Yesterday we announced that Jason Calacanis would be interviewing serial entrepreneur, Dallas Mavericks owner and billionaire Mark Cuban at TechCrunch50. The comments were mixed, and Cuban was clearly reading. And in one case, responding. When video blogger Loren Feldman wrote “Mark Cuban is not a tech visionary. He is a lucky bastard. Broadcast.com was a joke,” Cuban responded:
mark cuban - August 28th, 2008 at 12:35 am PDT
you people talk a lot of shit for being clueless.
hey loren, what do you even know about broadcast.com ?
Yeah Im lucky. And proud to be. I was lucky with MicroSolutions when we started selling LANS in 1983 before anyone else and sold to compuserve. I was lucky selling corporate business applications I wrote and developed. I was lucky with Precept, a hedge fund built on my tech background that I sold (didnt know about that one did you..). I was lucky with broadcast.com , I was lucky to start HDNet years before anyone else thought HD had a chance, lucky with about 10 other companies too.
I will keep on getting lucky, you guys will keep on writing comments on blogs.
m
Cuban 1, Feldman 0
Update: Feldman denies it’s him in the comments below, there’s no real way of verifying. So treat this as a generic anonymous attack on Cuban.
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I’ll take “how to be an asshole” for 300, Alex.
i find it very refreshing.
Mark Cuban isn’t a moron, it’s not like he won some lottery or something. If you’re going to talk shit, expect to get a response, especially from someone as frank and web-savvy as Cuban. (though feldman got owned by a puppet, so that’s not saying much)
Mark Cuban is a visionary. Anyone that could make the Dallas Mavs be cool knows what he is doing. That team was like the Clippers. He is able to live his dreams through his skill as a tech entrepreneur. The guy is living the dream.
Whose life would you want? Mark Cuban or Mark Z?
“PWNED” I just love to seeing Feldman getting put in his place. Under the boot of a guy with real talent.
I hope you’re referring to LF.
awesome
I’ll take you’re a dope and here’s a taste of your own medicine for 500.
you are a lucky bastard and a tech visionary! iam a little bit envy.
nice to see everyone out in the open.
Loren just got owned.
What makes you think Cuban prevailed?
The main point of Feldman’s comment was that Broadcast.com managed to get sold at an insanely inflated price near the peak of the tech bubble.
Cuban’s response almost entirely avoided this main point.
I was aware of his earlier successes. But those successes did not make him a billionaire (nowhere close).
The insanely lucky sale of Broadcast.com did.
And the jury is still very much out on HDNet…
And, if “Cuban” is in fact Cuban, then isn’t it silly to sneer (in a blog comment) about wasting time with blog comments?
No, he was only able to bring in a few hundred million from the other sales. Good thing he “lucked out” on Broadcast.com.
Cuban = biggest as*hole on the interwebs. I still hate Yahoo for making this idiot a billionaire.
mark did owned him.. waiting for loren comeback at mark. but a billionaire lucky or not that alone makes me respect them for their success. how many of us wishes to be a billionaire but cant because we can catch a break and be in right place at right time to catch such luck. mark is thee man i been a fan of his for a few years, and i am one of biggest haters here. mark when you buy cubs save a job for me.
MC hardly needs my help, but I would point out that no one was doing what Audionet (the beginning of Broadcast) did when it started…..that was innovative tech. The fact it grew into Broadcast took some tech. Do you think Yahoo came out and begged to buy Broadcast? Someone not only pitched it but made it make tech sense.
Luck is always a big part of the equation. Everyone needs a bit of luck in business. Nothing wrong with that…
But to get lucky means you have to work hard and be in the game. Mark worked hard, was in the game…and got lucky.
Cha-Ching!
Bravo Mark.
Too bad the Mavericks haven’t been so lucky! ZING! Go Spurs!
Seriously, sometimes a little luck isn’t a bad thing, but not everything Mark has accomplished is because of luck.
Cuban is a visionary and a leader; Feldman plays with puppets.
Luck = preparation + opportunity. Opportunities come and go, but we can only take advantage if we’ve prepared ourselves for them….and preparation isn’t luck at all.
