Sunday, June 20, 2010

Takeaways from a Silicon Valley Legend


I was fortunate enough to listen to a motivational talk and go out to dinner with Tom Mendoza, a Silicon Valley legend, in the fall of last year.
Tom was one of the original founders of Network Appliance (NetApp). If you haven't heard of NetApp, they are ~$3.5 billion company that competes with the likes of HP, EMC, and IBM. During my experience competing against and almost working for the storage giant, I have found their customers love their technology and they have built a fantastic company.
The head wrestling coach from the high school I volunteer at brought Tom in to speak to our students about what he learned from wrestling and how he has applied it to his personal and professional life. It was an awesome experience to meet and learn from one of the best.

Just to give you a quick history of their stock price, NetApp went public in late 1995 for ~$2.00. Since then, the stock has split 4x, peaked around $150 a share (during the bubble in Silicon Valley) and currently sits ~$40 a share. Both Tom and his wife have put their fortune to good use, among other things, they endowed the University of Notre Dame's College of Business in 2000.
Here are a few quotes and takeaways from sitting down with Tom...
  1. I look for people who are young in their career and hungry, that take ownership, and I can mentor.

  2. If we remove the founders from our business and it will fail - we have not created a sustainable business model

  3. How do I motivate people? I fire them.

  4. The reason I like wrestling as a sport is because it matches people who are even and then you see which athlete wins

  5. 90% of top performers from a Yale study showed they all had one thing in common - they all wrote down their goals

  6. Adversity doesn't build character.... it REVEALS peoples' true character

  7. It's not all about business - tell stories, tell jokes, build relationships, include people in the conversation, have fun


















1 comment:

  1. AnonymousJune 30, 2010 3:52 PM

    Wow, these are great takeaways Bob thanks for sharing.

    Although they are all great I think number 7 is so often overlooked for students new to the business worlds.

    I think people try to have the perfectly formatted resume or pretend to be so polished in an interview they loose site of what business is about. People.

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