LUIGIDOLLOSA

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MARIMBA

1.] Surround your team with talent

Van Hoff was fortunate enough to gather a pool of fine talents. Sun Microsystems, the producer/creator of Java, has made a mark in programming history that it is with great convenience to have co-founded a start-up business with four team members coming from this eminent company. It was a promising start in the sense that his co-founders was equipped with the top of the line competency at that time stemming from the Java Team roots. What is so common in all successful start-ups is that the co-founding team was a summoning of great minds and great hearts for computers. Ability for this track of interest is very critical since it’s the bedrock of the technology that the team is yearning to produce money out of. A passion without a foundation can lead to anywhere, but a drive accompanied with skill is a sure-fire path to achievement. It is just about building your team with a balanced mix of passion and profession.

2.] Take care of your people

One of the anecdotes that van Hoff recalled in the interview was their purchase of the espresso machine. Funny how it had affected the company, but it turned out that it was a well compromised expense for the reason that it had an indirect upshot to the performance of the employees. It denoted a far more importance than the technology, infrastructure etc. but it targeted an intangible aspect of an organization- the morale. A small deed it may seem, but as far as what I have interpreted, it had huge tributes to the betterment of the workplace in terms of workplace atmosphere. As van Hoff said, “People are happy and feel valued”, it just manifests the great extent into which a plain simple espresso machine had meant for the employees. Espresso is just a drink concentrated with caffeine, but it had been one crucial decision of purchase that was never regrettable to his experience. This just expresses the lesson of investing not only in the physical aspects of the team or organization but also investing for the goal of instilling harmony and good-vibe workplace disposition amongst, and between, all office personnel.

3.] The initial idea is just the catalyst

Another reoccurring theme in Founders at Work is the presence of evolution in the founders’ conceptual frameworks. Yet again, as blatant in this interview is another success story rooting from a basic original idea that progressed to the final ‘ideal’ idea of the start-up company. Charging it to experience, van Hoff, restated the ‘uncertainty’ principle of start-ups as he recounts the risk his team had undergone with the fundamental start-up purpose. The four of them found a group with pure intentions of getting big in the industry and earning huge amounts of cash; it was a group with the guts and the skills hoping for the right idea to emerge at the right time. Their first idea was user interfaces, in which they were too late because another group had worked on that same idea earlier. They shifted to software distribution, soon to be the core of Marimba. This shows that start-ups have starting ideas which are essential but not necessarily final. Ideas on the start are for the purpose of gearing up towards seeking for the true technological identity of the start-up team.