Getting a check from an investor is always nice, but this is not a validation by the market that your idea is good. Meanwhile advertising your business on a blo

Getting a check from an investor is always nice, but this is not a validation by the market that your idea is good. Meanwhile advertising your business on a blog, specially with all the conditions attached and no guarantee that you will get anything seems only useful for PR purposes, but in the end it does not really help unless you are in the first few who posted. I think Mark Cuban's idea is a good one for his own PR, but I doubt that it will help much in the end. Overall this is one issue I have with the concept of Open Funding, trying to make you believe that competitions are a good model, when what it is really is a waste of time and energy for entrepreneurs who do not need this type of distraction when starting a business. Competitions are lotteries, with one winner taking it all, and playing the lottery is not a good business strategy. Worse, once you won the lottery, you still do not have market validation from real customers, just the blessing of a selection committee that has their own criteria (hype, cool, vision, or whatever). How about competing for cash from customers? At least when you win, you know you have something and chances are there will be more customers after the first one.