This past Tuesday I had the pleasure of listening to Peter Ueberroth deliver the keynote address at Seattle's Zino Zillionaire startup competition. While many only know Ueberroth as a the sixth Commissioner of Major League Baseball (1984-1989), he has an amazing list of credits to his name, not the least of which is having been named 1984 Man of the Year by TIME Magazine. Since 1990, he has also been Managing Director of Contrarian Group, Inc., and investment firm focused on small and medium-sized companies. Among Contrarian's successes is the sale of GetThere to The Sabre Group in 2000 for over $750 million.

Ueberroth offered the audience 8 factors that his firm considers when evaluating companies for investment/acquisition. Ueberroth was passionate about many of these points, several of which I found particularly interesting, especially in light of the panel, led by Henry Blodget, that I attended yesterday at Web 2.0 Expo titled "Cashing Out: When, How, and How Much." Here are paraphrases of Ueberroth's list:

1. You don't "run" or "manage" a company; you compete! Ueberroth's point was that if you aren't in it to (his quote) "beat somebody's brains out," then you're a lightweight. "Management" and "running things" is for functionaries and bureaucrats.

2. Integrity is an absolute necessity. You have to keep your promises (note that this apparently doesn't preclude you from beating somebody's brains out).

3. A company needs "2 at the top." Titles don't matter, but there needs to be two at the top, balancing each other out. Some classic (and newer) examples are Bill & Paul (then later, Bill & Steve), Brin & that other guy, Jobs and... maybe Woz? Anyway, you get the idea. The interesting twist here was that in Ueberroth's mind, one of the two people's big jobs was to plug into Washington to influence legislation. Based on Ueberroth's personal experience, "the entity with the most power to ruin your business is the government."

4. Headquarter location matters--and it should be in the suburbs. This was an interesting one. Ueberroth's take was that suburbs provide better life for families, remove the distraction and the noise of city centers, place families closer to schools, etc. This was in sharp contrast to the consistent theme at Web 2.0 Expo that New York is a great place to launch your startup. But maybe Ueberroth was thinking of non-tech companies? He didn't specify. But talk of suburbs certainly never came up at Web 2.0 Expo.

5. Employees--all of them--need to have a stake in the company. "It doesn't necessarily have to be straight equity, but everyone has to feel that they are in the game, and they have to know how to keep score."

6. Companies must demand--not ask, not expect, but demand--service from their service partners. "Your attorneys should be a profit center, not a cost center. The same goes for your accounting firm." His point was that (back to the sports analogies again) everyone must be moving the ball down-field.

7. Unless we (his firm) can really add value by investing, we don't invest. Everyone has to bring something to the table, and it can't just be cash.

8. "We don't believe in exits." Ueberroth repeated this several times throughout his talk, probably because nearly all of the startups pitching at the Zino event talked about their exit strategies. His point was that you shouldn't enter a business thinking about your exit strategy; you should enter a business to profit, to grow, and to expand. If you get that right, exit strategies will emerge. (This was actually the one sentiment in this list that found support from one of Blodget's panelists at his Web 2.0 Expo session today: Kevin Ryan, co-founder and former CEO of DoubleClick and long-time entrepreneur and investor, echoed a similar idea about not focusing on exits too soon.)

Ueberroth is clearly an "old-school" player in business, but no one should confuse that with an inability to win. He clearly loves to compete, and it appears that he has no intentions of slowing things down any time soon.