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The leadoff batter is arguably the most important offensive weapon on a baseball team. His job is to get on base—it doesn’t have to be pretty. He could make it to first with a bloop single, get walked, bunt his way on or make a mad dash for first after the catcher drops the third strike. His success is measured not by the number of home runs he hits or even his batting average but by his “on-base percentage.” If he gets on four times out of every 10, he’s doing very well. (Ted Williams holds the record for career on-base percentage at .482.) The more powerful hitters follow the leadoff batter in the lineup. The slugger, typically slotted in the fourth spot, has the task of swinging for the fences and driving home the players who got on base in front of him. A slugger’s chances of hitting a home run are much lower than the on-base hitter’s of getting to first. If a slugger hits one home run every 11 times at bat, he’s doing extremely well. Knowing one’s role is essential to success. Sluggers shouldn’t try to bunt their way on base, and the greatest sin of a leadoff hitter is to go down swinging for the fences. As with baseball, I’ve noticed that business owners can be divided into “on-base hitters” and “sluggers.” Knowing which you are is critical to happiness and success. “On-base hitters” are the business owners who have a series of successful business start-ups. Like the on-base hitter, they would prefer small, regular successes over less frequent but larger wins. Rene Lacerte is an on-base hitter. His latest business, bill.com, is a software platform he created after exiting PayCycle, an online payroll business he co-founded. He started PayCycle from scratch with his partner, Martin Gates. Once the business got going, he recruited Jim Heeger to run it. Jim is a proven manager, having held big posts at Adobe and Intuit. One of the things I admire most about Rene is that he knows he’s an on-base guy and has no illusions of being able to swing for the fences by running a larger business. He’d rather get on base with a number of start-ups than run one business for his entire career. My bet is bill.com will be followed closely by another start-up. Fred Smith, the founder of FedEx, is a home run hitter. He’s owned one business in his professional life and has had the patience, stick-to-itiveness and talent to grow it into a Fortune 500 company. Both Lacerte and Smith are successful entrepreneurs who have built valuable companies, but one is an on-base hitter and the other a slugger. Interestingly, I don’t think Lacerte would be happy running FedEx. He’d probably be bored and get bogged down in the complexity. Likewise, I’m not sure Smith could cope with the uncertainty and ambiguity of Lacerte’s life as a perpetual starter-upper. I think one of the most important determinations a business owner can make is whether he or she is a slugger or an on-base hitter. The on-base hitter can focus on starting and exiting lots of smaller businesses in a career and not harbor second thoughts when heading for the exit. In contrast, the slugger would be best served by making a single business their life’s work. Tomorrow, I’ll tell you about a quick personality test that can determine whether you’re best suited to start lots of smaller businesses or to strive to build one big one. (Read Part 2 and Part 3 .) John Warrillow is the author of Built to Sell: Turn Your Business into One You Can Sell. He has started and exited four companies. Most recently John transformed Warrillow & Co. from a boutique consultancy into a recurring revenue model subscription business, which was acquired by The Corporate Executive Board. In 2008 he was recognized by BtoB Magazine’s “Who’s Who” list as one of America’s most influential business-to-business marketers. Business – Batting average – Baseball – Batting – PayCycle

Tony Hsieh will talk about his decision to sell Zappos to Amazon for $1.2 billion, and answer reader questions. Tony Hsieh – Amazon.com – Zappos – Sequoia Capital – Business

Tony Hsieh will talk about his decision to sell Zappos to Amazon for $1.2 billion, and answer reader questions. Tony Hsieh – Amazon.com – Zappos – Sequoia Capital – Business

A tree grows there, so why not a startup? The Brooklyn Public Library has been running its “ PowerUp! ” program since 2003, and more than 2,400 entrepreneurs have participated. That’s a lot of saplings that have started their growth using library resources. Maud Andrew of BPL’s Business Library Programs and Outreach told me their “Success Council” came up with the idea and started a competition. Members of the council gave prize money for the first round, and The Citi Foundation was the largest initial donor. In subsequent years, Citi has been the primary sponsor. How is supporting startups part of a local public library’s mission? “The mission of BPL’s Business Library is to promote economic development for all Brooklyn residents. PowerUp! is a real life example of the important role access to information plays in the success of a business venture. The participants are required to take classes at the library on writing a business plan, doing market research, making financial projections and giving a presentation,” said Andrew. “They are required to meet with a pro bono business counselor, get a library card and use the Library’s resources.” The winners certainly benefited from the competition. Stacey Toussaint, President and CEO of Inside Out Tours, Inc. won $15,000 for having a first place plan to launch a “cultural tourism company, offering bus and walking tours of NYC, specializing in Brooklyn.” Toussaint said “The goal of entering and winning the business plan competition gave us an incentive to take classes at BPL’s Business Library and utilize Brooklyn’s small business centers rather than just rely on our own resources. We received training in marketing, creating financial statements, and writing a business plan. We also made valuable connections with other competition participants that have resulted in strategic relationships.” Runner up Elissa Olin, Founder & Owner of Green in BKLYN , an eco-friendly home goods & gift shop in Clinton Hill said “The prize money was the most visible and recognized resource. I couldn’t have stopped working my “day job” in the months before the shop opened if I hadn’t received the award. But an even longer lasting influence on the success of the business has been the media support and coverage. It gave us a leg up and created not only a buzz, but momentum, which has been instrumental in the success of the business in its first and, typically, most difficult year.” Olin described the experience as “more work than I could’ve imagined. If you can start, write and finish a business plan, you end up feeling like you can do just about anything.” Both report their businesses are running well, with sales up. They’re specifically more than 60% higher year-to-year in Olin’s case. The future looks bright for library support of entrepreneurs in New York. The NY Public Library and Queens Economic Development Corp. are following the example Brooklyn Public Library has set, and Citi has funded these programs as well. There are business plan competitions in each borough of New York that promote the use of public libraries. Some simple Internet searching turned up libraries all over the US that have resources for start-ups and small businesses as well as plan competitions and connections to college Business Schools. E-books and the Internet may be slowly eroding the original nature of libraries, but it is good to see the smart ones keeping themselves relevant to their community as places of resource, education and economic development. Do you have a local resource people should know about? Share it below. Business – Small business – Brooklyn Public Library – Business plan – Public library

