TAPE SUCKS: Inside Data Domain, A Silicon Valley Growth Story

This fear-based behavior can scarcely be overstated. Large enterprises consistently prioritize their buying decisions to minimize the risk of embarrassment backlash. Huge premiums are paid in the misguided name of "playing it safe." Dominant suppliers carefully cultivate and nurture this incumbent bias.

Somebody once asked me how he or she would know whether they were a driver, and I answered, "you better find out before we do." In other words, be more demanding of yourself. Are you increasing the company's speed or not?

It is remarkable how little our strategy changed from dollar zero to a billion in sales. The most important thing we did throughout the journey: resist the ever-present temptation to muck with the strategy.

Trust your team—nothing else scales.

A challenged product sector is obviously a much better starting point than attacking a category that is favorably regarded. When picking a fight, don't seek out the most formidable opponent.

Becoming a value-led organization doesn't happen automatically. We imported somebody else's culture with every person we hired, and therefore had to undo a bunch of stuff. We called it "re-programming." People learn culture based on what behavior they observe around them, good, bad, or somewhere in between.

They don't "work for you"—we all work for the company. As a manager, you are there to help them succeed.

Being cash positive, we really didn't need the money for operations, but a strong balance sheet reassures enterprise customers so they buy gear from a small supplier.

Startup CEOs are more like plow horses than racehorses. A racehorse gets pampered all week, to be taken out of the barn for a few minutes to race on Saturday afternoon; startup CEOs live 12+ hours a day behind the plow. It doesn't feel so glamorous when you get home at 11 at night and you need to get up at 5 am to catch a flight out of town.