On the heels of Border’s announcing the imminent closure of many stores, I ventured to the nearest bookstore and picked up a copy of The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes. I’m only two chapters in, but so far it’s GREAT. So far, Roy Cullen has been discussed, and his story is very inspiring (in certain ways).
He was in his early 30s when he decided to get into the budding oil industry in Texas. He wasn’t successful until he was at least 40. Cullen basically spent ten years educating himself on the industry. He worked for other people, he worked with other people, and basically failed time and time again for ten years. Then when he finally decided to go out on his own, trust everything he’d learned, he failed some more. He went from property to property, negotiating oil leases for pennies, taking all the risk himself. He promised profit-sharing for the landowners and (at least so far) was honest. His first success is just fun to read: he gathered his family around, and while they were all dressed in their nice Sunday clothes, he started his drill. Just as he predicted, he struck oil and the black goop erupted into the air while he danced underneath it and his family cheered.
After a few more successes, he was approached by his initial investor, Jim West. West wanted to invest $1 million in a new oil company with Cullen as the president owning 25% of the company. After a week of silence, West asked Cullen what was taking so long for an answer. Cullen responded with an offer of his own: that West and Cullen both put in $5000 with a 50/50 stake, and Cullen would remain in charge of everything. West was incredulous: he obviously couldn’t figure out why Cullen would offer such a crazy deal. Five thousand instead of one million? Cullen’s answer: “This way, I won’t be working for you.”
West and Cullen then flipped a coin to decide whose name would come first: Cullen won, and they founded Cullen & West. They bought two rigs of their own (still incredibly modest for the time) and set off to find more fields. Cullen’s insight to dig deeper than other oilmen required him to innovate: he found a unique way to shatter the shale beneath most oil fields, which landed him his next wildly successful rig. And the story continues.
The number of parallels between the early oil industry in Texas and modern Silicon Valley are piling up in surprising numbers. Hopefully I’ll be able to write more about them in future posts.