How to Castrate a Bull

How to Castrate a BullDave 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.