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Sunday, May 25, 2003
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Moneyball Andrew from VentureBlog reviews and reccomends Moneyball, the new book by Michael Lewis on the Oakland A's which, despite a low budget, outperform in winning:
How they've done this is straight out of the entrepreneurial playbook: by using intellect and analytics to replace money as the solution to problems. As Michael Lewis relates in great detail, the A's take a fresh look at what makes a baseball player successful and are able to exploit inefficiencies in the market for talent. They don't spend top dollar on big names but instead hire for efficiency in what's important in baseball (getting on base). The A's create the equivalent of a personal stock option plan for baseball players: they take underappreciated players and give them a chance to excel knowing that those who do will rise in value and eventually get hired away by the big money teams. The A's can then use draft choices (which they get as compensation when their players are hired away) to reinvest in new young, underappreciated players.
My favorite quote from the book, which is directly applicable to life in a start-up, is one of the rules Billy Beane uses when he searches for talent to sign:
"No matter how successful you are, change is always good. There can never be a status quo. When you have no money you can't afford long-term solutions, only short-term ones. You have to be always upgrading. Otherwise you're fucked."
1:13:06 PM 
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© Copyright
2003
Ross Mayfield.
Last update:
6/2/2003; 2:15:37 PM.
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