeply  with Facebook and/or Itunes 10/Ping and all the devices they support.”

You can post them here or email me at [email protected].

If I like it , I will respond. If I dont, I wont.  I wont sign and NDA.”

Three things from the post struck me:

  1. His preference that applications “run on or integrate deeply with Facebook and/or Itunes 10/Ping.  iTunes 10/Ping is interesting given that it’s only 3 days old.  More interesting however is the focus on Facebook and iTunes 10/Ping only.  Why?  I see this as an extension of his past and present media ventures, Broadcast.com, expanding the reach of HDNet and Landmark Theaters’ forays into television and movie content, and doing so by leveraging the user base of both Facebook and iTunes 10/Ping.
  2. The NDA.  A NDA, for those unfamiliar with them, is a legal contract between at least two parties that outlines confidential material, knowledge, or information that the parties wish to share with one another for certain purposes, but wish to restrict access to by third parties.  Cuban will not sign a NDA.  This move by Cuban is smart and provides him with a huge advantage.  Why?  He may receive a few, hundreds, or even thousands of  inquiries to his post, all of which he will not bind himself legally not to disclose.  Small companies, individual developers, usually do not copyright or patent their creations, so in essence, Cuban is having others do his thinking for him and those doing so will have no recourse should he choose to use the idea.  Well played Mr. Cuban.  Well played.
  3. Finally, and who knows how quickly he threw this post up or what device he composed it on, but the grammar and other errors are deplorable.

It will be interesting to see what, if anything comes from Cuban’s request for products/developers focusing on Social Games.  What do you see as Cuban’s end goal?  Will you submit your name and idea for consideration?

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