5 ms·

I don't get the comments bashing the author. This is downright deception and he got screwed. Period. It's morally wrong and I just don't understand how people

I don't get the comments bashing the author. This is downright deception and he got screwed. Period. It's morally wrong and I just don't understand how people can defend this in the comments over at Linkedin. Why the fuck is the free market being used as a blanket argument against morals and ethics? There's even vaguely veiled threats against the author in the Linkedin comments. I'm fucking appalled and I don't understand why someone would A) kill your own reputation B) put women in startups/tech in a bad light C) use the same branding for the switcheroo that helps the author's case D) not realize there's post-show background check (that results in 50% of deals announced not going through according to comments) If she had just been honest and not greedy (why would you be so desperate to own 100% of nothing?) she could've avoided destroying her own goals. I don't know how anyone can possibly trust her, unless, it was someone who shared the same tony-montana-esque attitude towards wealth & status, bravado, chutzpah at the cost of others and your own soul, for more money in your pocket. But even Tony did not break his "word & balls" when starting his narcotic empire, in which Alajendro Sosa invested in Tony, risked capital in his business and he got paid. Imagine how angry Sosa would've gotten if never saw his returns. It proved to be lethal for Tony in the end.

mundo 10y ago
I read it as "I feel like I got screwed, but I don't want to sound whiny, so I'll frame it as 'Mark Cuban got screwed' instead because it affects him too".
- brilliantcode 10y ago
  He did get screwed. It's not the author's fault for not knowing the behind the scenes due process that isn't televised. I'm just shocked by why the background checks come after the the pitch and not before. It's not the author or audiences job to know and protect Mark Cuban or any of the shark's reputation or financial well being. I'm also wondering why there are so many Koreans circle jerking Mark Cuban in the linkedin comments. As a Korean myself, wtf? Did he pull the Incheon Landing or something?
  - chias 10y ago
    My guess is that it's because running the check costs money. Doing checks after going through the show means paying for fewer checks because you don't need to check people who don't get picked. Also, you get to air people who have a pitch that would rate well on TV but who end up failing the check.
    - brilliantcode 10y ago
      1) open browser and go to https://icis.corp.delaware.gov/Ecorp/EntitySearch/NameSearch.aspx https://icis.corp.delaware.gov/Ecorp/EntitySearch/NameSearch... 2) do a fact check. I don't see how this is can get expensive. Don't they have interns delivering coffee and running errands and other bullshit in the media/entertainment industry? Why not have them do more valuable and relevant tasks such as quick sanity check before the pitch?
      - chias 10y ago
        Visiting the link you post would indeed have uncovered this particular problem in just a few moments, but doing due diligence means a whole load of other checks as well. It is very cheap to verify that a problem exists if you already know what the problem is. I'm not suggesting that a quick sanity check before the pitch is a bad idea. For all I know they may do quick sanity checks before the pitch, but a quick sanity check is by definition incomplete. It isn't fair to say after-the-fact that a particular sanity check should have been included because that's where a failure was eventually found. To be clear, they are a well-funded TV show and personally I think they should bother with due diligence on pitches before the show. But I don't run it, and I guess they don't seem to agree.
        brilliantcode 10y ago
        Simple fact checking whatever the entrepreneur is pitching doesn't take a lot of resources for the most part. I think we have a different picture of "background check". I'm saying assume whatever numbers are thrown as bullshit until proven otherwise. That's just due diligence and common sense, it's hard to fathom it being an expensive and time consuming task unless you involve accountants and lawyers provided there's a audit trail available. That costs money and every year thousands of eager accounting/finance graduates are willing to work 60 hours a week at a depressed market rate due to the abundance of supply.
- beambot 10y ago
  Using Mark's name gives the headline virality. That's about all I read into it.
sean_patel 10y ago
> This is downright deception and he got screwed. Period. No one is disputing that. But the author's post title was (and still is) "Mark Cuban and Shark Tank got Royally Screwed". => https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/mark-cuban-shark-tank-got-royally-screwed-howard-marks https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/mark-cuban-shark-tank-got-roy... Mark Cuban and Shark Tank didn't get screwed. It's the author and his investment company that got screwed by a greedy founder.
- brilliantcode 10y ago
  Mark Cuban and Shark Tank did get screwed because somebody at the show production thought viewer rating is more important than filtering out entrepreneurs with bad intentions before being asked to put their reputation on line by announcing investments on national television which would expose the Sharks to real risks with implications. If I was Mark Cuban, I'd be fucking livid at the production for not seeing the risks of doing due diligence at his own expense, both intangible and tangible costs.
  - freddyc 10y ago
    Because, for a television production company, ratings fundamentally are more important. Cuban knows it's an entertainment show first-and-foremost and he bought into that (and frankly, from what I can tell, loves that aspect of it). I've never looked into the details, but I imagine the paperwork Shark Tank entrepreneurs sign includes something along the lines of "all deals agreed are non-binding and subject to completion of satisfactory post-show diligence blah blah". I'd be shocked if a decent percentage of the deals featured don't ultimately fall through for one reason or another at the diligence stage with zero impact on the investor's reputation, so I don't think Cuban will lose too much sleep over it.
    - netizzio 10y ago
      Can't remember where I saw it, but recall reading that a significant number of deals do fall through. Mark Cuban actually had one of the higher success rates with about 80% of deals actually succeeding, and I think both Lori and Robert were at around 45%. Edit: From this AMA on reddit with Mark Cuban 3 years ago, he says that about 25% of deals have something wrong (and therefore presumably don't work out). https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/15doqt/mark_cuban_this_is_my_ama/c7lkbfx/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/15doqt/mark_cuban_thi...
st3v3r 10y ago
Because those same people bashing the author want to be able to do the exact same thing to other people.
- brilliantcode 10y ago
  That's most likely true but there really are people who genuinely believe that free market is a panacea and that corporations and public as well as private interests are aligned to the point where even the suffering of people and individuals (getting wined and dined) is justified. Kevin O'rly comes to mind when he claimed 3.5 billion people living in poverty is good because free market lol
tomc1985 10y ago
> It's morally wrong and I just don't understand how people can defend this in the comments over at Linkedin. Why the fuck is the free market being used as a blanket argument against morals and ethics? I bet it's because a lot of people over there would do the same given the chance
CalChris 10y ago
Your reading of Tony is good. Still, I'd say that at the time that Tony says: I never fucked anybody over in my life didn't have it coming to them. You got that? All I have in this world is my balls and my word and I don't break them for no one. he's still poor and he has his principles. Later, he gets rich and then, violating the cardinal rule, gets high on his own supply. That's what corrupts Tony. Hahn doesn't even have a gangster's ethos. So Tony isn't a fair comparison (to Tony). Trump is a fair comparison.
- mundo 10y ago
  > Hahn doesn't even have a gangster's ethos. This would be a good time to remember that we haven't heard Hahn's side of the story.
  - CalChris 10y ago
    We have heard her side of the story. There may be more to her story but we have heard some of her side. We haven't heard her rebuttal.