Now all Mark needs to do is replace Dirk Nowitzki with a true gamer (assassin), and it’s all good.
Seriously–The man has a history of successes that everybody should be envious of. So what that broadcast sold at a time/price which is differnt than it might fetch today. The fact is to be interesting/available for sale, he had to be doing something right at the right time. I also find it interesting that his successes have been incredibly diverse. Hedge funds to Basketball to HD. I wish I had such vision/luck.
This is why Mark Cuban is so popular; he speaks his mind (uncensored obviously). There are a lot of critics out there and very few doers. Not to mention that Mark obviously enjoys putting blowhards in their place.
What has Loren ever done really? Loren is a dope.
Once, you’re lucky. Twice, you’re good. We are all probably just a bit jealous
Don’t know much about Mr. Cuban but realize he has a pretty long Hater list
Mark Cuban responding to comments on message boards…
I believe that achieves for him a zero status for life…
If he responded to this comment, I would just laugh at his pathetic self…
certainly would not give him a score.
Have you ever watched him court side at a Mav’s game? This is a guy who is unchanged by money. Once a scrapper, always a scrapper. Money doesn’t mean you look down on blog comments (and this was no ordinary blog by the way).
He’ll scrap stupidity anytime, anywhere. He put video boy in his place. Simple as that.
Feldman needs A MENTAL ENEMA !
Slow news day? Or did you need some more page hits?
http://www.alexa.com/data/deta.....ize=Medium
wow, looks like it’s been a tough few months for techcrunch. those alexa numbers tell a scary story.
would like to see techcrunch write about that.
Meh. Alexa is useless, or at least debatable. Compete tells a different story.
http://siteanalytics.compete.c.....?metric=uv
He clearly got lucky timing with the Broadcast sale, but don’t his other projects show he’s not “just” lucky?
Mark: Fedor vs Couture…do it already.
Cuban plays the “asshole” card as usual
Loren Feldman is great at link baiting … which unfortunately doesn’t pay the rent no matter how many times you duplicate it. (Tech Geek)
Mark Cuban is great at building businesses that others find extremely valuable, which pays the rent and he can duplicate for another 50 years. (Tech Winner)
Who would you rather be?
George
Never really understood why people get so angry (see: jealous) with Mark Cuban.
The man is passionate about everything he does. I see many similarities to Gary Vaynerchuck. So often people seem unable to recognize true passion and view it simply as arrogance.
As an entrepreneur, he’s a great story to learn about. As he rightly points out, because he beat so many others to the punch on a bunch of different tech fronts and made oodles of money off it, as fellow tech enthusiasts we should be proud of the guy. Why? Because he is STILL passionate about the tech industry when he could have simply taken his cash years ago and ran. That should be proof enough about what kind of guy he really is.
They’re angry because he is constantly flouted as some sort of tech luminary. He’s a great BUSINESS guy and he had some great luck on top of that. Tech luminary? No.
He’s quick to tout his successes. But come on. Look at his comment here. He’s trying to say he was on the leading edge with HD “before anyone else thought HD had a chance.” Who the hell doubted HD had a chance, ever? People only worried about how fast it might be adopted. But Mark wants to look like a genious.
This is the same technical guru that was blogging about how the wave of the future would be selling people boxes with huge hard drives that are pre-filled with [HD] video content. Wow, how’s that going? And no, this wasn’t before the internet was popular either, this was like a couple years ago. Who the fuck would buy that, someone in BFE? Do those people spend a lot of dough on digital movies?
He’s a blowhard, he gets more praise than he deserves, and his biggest claim to fame is for a product that no one uses any more… and it was only sold a few years ago.
Is that clear enough for you?
TC can claim Mark Cuban victorious over a single commenter here, but the complaints are valid IMHO.
Here’s a link to this marvelous punditry from 2006.
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-149433.html
And a snippet of the sage himself:
“I personally think that the optimal connection will be personally managed hard drives. In five years, a terabyte or more of storage on a hard drive will be less than $100. We should be able to fill that up with music and whatever content we want in HD format, connect it to the TV and, using our remote, choose whichever movies we want.
