As you know, from time to time I comment on what Mark Cuban has stated on his blog, blogmaverick.com. Today is one of those days.

In his post, The Irony of the Video Business, Mr. Cuban comments on how surprising it is Redbox, a company that rents DVDs through kiosks, is "the most disruptive force in the video business."

The true irony here is that about four years ago, when I was CEO of Immediatek, the company I founded in 2001 and which Mr. Cuban eventually bought majority ownership in, Mr. Cuban apparently fell in with the "conventional wisdom" which he has quoted in the referenced blog post. In other words, he was adamantly against kiosks when Immediatek, a company known to be ahead of the curve, was actively engaged in working towards disruptive kiosk solutions. To keep the long story short, our company had tremendous opportunities implementing our designs through third parties, not having to pay a dime for equipment, and Mr. Cuban shot it all down. In an email to me, and I quote:

"and so we are clear. We wont [sic] host a kiosk. We wont sell kiosks. We wont even take delivery..."

And in another instance:

"...there are dozens of companies trying to sell kiosks. None have made it. we are not stupid enough to think we could do something they cant [sic]..."

Mr. Cuban was adamant that we were not in the "kiosk" business. That we were in the "content" business. Since when? Immediatek had a history of introducing products such as NetBurn Secure, which was a software product that allowed artists to sell and distribute music in a secure format. Our kiosk designs were an extension of this model, and the music labels were interested. Our first artist that used NetBurn was JC Chasez of NSync. But... our kiosks were summarily dismissed, after months, if not longer, of work, to sew it into our overall offering.

So, where was this disruptive thought four years ago? I guess folks should be open to other technologies and ideas, even when they are not yours.