Siebel &MontanaSoftware mogul giving back to land, people
ENDLESS ADVENTURE. TIMELESS TRADITION.
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The Siebel How he’s touching the heart and the heartland of Montana
brand
In the middle of moving a herd of
black angus cattle from one pasture
to another, Tom Siebel dismounts his
horse and starts picking up stray pieces of
old trash—baling wire, odd pieces of rusted
metal, glass discolored by the years of
exposure to the elements. “Hey, this could
be a meth lab from 1929,” Siebel jokes in
his gravelly voice. Coming from anyone
else, the statement might earn a chuckle.
But for Siebel, the man behind the Montana
Meth Project, it carries a weighty message.
He’s invested more than $10 million into
ridding the state of what he calls “the
devil’s drug.”
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It’s midmorning on the Dearborn Ranch. The sun is starting to beat down hard and a trickle of sweat collects on the back of Siebel’s baggy blue shirt. The cattle move slowly but willingly except for a few confused calves who bolt from the herd every once in a while only to be headed off by Siebel or one of the ranch hands, Todd Krenning, Shane Hoopes, and Pete Petersen. Pedro, a young chocolate Lab, tries his hand at being a cattle dog, with little luck.
Traffic is slow on Highway 287, which cuts through the more than 90,000-acre ranch. The Reef hovers over the south side like a wave of grass and granite ready to crash down at any moment. Coburn Mountain, visible from almost every corner of the ranch, stands like a sentinel in the distance. Ranch hand and Siebel’s “get-it-done” guy Rocky Harber routinely tells visitors to the ranch to use the 5,280-foot peak as an orientation point, if they get lost. A lone RV heading west and a couple of pickup trucks stop to let the cattle cross the road. It’s a slow day; luckily no one’s in a hurry to be anywhere in particular, not even Siebel, who’s anticipating the arrival of his wife and four kids later in the day.
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Ninety thousand acres is a large chunk of land for a single person to own. It roughly stretches from Interstate 15, near Wolf Creek, to Bowman’s Corners, straddles several miles of the Dearborn River and reaches over to the outskirts of Craig. If Siebel stands in the middle of it, he could fairly claim that he owns everything in sight. But he doesn’t look at it that way. He just thinks of himself as a temporary custodian and plans to make the most of his time with it.
“I want this to be the best run ranch in the state,” he says. Along with his 50,000-acre N Bar Ranch near Grass Range, the Siebel cattle operation ships about 1.5 million pounds of beef a year and puts up about 3,500 tons of hay.
“This is a working ranch, but with Tom, wildlife always wins out to cattle,” Harber says.
Indeed, Siebel and his staff work with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other management agencies to make sure he’s using best
management practices. The 2,000 pairs of cows and calves are kept out of delicate riparian areas and are rotated frequently enough to maintain healthy grasslands. Parts of the ranch are under FWP’s block-management program, which allows public hunting to those who ask. According to Harber, FWP has released several rehabilitated wildlife species onto the ranch. There are plots dedicated to upland gamebird habitat and areas where organic means have been used for weed abatement. And except for the few modern structures—including a home, a barn and a new arena, all built to blend with the environment—the land probably looks similar to the way it did more than one hundred years ago when the small town of Dearborn Crossing was founded, thrived, and died, before the turn of the twentieth century.
In a volume called Miners and Travelers’ Guide, which was published in 1865, John Mullan wrote about the area: “Situated, as it is,
February 2005—Thomas siebel announces The esTablishmenT of the Montana Meth Project, a charitable organization funded through a $5.6 million grant from the Thomas
and Stacey Siebel Foundation.August 2005—Siebel kicks off a hard-hitting, multi-
media campaign geared to exposing Montana teenagers to the ugly reality of methamphetamine addiction. As part of the campaign, organizers purchased 18,000 television minutes, 18,000 radio minutes, 50 billboards and numerous newspapers advertisements. At the same time, the group launched two Web sites www.montanameth.org and www.notevenonce.com
March 2006—The Montana Meth Project completes its first round of advertising, and begins an intense study of the impact the campaign had on Montana teenagers throughout the six months the commercials saturated the market. Project coordinators said the first phase of the project made more than 33 million “impressions” on Montana residents, and generated 460 news stories across the state.