“Everyone thinks content delivery will come from the Internet. It won’t. It’s too expensive and far too slow to deliver HD content. You just bought your 50-plus-inch LCD that is hanging on the wall. Do you want standard definition over compressed HD or the best-possible picture quality from your content?
“Blu-ray Disc- or HD DVD-quality content or better will be possible, but you won’t get that quality from a download. The reality is that it’s cheaper and faster to send (hard drives with terabytes of) content overnight via UPS than it is to download it over the Net. Brown is faster than the Net.
“So the smart company will send you hard drives full of content that you will pick and choose from. If it were up to me, DirecTV and the Dish Network would merge. They would buy Netflix and Hollywood Video, and then offer us 10-teraybyte hard drives full of all the content we could dream of that we can get for free or buy at a premium. ”
Well, Mark. It’s not 5 years later, it’s 2 years later. Last night I browsed quickly through the Apple store on my Apple TV and rented a movie in HD. It was ready to watch in 30 seconds, and never skipped a beat the entire showing.
Was it Blu-Ray quality? No. But it was definitely HD quality, and it looked the same as other 720p material I watch on my Dish HD box at other times. (BTW, Dish has rolled out 1080p PPV movies that will download in the background if you want them.)
But we’re only 2 years out from your hard drive prediction. Maybe in another 3 years, people will give up on broadband movies, and truly FedEx will drop a giant hard drive off at my front door. Presumably I would spend a few days figuring out how to fill that thing up with dozens or hundreds of movies that I may or may not want to watch anytime in the future.
Or maybe the FiOS broadband that Verizon is hooking up in my garage this weekend to give me 30mbps will instead allow me to just download whatever I want, whenever I want?
OTA HD quality sucks. Consumers don’t care.
I dont think that answers like “you people talk a lot of shit for being clueless” show passion, they just show that Mark cant put together a coherent argument without resorting to name calling.
The tone of his reply shows a lot of desire to prove his own worth to himself and others. My point is: why care? There is nothing to prove.
feldman vs cuban {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/hiJF5QdHYe_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”feldman vs cuban ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/7L8eOtoySj”}}}
wow…she’s hot. what is she doin with that loser, besides trying to jumpstart her online modeling career?
she’s not hot.
lol… that’s too funny.
I have hair and money. Call me.
Ya Josh I also have hair and money as well.
Oh and the balls to use a real name here, troll on.
I”m impressed how he doesn’t get caught looking down her shirt
He only manages that by positioning her behind him – so he has to look away from her most of the time.
Riveting video. Interesting we don’t see her arms. She must be tied to the chair. What a tool.
everybody needs a little luck. i think marc is more than just lucky. i’ve met marc before and i don’t recall him seeming like a n00b at all.
i found his response to be funny, albeit unnecessary.
i’m confused tho. did marc imply that he was gonna continue getting lucky with ppl who comment on blogs?
I hate the way that people feel in a position to make judgements about other people and their achievements. Good on Cuban is what I say
People are justified when the person they are talking about is a shameless self-promoter, in my opinion.
Umm, last I checked, Web 2.0 and social media was all about shameless self-promotion. Blogging? Self promotion. Twittering? Self promotion. I could go on.
Personally I think that Mr. Feldman is pretty much an arrogant prick to drinks his own kool-aid way too often. Not to mention he’s just as much a “shameless self-promoter” as Cuban is. Seriously, have you looked at his Twitter account?
Face! Too bad the Warriors shit served the Mavs! Booya. Not lucky.
Feldman schtick is to talk trash about successful people so his loser followers feel better about their own lives. It works for him.
Feldman seems to be like an amateur George Carlin, in that, what Carlin rags on is *actual* life and interesting and important things.
Feldman seems to try and do the shock-jock act in a small world where none of it matters to the guy on the street.
And now he is at it again with Scoblizer.
How about everyone just ignores him. He seems like the troll under the bridge grumping.
Or maybe he is jealous of Cuban, and Scoble? Thats normally what these things come down to.
