Mark Cuban is an American billionaire worth about $2.8 billion. He is also the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and writes the popular blog, Blog Maverick.
Mark recently came out with his list of his top 12 rules for startups. Here are numbers one through seven.
1. Don’t start a company unless its an obsession and something you love.
2. If you have an exit strategy, its not an obsession.
3. Hire people who you think will love working there.
4. Sales Cures All. Know how your company will make money and how you will actually make sales.
5. Know your core competencies and focus on being great at them. Pay up for people in your core competencies. Get the best. Outside the core competencies, hire people that fit your culture but are cheap
6. An expresso machine ? Are you kidding me ? Shoot yourself before you spend money on an expresso machine. Coffee is for closers. Sodas are free. Lunch is a chance to get out of the office and talk. There are 24 hours in a day, and if people like their jobs, they will find ways to use as much of it as possible to do their jobs.
7. No offices. Open offices keeps everyone in tune with what is going on and keeps the energy up. If an employee is about privacy, show them how to use the lock on the john. There is nothing private in a start up. This is also a good way to keep from hiring execs who can not operate successfully in a startup. My biggest fear was always hiring someone who wanted to build an empire. If the person demands to fly first class or to bring over their secretary, run away. If an exec wont go on salescalls, run away. They are empire builders and will pollute your company.
What are your rules for running a startup?
#4 is dead on- if you are selling, and making profits, you can make lots of other mistakes and still be around long enough to fix them. If you aren’t making profitable sales, you are just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
#7 is debatable- it really depends on the business. If you run a boiler room- fine, no one needs an office. If you have programmers, or people who need to concentrate to get work done- a locker room atmosphere probably isn’t the best bet.
i agree, makes sense’
Blimey.
This guy sounds like hard work. He must have watched that scene out of glengarry glenn ross when alec baldwin reads the riot act (and actually says “coffee is for closers”) a few too many times. see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-AXTx4PcKI
I think some of what he says is good but then it depends what you’re after (eg some people want to be serial entrepreneurs, so point 2 goes against that).
And another famous saying, ref point 4, is “sales is vanity, profit is sanity and cash is reality”.
Horses for courses I guess.
Can’t argue with the Big Guy … after all, he made over $2 Bill. and I only made 1% of that – do the math
But, I disagree with the ‘exit strategy’ bit … one of the things that you MUST do is makeyour business ‘exit ready’ which means having documented operating systems/procedures and a business that can work without the Founder.
This doesn’t mean that you SHOULD sell the business … it’s just that you should make it ready.
I believe he has some very good points but nothing that has never been said before. I think the #1 that he left off was make a close to definite plan as possible (hard to do with it changing constantly) but don’t spend too much time obsessing over planning to the point where you don’t take action.