NetSuite is gearing up for an IPO and has apparently decided to glam up its board of directors just in time to do some good old fashioned road show glad handing. Billy Beane, GM (and part owner) of the Oakland Athletics, has joined NetSuite's board of directors.
In case you're wondering if this doesn't have just a little bit to do with Beane's larger than life celebrity in the Valley, just take a look at the title of today's press release:
"Billy's outrageously successful approach in changing the game of baseball by
managing using facts to supplement instinct is very similar to the
transformation our customers undergo when they move their business to NetSuite,"
said Evan Goldberg, chairman, co-founder, and CTO of NetSuite. "We are all
excited about the insight Billy will bring to NetSuite and our customers."
Changes Game? Hmmmm...hyperbole much? This is not to suggest this wasn't a bold and interesting move for many reasons. Beane has proven himself to be a phenomenal judge of talent, decisive and is 100% committed to challenging the status quo when there is evidence to support a contrarian take. All of those things will be essential toward building NetSuite from a solid SMB-focused SaaS play into a publicly-traded software vendor that's got the weight of the much larger and more established salesforce.com as a direct comparable.
I've not had the chance to meet Billy Beane, but like any other math geek who loves baseball, I devoured Moneyball and have followed Beane's career arc religiously. What I find most interesting about today's announcement is it would have the uninitiated believe it's Beane himself who leveraged Sabermetrics and statistical methods to evaluate baseball talent in a more empirical manner. While he's certainly the driving force behind that movement; he wasn't the one who actually crunched the numbers or devised the algorithms.
He was just prescient (and gutsy) enough to find guys who could (like J.P. Ricciardi and Paul DePodesta). If you've read Moneyball, you understand that Beane's talent is not as a mathematical genius, but rather as a man with undying conviction in his beliefs and the will power to push back on long-held truisms if it means success.
With an IPO looming, NetSuite needs to strengthen the independence of its board and this is probably the first of several new appointments I'm imagining. Prior to Beane's addition, the board was comprised of Founder Evan Goldberg, CEO Zach Nelson, VC Deborah Farrington (Starvest) and Steve Fink and Philip Simon, two members of Lawrence Investments [Larry Ellison's personal investment firm].
Today's announcement resonates against the recent news that Lenny Dykstra was starting his own investment fund. Fortune profiled Dykstra's unlikely rise into the world of finance last month; and they captured the bull-in-a-china shop, rough around the edges persona that made Dykstra such an effective major league player. Contrasting Dykstra's in your face style with the polished veneer of
Beane (now joining the board of a highly anticipated 2007 IPO
potentially) hearkens back to when they were teammates on the New York
Mets in the early 80s. In Moneyball, Beane talks a lot about how
Dykstra, the guy with limited physical gifts and unremarkable pedigree,
managed to outplay Beane (who was a 5-tool prospect and highly touted)
because of their respective mental approaches to the game.
From a review in Knowledge@Wharton [free sub required]:
A
high school phenomenon who chose pro ball over Stanford, Beane was
drafted by the New York Mets in the same draft that brought Darryl
Strawberry to the big leagues. Coming up in the Mets farm system, he
roomed with Lenny Dykstra, who was destined for a permanent spot in the
Mets outfield.
As
Lewis tells us, they were two very different kinds of ball players and
the contrast is instructive: “Lenny thought of himself and Billy as two
buddies racing together down the same track, but Billy sensed
differences between himself and Lenny. Physically, Lenny didn’t belong
in the same league with him. He was half Billy’s size and had a
fraction of Billy’s promise – which is why the Mets hadn’t drafted him
until the 13th round. Mentally, Lenny was superior, which was odd,
considering Lenny wasn’t what you’d call a student of the game. Billy
remembers sitting with Lenny in a Mets dugout watching the opposing
pitcher warm up. ‘Lenny says, “So who’s that big dumb ass out there on
the hill?” And I say, “Lenny, you’re kidding me, right? That’s Steve
Carlton. He’s maybe the greatest left-hander in the history of the
game.” Lenny says, “Oh, yeah! I knew that!” He sits there for a minute and says, “So, what’s he got?” And I say, “Lenny, come on. Steve Carlton.
He’s got heat and also maybe the nastiest slider ever.” And Lenny sits
there for a while longer as if he’s taking that in. Finally he just
says, “Shit, I’ll stick him.” I’m sitting there thinking, that’s a magazine cover out there on the hill and all Lenny can think is that he’ll stick him.’”
It'll be interesting to see whether Dykstra [i.e., the trader] or Beane [i.e., the analyst] have the greater success as financial strategists going forward.
Related Threads:
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billy beane
lenny dykstra
moneyball