Sad, and a little funny. Poor guy.
…is this really a TC article about a comment thread? I think that’s a first. Can we expect a new flood of comments from people hoping to be noticed and then written about on TC?
I know, I know, it’s Mark Cuban who left a comment, but still…it’s the equivalent of the NY Times writing a front page article titled “Oh no he didnt!” and all about a letter to the editor…referencing a previous letter to the editor…or something.
For the record, I usually like what Cuban has to say and I love that he comments in public and responds to average people’s emails.
It Wasn’t Me You Dopes {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/zHGcejSJYj_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”It Wasn’t Me You Dopes ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/l1PlEeG8qz”}}}
I guess Arrington has some explaining to do. When he wrote this post, I took it a face value.
This is either a traffic ploy, or a real screw up by TC.
GT
Of course it’s a traffic ploy. Did you just start reading TC?
Why do you sound like a fucking robot. LOL
You are an angry, angry young man.
Hey TC folks, can you look up the ip address of the person who actually left the comment for some verification?
Ha, and considering this was posted only 30 minutes after the real Loren Feldman made a similar mistake, pretty funny stuff…
http://www.1938media.com/apologies-to-dave-winer/
Yes it was. Your just mad because puppet got the best of you.
Not to mention your video blog serves no purpose. I couldn’t find a single interesting thing on your site.
Just a lot of hot air for a failure of a journalist.
mmm, you sure? sure looks like you from the admin.
mmm, Yeah I’m very sure.
This is getting interesting. How about some more details Mike?
It was me you idiots. Dont listen to the video claiming it wasnt me.
Loren Feldman 1938 media (or whatever the hell I yell).
Please. Stop shouting.
hey, i wasnt involved with this either
hmmm. Is that the real Loren? I think so, he is pretty angry!
It has to be him. He’s all pissed off!
Its like in school “Bobby, did you punch Tommy?”
“No sir, I didn’t.”
“So why is your fist shape in his face?”
Of course it was you.
Jesus man, go have a drink to relax. No wonder people think your an a-hole.
And the phrase is “checking facts”, not “fecking chacts”. That just doesn’t make sense!
This is obviously faked
whether Mark is occasionally fiery / asshole / childish / etc is beside the point.
1) he’s both tech smart & streety savvy
2) he’s not “lucky” to have been successful that many times
3) Yahoo wasn’t necessarily “stupid” to buy Broadcast, altho perhaps they bought at a nosebleed price… however, they were buying with inflated stock anyway. Cuban was simply smart by unloading the stock quickly after the purchase. again, another demonstration of #1
in summary: Cuban may have been “fortunate”, but he wasn’t “lucky”. he’s had multiple successes based on his combination of smarts, savvy, foresight, and business acumen.
nuff said.
Your post is somewhat correct. That said, why does Cuban have to consistenly act like the King of AssHat land? The man is an intolerable boor and he knows it.
I agree - you don’t get lucky selling a big businesses, it just doesn’t happen. It takes skill, savviness, etc etc
To all the people claiming being lucky, or whatever - they’re just jealous.
…and that included SL’s book, twice lucky good
I think this is the beauty of the Internet. People really aren’t as simple as one word and Cuban is no exception.
On one hand, broadcast.com was kind of a joke and it was bought for an insane amount of money.
On the other hand, Cuban did manage to sell it for an insane amount of money and he did have other tech successes (of varying degrees of impressiveness which each person can judge for themself).
So now everyone has a complete picture. You can think Cuban is 30% joke and 70% visionary or 70% joke and 30% visionary but whatever the case you have a clearer view of what the man is or isn’t than you’d get from an in-person conversation.
It’s sort of funny how bubble billionaires use the windfall to buy a sports team.
All I have to say, if you get lucky gambling, please just keep your mouth shut about it. But maybe that braggadocio is what draws the marks.
Who is Loren Feldman? Sounds like a douche…even though i’ve never heard of him!
Hey i want to be lucky too!
And future owner of the Chicago Cubs! We hope.
Good luck if he gets the cubs. If he does, it might be another 100 years without a championship. He’s won NOTHING as the owner of the ever-choking Mavericks.