April 2006—Siebel reveals that surveys of about 1,460 respondents indicate that 90 percent of the teenagers, young adults and parents reported seeing the advertisements on television. Two-thirds of those people surveyed also remembered the anti-meth advertising from the radio, in print publications, and on billboards. Survey results showed that parent/teenager discussions about the drug increased dramatically.
April 2006—Siebel unveils the second phase of the Montana Meth Project’s public service campaign with the release of new print, radio and television commercials. The software mogul says he’ll follow up his previous $5 million donation with a similar one to fund the project’s operations in 2001. However, he said he wouldn’t be able to continue to finance the project indefinitely.
April 2006—Siebel introduces the Paint the State Contest for children ages 13 through 17.
He explains that he has been overwhelmed by teenagers’ response to the Montana Meth Project, and he thought a large-scale, public art contest would be an excellent way to involve the youths in the anti-meth campaign. Participants in the contest from across the state were eligible to share in $300,000 in cash prizes.
August 2006—Alexa Audet of Townsend is announced the grand prize winner of Paint the State and collects a $13,000 prize. First-, second- and third-place winners were selected at the county level, and were awarded $3,000, $2,000 and $1,000 in prizes respectively. The prize winners were among 660 teenagers across Montana’s 56 counties to participate. The young artists used buses, hay bales, garbage cans, teepees, and even the sides of cows and sheep to present their anti-meth messages. Audet, whose venue was a wall at a public swimming pool, painted a portrait of a mermaid silhouetted against a vibrant sunset. The serene scene is shattered by a jagged line and blackness. The message captured in the mural reads, “Shattered hopes, dreams and all things imagined. With meth, it’s never a pretty picture.”
Fall 2006—Siebel is expected to wrap up the second phase of the Montana Meth Project campaign, and to release follow-up survey results
The Timeline
56 M O N T A N A M A G A Z I N E . C O M
by Carolynn Bright
58 M O N T A N A M A G A Z I N E . C O M
midway between Fort Benton and the Prickly Pear gold mines, it is worthy on examination on the part of those who propose to settle in the country. I examined it on my return from Fort Benton, June, 1862 … and it was on this trip that I was struck with the richness of the soil and the extent of agricultural land here found.
It is a favorite resort for game, and sheltered, as it is, by high rock walls from the cold bleak winds which sweep across the plains, for a choice site for farms.”
A small cemetery kept tidy on a knoll near the Dearborn River offers a brief history of some of the people who settled in the area that is now part of Siebel’s ranch.
“John H. Wareham, Born Dec. 24, 1844, died July 3, 1878, Killed by Indians.”
“T.M. Brown, Died April 10, 1885, Aged 55 years, God doeth all things well.”
A small headstone with the name Brassard carved into it marks the place where thirty-four-year-old Edmond Brassard was laid to rest after bleeding to death from an ax injury.
Closer to the center of the ranch is the fenced grave of Ivan “Ivie” Moore, whose death at age nine was a prelude to the most scandalous event of the area at the time—the murder-suicide of his parents in 1886.
But since Tom and his wife, Stacey, bought the property from Michael Curran in 1998, the area has remained quiet except for the Fourth of July celebrations, the father-son get-together, and the old-fashioned square dances that the Siebel family hosts for friends and neighbors.
Harber sits on a rock perched high above the Dearborn River and watches a red-tailed hawk swoop down toward the water. It’s a place Harber jokingly calls “the-mother-
in-law’s” jump—a fall off the 270-foot cliff would surely end any argument. After nine years working on the ranch—eight of those for the Siebels—Harber is familiar with every species of wildlife, every wildflower and every bit of history on the ranch.
“I’ve rode horseback, drove, or four-wheeled every fence line,” he says in his Texas accent. “Sometimes all it has in common is it’s all beautiful.”
His job title, he says, is the “make-it-happen, get-it-done guy.” His list of qualifications suggests that he could make it rain if he wanted. He has a pyrotechnics license, can stage a barbecue in the middle of nowhere, takes excellent photographs, makes a can of pork-n-beans taste like a five-star meal, baby sits, coaches Siebel and his two sons in the roping arena, keeps the ranch’s fleet of white pick-up trucks spotless,
mans the sporting-clay triggers, drives cattle, saddles horses, and does pretty much everything else he’s asked to do.
