Mark Cuban Offers To Help Economy

The last time I wrote about Mark Cuban was when the SEC charged him with insider trading. Now, Mr. Cuban has made the news for some positive investing practices.

Mark Cuban, Michael Eisner and Flat Stanley at SXSWi 2008

He has established the Mark Cuban Stimulus Plan to “figure out how to help the economy.”

In a nutshell, Mr. Cuban has invited entrepreneurs to post their business plans on his site, blogmaverick.com.

In return for posting their plans, Mr. Cuban will consider funding their ventures.

Since the Mark Cuban Stimulus Plan was initiated in February, there have been some interesting submissions. You can view Naked Pizza and Wickler, both of which have deals “in the works” according to Cuban’s blog.

Cuban thought out the rules of funding well before offering his stimulus plan to businesses, here they are:

1. It can be an existing business or a start up.
2. It can not be a business that generates any revenue from advertising. Why ? Because I want this to be a business where you sell something and get paid for it. Thats the only way to get and stay profitable in such a short period of time.
3. It MUST BE CASH FLOW BREAK EVEN within 60 days 
4. It must be profitable within 90 days.
5. Funding will be on a monthly basis. If you dont make your numbers, the funding stops
6. You must demonstrate as part of your plan that you sell your product or service for more than what it costs you to produce, fully encumbered
7. Everyone must work. The organization is completely flat. There are no employees reporting to managers. There is the founder/owners and everyone else
8.  You must post your business plan here, or you can post it on slideshare.com , scribd.com or google docs, all completely public for anyone to see and/or download
9. I make no promises that if your business is profitable, that I will invest more money. Once you get the initial funding you are on your own
10. I will make no promises that I will be available to offer help. If I want to , I will. If not, I wont.
11. If you do get money, it goes into a bank that I specify, and I have the ability to watch the funds flow and the opportunity to require that I cosign any outflows.
12. In your business plan , make sure to specify how much equity I will receive or how I will get a return on my money.
13. No multi-level marketing programs (added 2/10/09 1pm)

Keep up with the applicants and beneficiaries of Cuban’s stimulus plan at blogmaverick.com.