Why does Mark care if someone thinks he is lucky? Lucky, or not he is a billionaire. That’s a whole lot of zeros. If I was a Billionaire I would not care what anyone called me. Opps, I am not a billionaire, and I still don’t care what anyone calls me.
Man, why post this? This isn’t Valleywag, but it sure sounds it from the tone of this post.
Also, TC, way to distance yourself from Feldman with this post. Calling him a “video blogger” doesn’t sound like he’s closely associated with TechCrunch and has been on a million videos from Arrington’s house.
distance myself? I love Feldman, even if he did just get smacked down by Cuban.
Ummm, Cuban is an Ignoramus. How he got to be a judge on TC50 is a big mystery. But, so is Jason Calacanis, so I guess we should all start questioning Arrington’s instincts here.
oooooohhhhhhh shit son, you got served, moted, juked event!
I Never Said It You Dumb Bastards {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/C5hXjRZByS_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”I Never Said It You Dumb Bastards ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/qhCpFxiH7t”}}}
Dude, it’s called OpenID.
Tie to your website, yell at TechCrunch to add the OpenID plugin for WordPress, and you’re done.
Or blog commenting via your Twitter ID
Hey, just a puppet in this video. No proof of authenticity.
You , Sir, are a loser. I thought this post in itself was bad, then I saw your video and had to reconsider.
It wasn’t me making the comments. Really. I do a show with fucking puppets. Come on. If anyone around here is lucky and undeserving of any success its me. Really. Fuck Shel.
Nobody has said it yet — and since it has only been a few months… so I figured I’d post this with my Folgers Crystals alter ego again:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008.....nt-2403887
Has anything changed this this last one? TC’s team of web/systems folks might know. Though, right now you operate under obscurity so I would understand if you didn’t want to disclose the techniques you employ to vet comments (if at all).
Seriously though — TechCrunch and other free form comment fields online have yet to feel the love that is pretexting.
I’m not saying that this is a plug for video comments but they are slightly more seeing is believing assuming you trust video (editors come in many forms).
However, faking a seesmic video is more difficult than typing into a form as simple as Name, Email, and Website.
Maybe DISQUS, seesmic, et al, aren’t a bad thing… but that’s just my feeling in the wake of someone saying “it wasn’t me”.
Also, one of the funniest videos from Loren is Mark Cuban vs. Fred Wilson on the 1 year anniversary…
http://www.1938media.com/cuban-v-wilson/
Hmmm…
I’m lost! What’s up with broadcast.com? lol It’s directed to the Yahoo! homepage.
Luck is where opportunity meets preparation.
Admin should not be a part of the debate on @1938Media {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/uyRmMfURyS_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”Admin should not be a part of the debate on @1938Media ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/GpCRO3LYUP”}}}
sure i do. everything i posted was already posted in the previous post. you’re banned.
I’m banned for questioning your blog? Another question of integrity. I’m not usually about legal things, but don’t you think there is a line between the technical Michael Arrington and the Journalist? you are blurring the lines here. I want to dialog you on this and if I feel that there is an adequate discrepancy between your two roles then I will be satisfied and let it go. I don’t mind being wrong. Do you?
Is this some kind of inside joke that I don’t get?
Why the hell would the site owner not be able to introduce evidence?
yes agree. Also, i have no actual ability to ban people, but it always gets people riled up.
It’s a blog - get over it.
Hey Mike. Do me a favor and ban me, would you?
{seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/yjOvECXBm0_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:” ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/GwB8haUrQE”}}}
WTF??????????????????????????????????????????????????
Why was this even posted?
Hey Calacanis, Sharfenburger chocolate is owned by Hershey at this point.
Is it just me or does Calacanis sound like a little girl? Oh well, he’s rich so I’m his bitch.
Mike, what the hell man?!? I respect you (you give all young attorneys slaving away at big law hope of a better life), but this video was just useless. What exactly was the point behind this video?
I thought you were going to punch Jason, guess it was a yawn. Damnit. He needs a good punch.
can i have that minute and a half of my life back?