Appendix A. Early NetApp Business Plan
This is a very early NetApp business plan, requesting seed-round funding, written by Mike Malcolm, James Lau, and me in the two months following our first discussions. As you can see, we did not yet have NetApp as a company name. Back then we used the term server, as opposed to storage system, so you'll see some terminology differences from the rest of the book. In the book, I changed our early name from 1-800-SERVERS to 1-800-STORAGE to reduce confusion. Included at the end of the business plan is a preliminary specification for the product itself.
Be careful what lessons you take from this. Given that we never did manage to convince any venture capitalists to fund us until after we shipped product, perhaps ...
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