super-duper Italian, fully automatic, $15,000 espresso machine on his credit
card and submitted the expense form. The CFO almost had a baby. It was
unbelievable.
This was a beautiful piece of work, and they came and installed the espresso
machine and it was the best money we ever spent. Every morning, people
would meet and crowd around it. This thing was just it, the bee’s knees, people
loved it, they couldn’t stop talking about it. A month later, the CFO came and
said, “I’m sorry, we should have done this years ago.” And...

software distribution company—which is a lot more boring than in the
early days, but there was a lot more money to be made in that market.
Livingston: What would you tell someone who wanted to start their own
company?
van Hoff: If you have the energy to do it, then you should try it yourself. But
you do need to have the ability to form a team around you with good people.
Talent attracts talent.
A lot of people get stuck on the idea. They all want to invent something and
go...

frivolous overall anyway. But if you’re at the receiving end of a lawsuit, it can
make things difficult.
One of the problems for the founders, after the IPO, is that you can’t sell for
a certain period of time and, after that, every time you sell and the stock goes
down, you’ll get personally sued—shareholder lawsuits. So every time there
was an opportunity for us to sell, our lawyers would say, “You better not because
if you lose the lawsuit then you’ll get sued. You’ll replace one lawsuit with the
other.”
So...

Arthur van Hoff 159
might have been different.” So I might rely more on my intuition if I were to do
it again.
Livingston: Were you the ringleader to start the company?
van Hoff: Well, in a way. Jonathan and I came up with the initial idea to do a
startup, but you’re talking about a difference in weeks. Very quickly it became
the four of us. Then you need to make some decisions about when do you want
to leave and how much money are you going to put in. Then once...