The Story of Chapter Zero

There is an ancient battle about whether it’s better, when you are counting, to start with “one” or to start with “zero”. English majors think the answer is obviously “one”, but many technical folks believe that it's better to start counting with “zero”. This was the issue behind the argument about whether the new millennium began in 2000 or 2001.

I won't get into the nerdy details, but “off-by-one errors” are one of the most common mistakes that programmers make, and often the root cause is counting from one instead of zero.

Given that books are full of words, it is probably a good thing that English majors dominate the publishing industry, but as a result, books always start with Chapter One.

Until now.

I decided to strike a decisive blow for technical people by starting my book with Chapter Zero.

Many of my early readers were engineers, and they loved the idea of chapter zero. My copy-editor (not an engineer) was simply confused. She “fixed” it without even talking to me, because she couldn't imagine why I'd want to do such a thing. I explained about the ancient battle and the year 2000 and how it wasn’t fair that engineers have never had a book numbered their way. She was stunned by my anguish. “I had no idea this was so important to you.” She was a good sport and changed it back.

So without further ado, here is your chance to read chapter zero. (To read more, I'm afraid you'll have to visit Amazon. :-)

How To Castrate a Bull

Chapter Zero

I am the product of a tryst in a squalid Times Square flophouse and was raised by a brothel owner and his opium-using wife. I am a high school dropout who started college at fourteen. My youth was spent hitchhiking and cutting the testicles off bulls. I sold my blood for money. I am an ordained minister and an atheist. I once ate dog meat and the still-beating heart of a snake. I made a billion dollars and I lost a billion dollars. I am presently employed as a shaman.

Or . . . I can say that I am the son of comfortable and educated middle-class parents. My father was an aerospace engineer while my mother took care of the three children. I went to college and studied to become an engineer like my father. I earned a computer science degree from Princeton in 1986 and headed off to Silicon Valley to write software. In 1992 I joined two colleagues to start a data storage firm called NetApp, where I still work today.

Both accounts are true. My story, like everyone’s, depends on the circumstance in which it is told.

This book is a memoir of a company and of a man, because both stories are intertwined. NetApp started as an idea scribbled on a placemat, became a real business, and quickly grew to a Fortune 1000 company. Our sales are about four billion dollars a year. I began as a software engineer, became a manager, and eventually developed into a businessman. In a sense, NetApp and I grew up together. Being there from the very beginning has given me an amazing tour through business. I’ve seen—and participated in—venture capital financing, management shake-ups, hypergrowth, going public, economic disaster, strategic reversal, and recovery. It’s rare for one person to survive such a volatile trip, seeing the whole thing as an insider, so I’ve tried to capture my experiences and distill lessons that may be useful to other businesspeople. I also want to tell a story that non–business readers can enjoy.

NetApp sells mostly to large corporations, so it isn’t a household name—even though the company has thousands of employees, billions in revenue, and offices in over a hundred countries. Let me briefly describe what NetApp does. We sell giant boxes of disk drives to big companies that store large amounts of data—Internet e-mail, X-rays and CAT scans for hospitals, design data for new cars and computers—and we help customers manage all that data. If you’ve flown Southwest Airlines, seen Lord of the Rings, or driven a Mercedes, then you are an indirect NetApp customer. Major banks, telephone companies, and retailers around the world use our equipment to track customer records, which covers still more people. (I try to avoid getting too technical in this book, but there are more details in “Interlude: What NetApp Does” after Chapter One. There’s also a glossary for when I do use jargon.)

I care more about themes and lessons than about chronology, but stories lose their meaning without a sense of time, so I divided the book into three parts: NetApp’s childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Childhood is about getting started, raising money, venture capitalists, and so on—plus one chapter on my own beginnings. Adolescence, in NetApp’s case, was a time of rapid growth in the dot-com boom, and then a sudden, painful end to rapid growth. Adulthood is about becoming a grown-up company, selling largely to other grown-up companies. The bull of the title is a metaphor for risk. In some ways, the first part is about risk, the second about growth, and the third about success, but in fact, all three themes run through all three parts, especially risk.

This is my personal journey as well. In Part One, I am a programmer, spokesman, and company gadfly. In Part Two, I am a vice president with a $100 million budget and a staff of hundreds. In Part Three, I have no direct reports but influence NetApp’s strategic direction by trying to predict the future.