Wozniak, Jobs, . . . and Wayne? The Mercury News heads to the Nevada desert and catches up with Ron Wayne, ” Apple’s forgotten founder .” Wayne was recruited by Steve Jobs to mediate disputes with co-founder Steve Wozniak and, in exchange for his help, was given ten percent of Apple’s stock, which, today would be worth a staggering $22 billion. But after 12 days with Jobs and Wozniak, who were unable to agree on strategy and had quickly gone into thousands of dollars in debt, Wayne had had enough. He quit Apple, selling back his shares for just $800. The Mercury News finds Wayne living off of social security checks and passing the time in casinos, declaring him “one of the most luckless men in the history of Silicon Valley.” Let that be a lesson to you: If Steve Jobs offers to give you 10 percent of his company, definitely do not say no. Want to see Mark Zuckerberg break a sweat? Just ask him about Facebook’s privacy policy . New York Times blogger Nick Bilton reported from last night’s D8 conference , writing that the 26-year-old CEO was “visibly uncomfortable and sweating profusely” as host Walt Mossberg grilled him about the site’s complicated privacy settings. Bilton notes that Zuckerberg he even took off his signature hooded sweatshirt. The most straightforward answer Facebook’s leader gave regarding privacy issues was, “There have been misperceptions that we are trying to make all information open…That’s completely false.” But he did take a definitive stance on whether or not he’s planning to take Facebook public (he isn’t). For now, Zuckerberg said, he plans to fuel the site’s tremendous growth by continuing to push the limits. “As companies get bigger people expect you to slow down and do less crazy stuff. I guess I hope we never do that.” The innovation dilemma. In his latest post, serial entrepreneur, B-school professor, and diagram impresario Steve Blank outlines the difficulties of continuing to innovate as your start-up transitions into a stable mid-size company and then a large company with several hundred employees. “Disruptive innovation in a large company,” he writes, “may require processes and individuals that look a lot like those in a startup.” Intuit founder Scott Cook has similar, and specific, advice in this 2009 Inc. piece on incubating new ideas while still staying focused on your current business. Is 35 months too long to wait for a patent? U.S. Patent and Trademark Office chief David Kappos think so. To the relief of inventors everywhere, he’s proposed a new way to expedite patent applications. If approved. the new three-tier system would allow inventors to pay more (on top of the typical $1,090 filing fee) to bump their application to the front of the approval line. The Wall Street Journal reports that the speedier patent review option is part of an Obama administration effort to ramp up the patent office’s capabilities. It could also nudge other government agencies into offering fast-track options, such as the State Department’s $60 expedited passport service. How to become an angel. Tuesday’s Angel Boot Camp in Boston brought together a diverse mix of entrepreneurs, angel investors, and angels-in-training, for a series of talks about all things angel-related. The most buzzed about panel? Tips on how to become a successful angel investor . If you weren’t able to attend, angel investor and tech honcho Don Dodge has a nice recap of the main points of the talk. Among the tips Dodge suggests is investing in people that you know and businesses you understand. He also suggests investing alongside other investors you trust. For those entrepreneurs hoping to land some of that angel investing money, check out our angel investing guide . Can Groupon morph Chicago into a VC hotspot? The top three centers for venture capitalism have always been in California, Massachusetts, and New York, but CB Insights thinks Groupon could change all that. On multiple occasions the state has broken into the top five ranking for dollars invested or deals, with a steady climb over the last four quarters (including a big bump from Groupon). CB Insights then measures how Chicago stacks up against Paul Graham from Y Combinator’s thesis about a region needing “nerds” and “rich people” to build a thriving ecosystem for startups. (via peHUB ) Skype and Kazaa founders return to online music. We first told you about online social music service Rdio in October , but today the promising start-up became official. Venture Beat explains that Rdio, founded by serial entrepreneurs Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis of Skype internet calls and the Kazaa music service, will store the music you listen to in the cloud, with the benefit of being able to play your music on any device you want. One of Rdio’s more interesting features is being able to follow and listen to your friends’ purchased music as well. Also unlike iTunes and its 99-cent-per-song model, Rdio (which is currently in a small beta testing program) will offer $4.99 monthly subscriptions for an unlimited number of songs, thought its catalog of songs is about half the size of that of iTunes. More from Inc. Magazine: Get this delivered to your inbox. Or get it on the Kindle Follow us on Twitter or Tumblr . Friend us on Facebook. Apply now for the 2010 Inc. 500|5000 . Facebook – Steve Jobs – Apple – Mark Zuckerberg – Rdio