How to Castrate a Bull: Unexpected Lessons on Risk, Growth, and Success in Business

Dave Hitz didn't set out to be a Silicon Valley icon, a business visionary, or even a billionaire, but he became all three. Perhaps it's because he likes to solve fun puzzles. Somewhere along the way, Hitz discovered that business is a mosaic of fascinating puzzles that involve managing risk, developing and reversing strategies, and looking into the future by deconstructing the past.

Filled with colorful examples and anecdotes, Dave Hitz's autobiographical book, How to Castrate a Bull, is a story for anyone interested in understanding business, the reasons why companies succeed and fail, and how powerful lessons often come from strange and unexpected places—even from the open range. Before his career in Silicon Valley, Dave worked as a cowboy, where he got valuable management experience by herding, branding, and castrating cattle.

As a founder of NetApp, a data storage and management firm that began as an idea scribbled on a placemat and now takes in $4 billion a year, Dave 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 dot-com boom and bust, and finally to a mature enterprise. 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.

Written for anyone who wants to know what it takes to succeed in today's volatile marketplace, How to Castrate a Bull relates not only what lessons Dave Hitz has learned in the course of his remarkable life but more important how he learned them.

"Dave Hitz brings a colorful, refractive prism to the views of CEO success. His work is a unique—and delightful—look at how successful CEOs should manage risk, deal with failure, and conceive success."

—Bill McDermott president and CEO, global f ield operations, and executive board member, SAP AG

"This is the real inside story of a one-in-a-billion, against-all-odds success that will prove to be a classic 'how to' book for generations to come. The overt and covert lessons are astounding, and a superb contradiction to today's endless tales of corporate dirtbags. Hitz has proven that good guys can win—without the need to lie, cheat, and steal. If there has ever been a better example of a cohesive management team than NetApp, I don't know what it is."

—Steve Duplessie founder and senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group

"Engaging and insightful. Hitz brings to life the behind-the-scenes dynamics of a high-growth technology company. A must-read for tech company executives."

—Warren Adelman president and COO, GoDaddy.com

"An authentic and witty chronicle of an iconic Silicon Valley company, covering all aspects of starting and growing a successful enterprise. Filled with important and useful information delivered with insight and humor, with clear prose and memorable stories to illustrate key lessons for anyone interested in starting a company or understanding how Silicon Valley really works."

—Chuck Holloway Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers Professor of Management, emeritus, and co-director of the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, Stanford Graduate School of Business

At Deep Springs, the actual act of castrating an 800-pound bull, which earlier seemed impossible, became imperative.  At the ranch Hitz learned lessons about self-sufficiency, risk taking, and trust, that were invaluable in the business word when he made the jump from software coder in a start-up to overseeing an engineering department of hundreds, and later serving as the company visionary.

Through dynamic example and colorful illustration, Hitz shows how powerful learning tools are forged from experience and experience often comes from strange and unexpected places. Using humor and insight, Hitz’s experiences an engineer thrust into managing hundreds of people and his time as a cowboy/student in Deep Springs, California, into a new type of business book. What will surprise readers is that problems aren’t to be avoided but rather sought out eagerly. In many instances, a reader need not learn a new technique or process for dealing with problems, they just have to look at their own experiences in a new way.

Pat Walsh is the founding editor of MacAdam/Cage, a publisher of literary fiction and narrative non-fiction.

1. Before NetApp On Computers, Colleges, Castration, and Risk.

Interlude: What NetApp Does.

2. Starting NetApp On Toasters, Angels, Resellers, and Ferraris.

Interlude: Redundant Array of Pyramid Hieroglyphics (RAPH).

3. CEO Lessons On Pixie Dust, Decision Making, Candor, and Going Public.

Interlude: Tom Mendoza’s Lessons on Public Speaking.

PART TWO: Turbulent Adolescence.

4. Hypergrowth On Goals, Doubling, Ancestors, and Pain.

Interlude: How to Fail in Executive Staff Presentations.

5. Values and Culture On Dilbert, Drooling, Lies, and Game Theory.

Interlude: Lawyers Aren’t Evil Fairness and Morality Are Not Their Job.

6. Managing Engineers On Development, Consensus, Doctor Death, and Magic.

Interlude: Scientific-Truth and Useful-Truth.

PART THREE: Grown-Up Company.

7. Customers On Love, Enterprise, Simplicity, and Partners.

Interlude: Shark Island A Parable of Risk and Mass Media.

8. Strategic Change On Reversing Course, Chocolate, Debates, and Core Beliefs.

Interlude: Speckled-Egg Thinking.

9. Vision On Whining, Eras, Future History, and the Meaning of Life.

Appendix A. Early NetApp Business Plan.

Appendix B. NetApp Company Values.

Glossary.

Bibliography.

Acknowledgments.

The Author.

Index.