“You don’t tell Tom your plate’s full,” Rocky says and laughs. “He’ll tell you how to build side-boards for that plate or just give you a platter.”
But in return Rocky gets a home on the ranch and an extended family.
“They’re an extraordinary family, but they’re just an ordinary family,” Rocky says. “Their kids walk around and eat popsicles just like everyone else. People always ask me, ‘How different are they?’ And I just say, ‘Hell, they’re human.’”
A bowl of Wheaties for breakfast, a turkey and cheese sandwich on wheat bread for lunch. A pair of Ariat cowboy boots, off-brand blue jeans and a Montana Highway Patrol ball cap. He wakes at 6:30 a.m., reads a few pages from The FirsT World War, by John Keegan. He prefers Macs to PCs and vaguely resembles Richard Gere, if Gere had pursued an MBA rather than acting. These are the details of Tom Siebel’s life when he’s at the Dearborn Ranch, which is about a third of the year.
The rest of his time he spends conducting business near his home in Woodland, California. There the details sound a little more impressive, if a little esoteric. He’s the chairman of First Virtual Group, a diversified holding company with interests in commercial real estate, agribusiness, and global investment management. He was the founder, chairman, and CEO of Siebel Systems, a software company that employed more than 7,000 employees in 29 countries and had an annual
59S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 6
revenue of $1.5 billion before merging with Oracle Corporation in 2005. Some of his awards include the 2003 Entrepreneurial Company of the Year by the Harvard Business School, the 2003 Master Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young, 2002 CEO of the Year by indusTryWeek and 2000 World’s Most Influential Software Company by Business Week. In an issue this year, Forbes magazine ranked him as the 486th richest person in the world with a net worth of $1.6 billion.
But before the billion, before he became the man behind the Montana Meth Project, before the MBA and the master’s degree in computer science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, he was a kid from northern Illinois working as a ranch hand in Red Lodge with a dream of someday owning his own ranch.
“This ranch is a lot larger than I ever imagined,” Siebel says. “But I’ve been enormously fortunate in my life. I’ve been able to carry on my life in an atypical fashion.”
By 3 p.m., the fence around the roping arena, which is made of recycled oil pipes, is too hot to touch. Even the calves look a little wilted. Siebel has gotten word that his family has landed in Great Falls and is en route to the ranch. Harber, Krenning, and Petersen ready some horses, anticipating that the four Siebel kids, who range in age from seven to eighteen will want to hit the saddle after the trip from California.
In the meantime, Siebel and Petersen practice in the arena. Siebel is the header and Petersen, the heeler. Rocky reclines on the small
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60 M O N T A N A M A G A Z I N E . C O M
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set of bleachers near the chutes and shouts pointers to the ropers.
If there’s anything Siebel likes to talk about more than the Montana Meth Project, it’s his own family. Earlier in the day, after breakfast, he watched a slide show of the weekend before when his oldest daughter, Taylor, invited several of her friends and their dads for a few days on the ranch. Siebel assembled the slide show himself and set it to music—“What a Day for a Daydream.” For a high-powered chairman of a diversified holding company, the moment seemed unusual. But for a father, it was a moment of unadulterated pride and, perhaps, disbelief at just how lucky he is.
“I never imagined I’d have this,” he said. “I wanted a place where my family and friends could experience Montana and ranch life. I wanted to expose my kids to a different value system and appreciation for nature. I wanted them to learn different skills, like horsemanship, archery, team roping, and marksmanship.”
If he didn’t have cows to move or 100,000 acres to explore, Siebel seems like he could watch the slide show over and over—Taylor on a horse, Taylor on a four-wheeler, Taylor smiling with her friends.
Two white trucks kick up a cloud of dust about fifty yards away. Instead of pulling up to the house, the trucks stop at the arena. Siebel dismounts his horse and hurries to the trucks. His wife of 19 years, Stacey, jumps out and hugs him, followed by the swarm of his kids.
Riley wants to start roping immediately; Casey wants some of Harber’s beans; Taylor wants to go up to the house; and Hunter just wants to work the release on the steer chute.
The afternoon gets hotter, but Siebel, who’s been up since daybreak waiting for his family, mounts his horse and challenges Riley and Casey to a friendly team-roping competition.
“They probably have these calves rigged,” Riley jokes.
“Let’s give these boys a roping clinic,” Siebel says to Petersen.
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