Jonathan, it’s just awesome to hear from you. There was only so much we could fit in the book, but a lot more Neil and I talked about with the author. You were a gentleman in a sea of sharks. I’ll always be grateful for the chance to have worked with you. - Ross

There was one chapter that Neil and I wanted to write at the end of the book, but it never did come together. It was going to be a list of Neil-isms. All the pithy phrases that Neil coined to capture our culture. Ie: “The most important thing”. Chris, there was one that applied to your post. “High performance adult culture”. It roughly translated (expanded) into really smart people, do your best work, don’t suffer fools, ’management’ would be transparent/honest, and we’d share the good and the bad news. I remember a few Monday all-hand meetings at the Far West building where I had to stand up and say, ‘well the good news is we just closed such-and-such deal. The bad news is that we have about 3 weeks of cash left.’

Adam interviewed 20 people across a year’s time, and I think I read about the dentist drill as the most common memory.

Here's what I think the genesis was, but I could also be remembering something that never happened :-). Recognizing spouses and families for their silent contributions of support behind the scenes was something we wanted to promote from the beginning. By the time this event (~'97 prob) was being planned, we'd already ballooned to dozens of employees. So it had to be formalized into a 'thing'. But, Neil and I didn't want typical and boring. I don't remember who actually said 'pig' not 'BBQ' first, but I know it was an immediate and unanimous yes vote. It was just edgy enough to receive at least one 'gross!' vote. Thus 'family outing' but we were not yet confident enough in the idea to promote Pig Roast over family. LOL. -- Here's another factoid. This took place at Medway Ranch, which was out in Lakeway off 620. Lovely spot. I'm sure it's 500 density packed houses these days.

Thus why.. this forum is great. I love this story. Shit that everyone of us remembers, but just would only work in the movie version of the book ! (Seriously though, Charles Sansbury's wife yells across a parking lot at me last week.. I didn't see her.. and says "I stayed up all night last night to read the book. It's great. You need to make a movie version of it!"). Neil and I hired Adam to write this thing and told him that his marching orders were "write a book and tell us what happened. We either don't know or don't remember." Charlie, I think we need to get your story in the second printing LOL. -- Thanks for taking the time.

Our original Dr. Evil !!

Phil, this is great.. Im sitting here staring at the image and remembering a variety of things that went into that. Getting the deal done with Chicago Tribune, which I believe were our first paying customer, and I still have a copy of the invoice in a frame. Internally negotiating the StoryServer 4 logo. All my "crazy" that insisted we pivot our positioning from content management to go take on Broadvision. Which by the way was probably the right move, but IMO I made a bit mess with how we sold that pivot. Oh, and the counter !!! for how many pages were served to date. -- Really fun. Thanks for sharing.

Although I was long gone by then, your memory connects back to what Neil and I set out to do: create a company full of A players that was fun to work at. Neil later evolved this to "a high performance adult culture". In the early days of turning this into a way of life, everyone was "in". Everyone was at 99-100% of what they could put in. And I'd say that even more important was that each department understood why they needed to go to the mat for the other groups. The classic marketing vs. sales bullshit, or engineering vs. marketing crap.. we kept that out for a long time. Everyone saluted, and everyone knew that it was about getting the deal done. I remember Con coming up to me on the last day of either Q3 or Q4 1997 and asking my why the sales bell wasn't ringing yet, and should he be worried ? Imagine that -- an engineer calculating the revenue line in his head -- You and Mike squatting onsite until you had a signed contact is just that. -- Thanks for sharing.

Gary and Woodstock were a once in a lifetime duo. Your west coast team were such a machine. I don't remember if I ever went on a sales call with both of them, but I can imagine Gary as the innocent church choir boy, and Woodstock as the gentle purple distracting guy.. and the two of them acting out a Kill Bill scene before the customer knew what happened to them. -- Thanks for sharing, Matthew.