mundo 10y ago

I read it as "I feel like I got screwed, but I don't want to sound whiny, so I'll frame it as 'Mark Cuban got screwed' instead because it affects him too".

brilliantcode 10y ago
He did get screwed. It's not the author's fault for not knowing the behind the scenes due process that isn't televised. I'm just shocked by why the background checks come after the the pitch and not before. It's not the author or audiences job to know and protect Mark Cuban or any of the shark's reputation or financial well being. I'm also wondering why there are so many Koreans circle jerking Mark Cuban in the linkedin comments. As a Korean myself, wtf? Did he pull the Incheon Landing or something?
- chias 10y ago
  My guess is that it's because running the check costs money. Doing checks after going through the show means paying for fewer checks because you don't need to check people who don't get picked. Also, you get to air people who have a pitch that would rate well on TV but who end up failing the check.
  - brilliantcode 10y ago
    1) open browser and go to https://icis.corp.delaware.gov/Ecorp/EntitySearch/NameSearch.aspx https://icis.corp.delaware.gov/Ecorp/EntitySearch/NameSearch... 2) do a fact check. I don't see how this is can get expensive. Don't they have interns delivering coffee and running errands and other bullshit in the media/entertainment industry? Why not have them do more valuable and relevant tasks such as quick sanity check before the pitch?
    - chias 10y ago
      Visiting the link you post would indeed have uncovered this particular problem in just a few moments, but doing due diligence means a whole load of other checks as well. It is very cheap to verify that a problem exists if you already know what the problem is. I'm not suggesting that a quick sanity check before the pitch is a bad idea. For all I know they may do quick sanity checks before the pitch, but a quick sanity check is by definition incomplete. It isn't fair to say after-the-fact that a particular sanity check should have been included because that's where a failure was eventually found. To be clear, they are a well-funded TV show and personally I think they should bother with due diligence on pitches before the show. But I don't run it, and I guess they don't seem to agree.
      - brilliantcode 10y ago
        Simple fact checking whatever the entrepreneur is pitching doesn't take a lot of resources for the most part. I think we have a different picture of "background check". I'm saying assume whatever numbers are thrown as bullshit until proven otherwise. That's just due diligence and common sense, it's hard to fathom it being an expensive and time consuming task unless you involve accountants and lawyers provided there's a audit trail available. That costs money and every year thousands of eager accounting/finance graduates are willing to work 60 hours a week at a depressed market rate due to the abundance of supply.
beambot 10y ago
Using Mark's name gives the headline virality. That's about all I read into it.

