Chapter 4. HYPERGROWTH: On Goals, Doubling, Ancestors, and Pain

A company is most vulnerable when it has completed one major goal and not yet signed up for another: this was our position after going public. Dan said that an IPO is like graduating from college. For years you focus on getting that diploma, but then you leave school and it's time to go out and show the world what you can do. Dan was warning us not to be too pleased with ourselves. By some measures, NetApp was remarkably successful, but in the computer industry, we were something else: small and weak, with much larger competitors hell-bent on killing us, and customers who weren't big enough to sustain us. Going public is the beginning of a tough fight, not the end of one.

To survive, ...

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