F|R: What Startups Can Learn From Billy “Moneyball� Beane

If you’re a major league baseball fan, you’ve probably read “ Moneyball ,” the best-selling book by journalist Michael Lewis chronicling the successful statistics-driven management of Oakland Athletics General Manager, Billy Beane . Baseball has long been a game of stats, but Beane’s philosophy gave the tradition a twist: Instead of tracking a player’s batting average or runs batted in , Beane tracked a player’s on base percentage . The unorthodox approach helped Beane build the A’s into a remarkably efficient team that has reached the American League playoffs five times in eight years with a payroll that’s consistently near the bottom third of all 30 MLB teams ($78.5 million in 2007). Plenty of corporate executives have tried to apply Beane’s tactics to their own operations. NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson did one better: In 2007 he invited Billy Beane to join NetSuite’s board of directors . Nelson says tracking...