TC50 interview with Mark Cuban

He's a straight talker, no BS. He knows his worth, but isn't arrogant about it. That's a recipe for being well-liked and respected.

Today seeing Mark Cuban speak completely changed my opinion of him. I also assumed wrongly he'd be an ass, but damnit he's now my hero. Really insightful and hysterical funny. His advice was spot on and I loved the honesty.

Highlight from today's tc50 "Maybe I’m missing something, but that just sounded like the biggest bunch of bullshit I’ve ever heard in my life." Reference below to Imindi.

(http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/09/imindi-wants-to-get-ins...)

My favorite Cuban quote: "I can't tell you how many girlfriends I’ve had that said: 'me or the business', and I said 'what's your name?'"

I actually emailed him my freshman year of college asking him about happiness and what he's going to do now that he has all the money anyone could ever want. He told me (and I'm paraphrasing) that he's just as happy now as he was living in a dumpy apartment living off of happy hour bar food.

I'll never forget it. God I wish I still had my .edu email :(.

That particular comment made me walk away thinking he was rather jerkish. I didn't know who he was at the time of tuning in live, but there's about 10 different ways to say that without making the poor startup guy feel like a humiliated loser. He has a dream-- maybe Mark will bring him back down to reality, but I personally think the same sort of response could have been said about Wikipedia, Knol, About.com, Mahalo, etc.

Just because Mark and Kevin Rose didn't quite follow the long-term vision, it doesn't mean it can't catch on or grow. Hopefully the imindi guys will figure out a better way to present/grow their technology such that people won't have that kind of reaction, but that kind of comment didn't give me any new respect for Mr. Cuban. (I did enjoy the transcript of his one-on-one interview, though.)

I guess I have a lot of dreams like the imindi guys and can empathize with them. I also think there's a lot of long-term value in gathering cross-related/semantic data.