Evidence-based entrepreneurship is driven by data--just like the Oakland A's.

• Author: Johansen, Kevin
• Position: GUEST column

Jeremy Brown is fat. In 2002, Brown also walked more times than any other player in college baseball. The statisticians loved him. The scouts didn't. One of the scouts went so far as to say, "If he played in corduroy he'd start a fire."

So what he looks like isn't what he is. Brown was drafted anyway, against the better wishes of the scouts--and he's progressed faster in the Oakland As organization than anyone else drafted that year. In this process the Oakland As management, using statistics, overruled the scouts, who used experience. This was considered an insult to the soul of baseball.

In 2003, Michael Lewis released his book about the Oakland As management practices titled "Mon-eyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game." Entrepreneurship today, and by extension, angel investing, too often looks like baseball prior to 2003--an unfair game.

The questions that are being asked by entrepreneurs today are mostly still the ones that have always been asked: What works? Who's good? What's good?

But it's 2008. The questions that should be asked now are, "Where's the database? Where is the statistical breakout of what works in business development--and what doesn't?"

Data generally finds its way into a database through the application of a mix of archival, collective and "swarm" intelligence. Archival intelligence is about what worked in the past. History, which we are doomed to repeat if we don't study it, is archival intelligence. Collective intelligence is about what worked today. Collective intelligence is best-practices sharing. "Swarm" intelligence is about problem solving and making things work better.

Building a database--a knowledge archive--of almost any sort is an investment the builders hope to see pay off. In the case of the Angel Capital Summit, a community-wide event hosted by the Rockies Venture Club on Nov. 13, the Entrepreneurial Standards Forum, a Colorado-based nonprofit, made this investment. They did it for entrepreneurs in specific and investors in general. For the ACS, it paid off well.

In 2006, the ESF released the Benchmark Survey as an online tool for entrepreneurs. In simple terms, when an...