

What Entrepreneurs Should Not Do - agotterer
http://blogmaverick.com/2009/08/19/success-motivation-what-entrepreneurs-should-not-do

======
sgrove
This reads much less like a clear explanation of "What Entrepreneurs Should
Not Do", and much more like, "Huhuh, dude, check out this idiot and his idiot
paper, huhuhu!".

Classy, Cuban.

~~~
pvg
These things are hardly mutually exclusive. Perhaps harsh for your tastes but
being an idiot writing idiot letters is certainly something one should not do
in professional and business correspondence. Be concise, write well (and if
you can't get help from people who can) As advice, it may be mundane and
obvious but it's hardly unclear.

Similar things can be said for his other point - cut the bullshit/fluff.
Perhaps we've become so used to filtering it out due to its prevalence that a
reminder that it actually tends to have zero informational value is helpful to
those sending pitches to people who put some value on their time.

Just as a random example, I loaded up the Rails front page and was greeted by
the following [annotated]:

"Web development that doesn't hurt. [ok catchy tagline]

Ruby on Rails is an open source web framework [actual information]

that's optimized for programmer happiness and sustainable productivity [are
any web frameworks optimized for unsustainable productivity or programmer
misery? Fluff]

It lets you write beautiful code by favoring convention over configuration
[Fluff]"

Then you get the following quote, also essentially zero-information-content
fluff. Well, you learn that Tim O'Reilly is excited about Rails.

"“Ruby on Rails is a breakthrough in lowering the barriers of entry to
programming. Powerful web applications that formerly might have taken weeks or
months to develop can be produced in a matter of days.” -Tim O'Reilly, Founder
of O'Reilly Media "

This style of writing flaunts its disregard for the time and intelligence of
the reader. It's simply bad on a website aimed at technical users looking for
information and a few download buttons. It's inexcusable when asking for
money.

~~~
trapper
Apart from actually delivering, rails was the first framework to actually
"market" itself as sexy that I have heard about. And it worked. Maybe
programmers want to be excited, and not just read detailed specifications all
day ;)

~~~
pvg
This is a bit of a straw man, though - the opposite of 'bad, vapid,
uninformative writing' is not 'detailed specifications'. It's writing that's
good, succinct and informative. There's no reason such writing should not
convey one's enthusiasm or infectious excitement about the topic. There's
certainly a lot more leeway in a general product website, especially when your
product is so well-established the bad writing almost doesn't matter. It's
hardly a luxury an unestablished player, let alone someone looking for funding
can afford, though. Besides, simply because you can afford to get away with
badness doesn't actually make it anything better than bad. One way to read
Cuban's message could be 'You're likely misestimating the point at which you
can pass drivel for communication so don't.'

------
andymism
Blows my mind that someone thought asking for money like that would work.
Reads like a Nigerian phishing scam. Hilarious.

------
tesseract
> First, I want to thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to
> overlook a great opportunity we have for the near future.

Thank YOU. I will be glad to "overlook" your "opportunity".

------
knightinblue
You gotta give the guy credit for writing 3 whole pages without saying a
single, solitary, concrete fact about what exactly the company does. It's
almost like a challenge where he's daring the reader to figure it out.

~~~
edw519
Why? The only reason this didn't hit the round file is 10 seconds is because
it was so bad. Slow blog day, I guess.

------
Virax
> They sender has come up with a name, but doesn’t have the focus or
> confidence to put up a website.

The say that focus is in they eye of they beholder

------
edw519
Too easy. _Anyone_ could have written that.

Know what I'd like to see? Mark Cuban critiquing something that appears to be
pretty good by my standards. _That's_ data that would make a difference to me.

~~~
bena
What if you happen to have better standards than Mark Cuban? Let's not rule
out the possibility that Cuban's circumstances could be in part due to any
number of random variables (i.e. right place, right time) that anybody with a
reasonable amount of ability could exploit to become wealthy.

~~~
edw519
I may write better code than Mark Cuban, but I doubt that I have better deal
making standards than he does. He does this as often as I write programs. By
sheer repetition, he must have something to share.

Cuban would be the first to admit that he was in the right place at the right
time. But he knew the right thing to do, time and time again. Nothing wrong
with trying to learn something from someone with a track record like that.

