While I love Mark Cuban, this move is clearly not just out of the "goodness of his heart". He is a savvy investor. The production company (Finnmax) was receiving the equity stake, not the sharks. He rightly felt that the clause was limiting the quality of startups trying to get on the show. Now that he's used his leverage to get rid of it, he will get better opportunities to invest in.
He also gets the benefit of now seeming more entrepreneur friendly than the other sharks, which increases he chance of participating in deals.
It'd be great if you could use this to detect nudity. Any plans for that? I'm assuming the balls on the "in the works" list are of the sport variety? ;)
In the works:
Shoes
Balls
Smartphones and tablets
Dogs
Keyboards
Cups and glasses
Doors
Keys
I don't think Stanford is an outlier. I went to HBS and they also say that 50% of grads eventually do something entrepreneurial. However, the term entrepreneur is probably different from what most people on HN think--it includes starting a consultancy, hedge fund, small business, etc.
Hey guys - Just wanted to share what we've been working on and get feedback from the HN community.
Pictorious is a fun, new game that inspires people to take awesome photos and challenge their friends to do the same. We're still very much in learning and iterating mode so welcome any and all feedback on this project.
We place a heavy emphasis on sleek design, performance and, of course, fun. We built the app using Objective-C, Node.js and MongoDB. We've also built out a REST API for our partners to pull in photos and other relevant data.
Coming soon: create your own challenges, better photo browsing and deeper game mechanics.
He also gets the benefit of now seeming more entrepreneur friendly than the other sharks, which increases he chance of participating in deals.