Another Reason to Love Mark Cuban
by Aner Ravon

I love Mark Cuban. More importantly, I adore his attitude. Very NBA 2.0, definitely a primary factor in my support for Dallas taking it all this year. Most people I know associate Mark Cuban with Broadcast.com and with being an NBA “Badboy”, but he is also a great blogger (thanks Yaron for referring me). My favorite entry, so far, is called I’m a Whiner, in which Mark articulates about the underrated productive outcome of consistent whining:

“When I got to Indiana University, I whined that the classes they wanted me to take weren’t enough of a challenge, so I snuck into the MBA program and took graduate level statistics when I was a freshman…When I got a job selling software, I whined to the owner that he shouldn’t make me sweep the floor of our store and I should be able to go out and close sales. That led to me getting fired, which in turn led to me starting MicroSolutions…When I was hanging out with my buddy, Todd Wagner, we whined together about how we couldn’t listen to Indiana Basketball or any hometown sports in Dallas, so we started AudioNet, which became Broadcast.com…When I was at the opening night of the Mavs 99-00 season, I whined to my friends that there was no energy, no fun in the building, that I could do a better job. Which led to me buying the Mavs.”, etc.

The message is clear, and to a true whiner like myself it is clearly a very inspiring one. However, unlike Mark Cuban I still can’t just buy everything that pisses me off. But if I could, here are my top “I’m sick of whining about it, I guess I’ll just buy it” assets:

1. A Personal Blog Assistant – I miss so much great stuff and on the other hand spend so much time reading absolute garbage. And no, Technorati and the other blogsphere search engines, tagging engines and RSS readers do not solve this problem. In many cases they worsen it. Until someone comes up with something that really works – nothing beats the human eye and hand.

2. The NY Knicks – Fire everybody, give out 10,000 free season tickets for a year and start the whole thing over. From scratch. Get 12 Euroleague players to start it off, they play much more attractive basketball. Some things are so beyond rehab so I look at it as an opportunity.

3. AOL Instant Messenger – reshuffle business strategy and open it up to interoperability for partners and other IM communities. The 90s are over, man!

4. Bank Hapoalim – the largest bank in Israel whose executives make a mockery of their customers by pulling out outrageous bonuses for success in a monopolized environment. My first action would be to let the chairman and CEO go, just to prove that their absence will have zero impact on the bank’s results. I would then cap individual salaries (including bonuses) to $5M a year for the next 10 years. Nobody will quit, I guarantee.

5. MySpace – to shut it down. Popular doesn’t ALWAYS mean good. MySpace is so full of crap that it overshadows the basic good value of personalized self expression.

6. Charleton – “What’s not yours do not touch” is a freely translated old Jewish proverb. Charleton is the “company” (a speculative soccer player agent) that “purchased” (noticed a loop hope 8 years ago) the national broadcasting rights to the Soccer Mondial. They now resell a globally available free product for $100 a head. To me, this is like confiscating my drinking water and taxing me for them.

7. Pay off Michael Harrington, Pete Cashmore, Mark Cuban and Guy Kawasaki to mention Degardener and add it to their Blogroll. I don’t just look to whine, I need my whining to be heard!

Aner Ravon
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