Mark Cuban Slams Y Combinator Co-Founder for Dissing Shark Tank in Ugly Twitter Feud

Don't swim with sharks, not if you can't bite back.

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By Kim Lachance Shandrow

ABC/Bob D’Amico

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Mark Cuban is a feisty one. He doesn't take kindly to people bashing Shark Tank.

Y Combinator co-founder and former president Paul Graham found out in a very public, ugly way yesterday. The billionaire (Cuban) and the millionaire (Graham) knocked horns on the little blue bird last night.

Graham fired the first shot, warning startups not to waste their time appearing on Shark Tank.

Former Googler and Shark Tank guest star Chris Sacca, fought back first with a splash of sarcasm.

Sacca's sneer didn't sit well with Graham, who's long written plenty about how hard founders like, for example, Google co-founder Larry Page, have it.

Next Graham fired off a link to a Wall Street Journal story featuring fellow Y Combinator co-founder Jessica Livingston's unorthodox advice to early-stage startups. Nutshell: Don't spend an iota of energy marketing an "initially mediocre product." Wait until it's perfect.

Related: Billionaire Mark Cuban on Raising Kids: 'I Don't Want Them to Be Entitled Jerks'

Sacca weighed in with another snarky two cents.

Then Cuban stepped in the ring and the gloves really flew off. So what if he was a few hours late?

Startups, accelerators and arrogance, naw, those never go together, especially not up in Mountain View, Calif., where Y Combinator is headquartered.

Cuban, known to be bit of a hothead at times, spit more fuel on the fire, implying that Y Combinator is a crusty has-been, that its heyday as a relevant accelerator is long gone. We're surprised the razor-tongued Pittsburgh native didn't use any of his usual salty language.

Ouch. Maybe Cuban's bite was enough to shut Graham up about Shark Tank, at least for now. Apparently immune to shark bait, he still hasn't yet responded to Cuban or Sacca. We're guessing he's saving his energy for one of his preachy trademark essays.
Kim Lachance Shandrow

Former West Coast Editor

Kim Lachance Shandrow is the former West Coast editor at Entrepreneur.com. Previously, she was a commerce columnist at Los Angeles CityBeat, a news producer at MSNBC and KNBC in Los Angeles and a frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Times. She has also written for Government Technology magazine, LA Yoga magazine, the Lowell Sun newspaper, HealthCentral.com, PsychCentral.com and the former U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. C. Everett Coop. Follow her on Twitter at @Lashandrow. You can also follow her on Facebook here

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