sean_patel 10y ago

> This is downright deception and he got screwed. Period. No one is disputing that. But the author's post title was (and still is) "Mark Cuban and Shark Tank got Royally Screwed". => https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/mark-cuban-shark-tank-got-royally-screwed-howard-marks https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/mark-cuban-shark-tank-got-roy... Mark Cuban and Shark Tank didn't get screwed. It's the author and his investment company that got screwed by a greedy founder.

brilliantcode 10y ago
Mark Cuban and Shark Tank did get screwed because somebody at the show production thought viewer rating is more important than filtering out entrepreneurs with bad intentions before being asked to put their reputation on line by announcing investments on national television which would expose the Sharks to real risks with implications. If I was Mark Cuban, I'd be fucking livid at the production for not seeing the risks of doing due diligence at his own expense, both intangible and tangible costs.
- freddyc 10y ago
  Because, for a television production company, ratings fundamentally are more important. Cuban knows it's an entertainment show first-and-foremost and he bought into that (and frankly, from what I can tell, loves that aspect of it). I've never looked into the details, but I imagine the paperwork Shark Tank entrepreneurs sign includes something along the lines of "all deals agreed are non-binding and subject to completion of satisfactory post-show diligence blah blah". I'd be shocked if a decent percentage of the deals featured don't ultimately fall through for one reason or another at the diligence stage with zero impact on the investor's reputation, so I don't think Cuban will lose too much sleep over it.
  - netizzio 10y ago
    Can't remember where I saw it, but recall reading that a significant number of deals do fall through. Mark Cuban actually had one of the higher success rates with about 80% of deals actually succeeding, and I think both Lori and Robert were at around 45%. Edit: From this AMA on reddit with Mark Cuban 3 years ago, he says that about 25% of deals have something wrong (and therefore presumably don't work out). https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/15doqt/mark_cuban_this_is_my_ama/c7lkbfx/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/15doqt/mark_cuban_thi...

st3v3r 10y ago

Because those same people bashing the author want to be able to do the exact same thing to other people.

brilliantcode 10y ago
That's most likely true but there really are people who genuinely believe that free market is a panacea and that corporations and public as well as private interests are aligned to the point where even the suffering of people and individuals (getting wined and dined) is justified. Kevin O'rly comes to mind when he claimed 3.5 billion people living in poverty is good because free market lol

tomc1985 10y ago

> It's morally wrong and I just don't understand how people can defend this in the comments over at Linkedin. Why the fuck is the free market being used as a blanket argument against morals and ethics? I bet it's because a lot of people over there would do the same given the chance

CalChris 10y ago

Your reading of Tony is good. Still, I'd say that at the time that Tony says: I never fucked anybody over in my life didn't have it coming to them. You got that? All I have in this world is my balls and my word and I don't break them for no one. he's still poor and he has his principles. Later, he gets rich and then, violating the cardinal rule, gets high on his own supply. That's what corrupts Tony. Hahn doesn't even have a gangster's ethos. So Tony isn't a fair comparison (to Tony). Trump is a fair comparison.

mundo 10y ago
> Hahn doesn't even have a gangster's ethos. This would be a good time to remember that we haven't heard Hahn's side of the story.
- CalChris 10y ago
  We have heard her side of the story. There may be more to her story but we have heard some of her side. We haven't heard her rebuttal.