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 it tells you something
about where you spend your money and what you spend your money on. It’s not
just business-related expenses. You also have to create an environment that you
like so that people are happy and feel they are valued.
Livingston: Did you get along with your VCs?
van Hoff: VCs are an interesting bunch; you can’t live with them, you can’t live
without them. They are instrumental in your success because they give you
money and a really strong endorsement. They have this mafia-like network of
connections and they help you with deals and find the right executives. They
are really working your case.
In my experience, it rarely happens that they turn against you, because
you’re a team and if the team isn’t working, the company will likely fail.
Occasionally, when you’re a screw-up, they’ll have to make a tough decision and
fire someone, but that’s rare in my opinion. Because they wouldn’t invest in
your company if they didn’t believe in you and your team. So I’ve always had a
good experience working with VCs.
Arthur van Hoff 157
Livingston: Was there anything about your technology that people misunderstood?
van Hoff: We spent a lot of time talking about subscription-based software distribution
and that took a long time for people to get. In hindsight, we were
probably a little early with that. Now it’s a very well-understood thing. The
Microsoft operating system updates automatically. Updates to virus programs
come over automatically. In the beginning, a lot of people we talked to said, “It’s
too early. Do I really want to do this?”
But we had a couple of really big successes—Morgan Stanley and Bear
Stearns. These companies that had thousands of traders all over the world
really needed to use the same software or it wouldn’t work. They needed to roll
this out at 100,000 endpoints and needed to get a report and warn people that
didn’t get updates. And we did that very, very well. Over time, Marimba went
from a consumer software distribution/push technology company to an enterprise

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• super-duper Italian, fully