How to Castrate a Bull: Unexpected Lessons on Risk, Growth, and Success in Business
- 2h 50m
- Dave Hitz, Pat Walsh
- John Wiley & Sons (US)
- 2009
Dave Hitz likes to solve fun problems. He didn’t set out to be a Silicon Valley icon, a business visionary, or even a billionaire. But he became all three. It turns out that business is a mosaic of interesting puzzles like managing risk, developing and reversing strategies, and looking into the future by deconstructing the past.
As a founder of NetApp, a data storage firm that began as an idea scribbled on a placemat and now takes in $4 billion a year, Hitz has seen his company go through every major cycle in business—from the Jack-of-All-Trades mentality of a start-up, through the tumultuous period of the IPO and the dot-com bust, and finally to a mature enterprise company. NetApp is one of the fastest-growing computer companies ever, and for six years in a row it has been on Fortune magazine’s list of Best Companies to Work For. Not bad for a high school dropout who began his business career selling his blood for money and typing the names of diseases onto index cards.
With colorful examples and anecdotes, How to Castrate a Bull is a story for everyone interested in understanding business, the reasons why companies succeed and fail, and how powerful lessons often come from strange and unexpected places.
In this Book
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How to Castrate a Bull—Unexpected Lessons on Risk, Growth, and Success in Business
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Chapter Zero
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Before NetApp—On Computers, Colleges, Castration, and Risk
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Starting NetApp—On Toasters, Angels, Resellers, and Ferraris
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CEO Lessons—On Pixie Dust, Decision Making, Candor, and Going Public
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Hypergrowth—On Goals, Doubling, Ancestors, and Pain
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Values and Culture—On Dilbert, Drooling, Lies, and Game Theory
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Managing Engineers—On Development, Consensus, Doctor Death, and Magic
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Customers—On Love, Enterprise, Simplicity, and Partners
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Strategic Change—On Reversing Course, Chocolate, Debates, and Core Beliefs
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Vision—On Whining, Eras, Future History, and the Meaning of Life
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Early NetApp Business Plan
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NetApp Company Values
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Bibliography