There is more than one way to tell a story; however, this book is the best way I know to relate not just what I’ve learned but—more important—how I learned it. Let’s start with my first business lesson ever:

Don’t listen to my mother.

Comments

[Bob]

The millenium counting example is cute, if a bit counterintuitive :).

[Justin Warren]

Great intro Dave! And congratulations on the book.

[Dave]

If, as you say, both accounts of your youth are true, then I can't wait to find out in what circumstances you can honestly say you were a hitchhiking castrater of bulls...

[Sudhanshu]

A very welcome addition to the club. Enough read about the Intels and IBMs of the world. We have been wanting to know what "Netapps" is all about, all this time.... :)

[Steve]

Awesome Intro. I'll have to buy the book to see if our memories from NetApp align from the late 80s and early 90s. I just this week retired my 1998 "Gamera" release t-shirt. Too many holes to wear in public anymore. Sadly it will be putting a shine on my car soon enough. Just one more time you should print a ".com era" type T-shirt for all NetApp employees. I have the "Licensed to sell" kickoff long-sleeve which I still wear, and a few others. Thanks for the great memories.

[Steve]

Hey wait, I mean late 1990s and early 2000s. Man, I'm old.

[Steve Klinkner]

Unfortunately I didn't join NetApp until one the chapters which is more palatable to English majors.

However, it's a great place to work. Thanks for that, Dave.

[Dave replies: You are welcome. I did it just for you!]

[Dan Pancamo]

Sounds Great! Will you be replicating a copy to your favorite customers? :)

dan

[Shibin Zhang]

Dave: Are you the No. 1 engineer of NetApp?

[Dave replies: James Lau and I were the first two engineers at NetApp, so perhaps that qualifies me as a “number one engineer”. On the other hand, neither James nor I have done any product development for a long time. Both of us now work on higher-level corporate strategy. So at this point, we aren’t engineers at all, number one or otherwise.]

[Chad Sakac]

Dave - looking forward to buying and reading the book!

Congrats on the book, the success - and as always - may we meet on the battlefield!

(from an EMCer)

[Devang Panchigar]

Dave, great blog, nice to read a engineering perspective.

[Vonny]

I loved the "don't listen to my mother" since I went to high school with her. I reconnected with her October 2006 at the 50th reunion in Stockton.

[gordon anderson]

Hilarious! During the initial nanosecond I parsed "Chapter 0" as leading towards 'Chapter 11', so was expecting bad news for NetApp. Thankfully not.

The segway onto Testicle removal was too much and I cracked up laughing as I skimmed the article - a great opener for your book.

offtopic - ZFS patents

Id love to see a public announcement that Sun and NetApp have granted each other free use of the disputed patents. Who wins is less about technical innovation and more about lawyers fees, and I think fighting ZFS puts the community of open source developers off-side when they're an important source of NetApp recommendations. just a thought.

Hope the book does well, these success stories egg us code-tinkerers onto great things.

gord.

[Amit Shiknis]

Congratulations on the bookWriting a book is a huge undertaking, and it’s impressive that you’ve managed to do it while working on all the other things that you do. I'm very much curious to know about story of "Netapp".

Looking forward to see your book soon!.

~Amit Shiknis.

[Petra]

Well, as a mother, I find your ending rather provocative…so I guess I’ll have to buy it to see where you take it.

I’m sure you must resolve it positively to stay out of your mom’s and wife’s collective doghouses!

Seriously, looks like a great read. I like the W.S. Burroughs-esque introduction. 

[George Hyman]

Chapter Zero brings back the memories of the DEC (bits 0-31) vs IBM (1-32) numbering styles/wars as well!

How about an audio edition for us commuters - maybe you could even be the narrator for your own book!

[Jorge]

Hi Dave

I have a question with regards to NetApp, please.

What do you use for Multi-pathing, what is the NetApp application?

EMC uses Powerpath and HDS Hitachi uses HDLD, I'm very familiar with Multi-path applications and would love to know what is used for NetApp, perhaps Data ONTAP?

Thanks Jorg

[Geert]

Hi Dave,

I just handed out two copies to two friends of mine who started a new company (despite given climate).

Let's see where they're at 15 years from now... ;-)