“It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everybody would do it. The hard… is what makes it great.”

That’s a quote from one of my favorite baseball movies, A League of Their Own. It is said by manager Jimmy Dugan (played by Tom Hanks) to a player after she tells him she’s quitting because the game is too hard.

To paraphrase Jimmy Dugan…

Early investing is supposed to be hard. That’s why the returns can be so high.

I like the baseball analogy. In baseball, players who fail to get a hit seven out of 10 times are considered great hitters. But if they fail eight out of 10 times, they’re bums.

Hitters never mosey up to home plate intending to strike out. But it happens. My Baltimore Orioles just completed a three-game series where they averaged 17 strikeouts a game. (They’re still a playoff-worthy team!)

Similarly, no startup investor plans for his investments to fail. But it happens.

Because baseball has accumulated over a century’s worth of statistics, players know exactly where they stand. A quick look at a handful of player metrics will reveal how good (or not) he is.

Equity crowdfunding is brand spanking new and stands at the opposite end of the spectrum. It has a complete dearth of hard information to indicate how well or poorly you and your startup portfolio are doing.

This also makes equity crowdfunding different from public stock investing and most other kinds of investing where track records exist.

Many Questions and Few Answers

For early investors and new crowdfunders, there are many questions and few answers. (But don’t worry; I have some.)

What metrics should you slap on your portfolio? Should you go for a 30% hit rate, like a ballplayer’s “.300” batting average? How much profit should your portfolio generate?

Ballplayers who generate or drive in 100 runs (called “runs batted in” or RBIs) in a season are on top of their game.

What are your benchmarks for driving in dollars? Where should you look? At the VC world? At the public stock investing world?

What constitutes a reasonable but ambitious goal?

You should have some idea. Otherwise, you could be doing extremely well and not realize it. The opposite is worse. You surely don’t want to be underperforming and not know it.

Equity crowdfunding is a new type of early-stage investing. Lacking historical data, let’s do the next best thing. Let’s see what clues we can glean from how public and private stock investors rate their own performance and portfolios.