Maria Lourdes C. Capilitan

Sysanal(O0A)

June 17, 2008

Case Study

Arthur Van Hoff

(Cofounder, Marimba)

            Experiencing for something is really important even you experienced it in a short time, it is better than knowing nothing. You also have to create an environment which people will be happy and feel they are valued because it will make a big difference not just for one person but for the whole company. Even you have their trust it doesn’t mean that you will take advantage of it because you are a team, you must help one another. You should be patient for everything specially if your product is new to the public.

            Arthur van Hoff was part of Java in Sun Microsystems before he founded Marimba. Marimba was part of a software distribution company. A company who only got 4 employee turned to have more then 300 employee.

            Jonathan Dayne and Arthur van Hoff decided to have their own start up. First thing that they did is find an office. They found it in California Avenue, above the flower shop. They give $250,000 each for them to get started the company. They bought metal desks for $25 and spend them $1400 to furnish the office. After some years they started to create strange berry. If Marimba didn’t get successful, strangeberry become so relevant. They have lots of ideas and executed it. When Kim Polese and van Hoff left sun, they have a meeting with Scott Mcnealy. They wanted to create a user interface builder. For the first months, they work for the UI. A group come to their office showing their product to van Hoff, those people cam from Netscape. They are not bother because Netscape is also doing the same thing. They come up with the idea of subscription-based software. Having this new concept will be a big hit. The publicity that was given by the press helps a lot because of them van Hoff’s product were known. The uniqueness of their concept is hard because the people didn’t have any idea how does it work so you have to explain it well. Kim Polese did really well to their company but van Hoff said that you are not there in a company because of the person but because of the product. Lately, a reporter visited their company while having the company outing. She took a lot of pictures of Kim P. and published to their magazine (Fortune Magazine). This took Kim a hard time but still she continue talking to press people. She is a good CEO but lacks on experience regarding managing people and motivating teams. John Olsen replaces Kim P., he has been managing big companies and solve different problems that for van Hoff’s company was look so hard to solve.

            Their business plan by that time was IPO. Start up companies want to gain a lot of money. Van Hoff exceeded their expectation. Decision making is very emotional for them because every business plan is only a guess. The turning points in their first year was when they release the first software. They have their first law suit filed. The case of Marimba was unfair because of investors. The Venture Capital are instrument in your success because they will give you money and strong endorsement. Like you’re having a VIP access to the industry. They have a big success in Morgan Stanley and Bear Stearns. This company have thousands of traders all over the world and needed the software. It was a big break for them.

            Arthur van Hoff said that in starting a company you need to have the ability to form a team around you. As he said talent attracts talent. If you receive bad reactions immediately stop it because it is not good to sell bad plan. Doing a start up means you are giving up your job. The most frustrating happen to them is when the lawsuit kept on dragging them that took them a lot of time. Van Hoff received the president’s award at Sun that was whole bunch of stock options. In doing start up there’s a lot of people that will be involve and give you advices but this advices sometimes didn’t help. Follow your intuition. In their funding it is equally divided. In having a group of people that worked together, you should not take anything with you, be very careful about the intellectual property. Lastly, don’t plan anything, remember that companies will not sue people who are failures.