The Story of Grandma at the Bottom of the Dot-Com Crash
The dot-com crash was hard on a lot of people. At NetApp (NTAP), the stock dropped from a peak of about $150 down to $6. Hard for investors and also for many employees.
I remember the first shareholders meeting after the stock had hit its $6 low. It had "recovered" to about $12, so it wasn't quite at its worst ever, but the mood in the room was not at all cheery. Still, Dan gave a good presentation, and then opened up the floor for questions.
A small, old woman got up, clutching her walker, and slowly made her way to the microphone. She had a quavery voice. "I was watching the stock ticker a couple months ago. When I saw my beloved Network Appliance hit $6, I almost fell out of my wheelchair rushing to the phone to call my broker..."
What flashed through my head was, "Oh my God, Grandma sold it all at the bottom." As if I didn't feel bad enough already.
She continued, "...and I told him to buy as much as we could get our hands on. Mr. Warmenhoven, I've doubled my money since then. Here is my question. Whatever you are doing, are you going keep doing it?"
After a short silence, as her question sank in, the whole audience started clapping, and then laughing. One simple question completely changed the mood of the room. I've always wondered whether she did that on purpose, just to stop people from being so grumpy.
I remember the first shareholders meeting after the stock had hit its $6 low. It had "recovered" to about $12, so it wasn't quite at its worst ever, but the mood in the room was not at all cheery. Still, Dan gave a good presentation, and then opened up the floor for questions.
A small, old woman got up, clutching her walker, and slowly made her way to the microphone. She had a quavery voice. "I was watching the stock ticker a couple months ago. When I saw my beloved Network Appliance hit $6, I almost fell out of my wheelchair rushing to the phone to call my broker..."
What flashed through my head was, "Oh my God, Grandma sold it all at the bottom." As if I didn't feel bad enough already.
She continued, "...and I told him to buy as much as we could get our hands on. Mr. Warmenhoven, I've doubled my money since then. Here is my question. Whatever you are doing, are you going keep doing it?"
After a short silence, as her question sank in, the whole audience started clapping, and then laughing. One simple question completely changed the mood of the room. I've always wondered whether she did that on purpose, just to stop people from being so grumpy.
This is a great story.
I remember her well. She was the central person in the Woodside Investment Club, a bunch of retired and mostly widowed women who were renowned for beating every major index for over a decade. Don Valentine described her as "perhaps the greatest investor of our time".
Once, when I completed my presentation showing market shares in every category, and EMC was number one almost everywhere, she stepped up to the microphone and asked very politely: "Mr. Warmenhoven, based on the presentation you just gave, why shouldn't I buy EMC?"
I was quite stunned.
And another time, she chastised me for the lack of cookies at our shareholder meeting. Larry Carter was on our board at the time and was also the CFO of Cisco. She went up to Larry and said she enjoyed the Cisco meetings better because they had cookies, and NetApp really should have cookies at their annual meeting.
After that, we have always had cookies.
This woman was incredible.
Posted by: Dan Warmenhoven | April 23, 2007 at 10:33 AM