Arthur van Hoff. Photo by Arthur.van.hoff. Wikimedia Commons

Top 10 Interesting Facts about Arthur van Hoff


 

Arthur van Hoff went to University of Strathclyde and Hogere Informatica Opleiding where he studied computer science.

He worked as an engineer with the Distributed Objects Everywhere team at Sun Microsystems which he joined after his studies. He later joined the Java development team in 1995 at the company.

With the Java development team, he participated in writing the language’s compiler and in August 1995 took responsibility for its first release to Netscape.

The top 10 interesting facts about Arthur van Hoff include the following.

1. Arthur Established the Startup Marimba and Served as Its Chief Technology Officer

Sun Microsystems logo. Photo by Sun Microsystems. Wikimedia Commons

Opportunities to develop Java outside of the organization were too tempting for Arthur.

In 1996 he left Sun Microsystems and founded the start up Marimba in which he took up the role of Chief Technology Officer in the startup.

Arthur led the engineering team in developing a pull technology-based software distribution system, Castanet at Marimba.

In a pull technology the initial request for data originates from the client and the server responds to the client request. It is a style of network communication also called client pull or pull coding.

2. Arthur’s Start Up Marimba Was Acquired For $240 Million

BMC . Photo by Wattssw. Wikimedia Commons

Marimba which Arthur founded as start up in 1996 was acquired by BMC Software for $240 million in 2002. Instead of staying on with the company, Arthur chose to leave the company after it was acquired.

Founded in 1980, some 42 years ago, BMC Software is an American company engaged in information technology, consulting and enterprise software.

BMC Software as at 2020 had 6,000 employees and reported a turnover of $2.1 billion in 2021.

3. Arthur Founded the Startup Strangeberry

TiVo Logo. Photo by TiVo Inc. Wikimedia Commons

After Arthur left Marimba after it was acquired by BMC Software, he founded another startup called Strangeberry.

The principal business activity of the new startup was to develop software to play computer-stored content on television sets.

In January 2004 Arthur’s startup Strangeberry was acquired by TiVo, Inc and Arthur joined TiVo as Principal Engineer unlike in his previous startup Marimba where he chose to leave after it was acquired.

 In 2005 just about a year later, Arthur resigned from TiVo Inc and took the job of   Chief Technology Officer at Flipboard.

TiVo Inc was initially known as Teleworld Inc.  and was founded in 1997 with eponymous digital video recorder being its primary product.

The company is based in the United States of America but has operations in multiple countries.

4. Arthur Co-Founded Jaunt Virtual Reality

Arthur left Flipboard in November, 2012 and co-founded Jaunt Virtual Reality together two other co-founders namely Tom Annau and Jens Christensen.

He joined the company as its Chief Technology Officer as from 2013 to late 2018 when he left and joined Apple Inc. 

Flip board is based in Palo Alto, California, with offices in New York, Vancouver, and Beijing and is a news aggregator and social network aggregation company.

5. Arthur van Hoff Serves as the Entrepreneur-in-Residence of Redpoint Ventures

Arthur van Hoff Served as the Entrepreneur-in-Residence of Redpoint Ventures as well as being the Chief Technology Officer of Jaunt Virtual Reality.

Entrepreneur-in-Residence also known as Executive -in- residence is a position in venture capital firms, private equity firms, startup accelerators, law firms or business schools held by successful entrepreneurs.

The successful entrepreneur typically leads or has led a small, early-stage, emerging company .

These companies are deemed to have high-growth potential, or which has demonstrated high-growth in certain aspects such as in employee numbers, revenues or a combination of both parameters.

6. Arthur van Hoff Joined Apple as a Senior Architect

Apple headquarters. Photo by Joe Ravi . Wikimedia Commons

Arthur left Jaunt Virtual Reality in late 2018 and took up a position in Apple Inc. as a senior architect. 

The probability of Arthur meeting most of his former colleagues at Apple Inc were quite high as Apple had hired a number of former Jaunt engineers.

The engineers were hired to work on AR, computer vision, camera systems and other projects.  

At the time Arthur joined Apple, the company had been working on an augmented reality headset with VR capabilities.

7. Arthur Had Been Advising A Number of Startups

Arthur worked at Flipboard as the Chief Technology Officer, software and services Chief Technology Officer at Dell and principal engineer at TiVo during various stages of his career.

Arthur took up an additional role of advising a number of startups in his career. Some of the startups that he played the role of an advisor include internet of things startup Ayla Networks and VR camera maker Lucid.

Once he took up the role of senior architect at Apple he stopped those roles.

Apple has been working on an augmented reality headset with VR capabilities for some time.

The company still hasn’t officially revealed its plans for this space, but it’s hoped that Arthur will look into the project.

8. Arthur Is One of The Most Popular and Richest Dutch Computer Scientist

Arthur is listed as one of the most popular Dutch computer scientists and is also one of the richest computer scientists in the Netherlands.

Arthur van Hoff net worth is approximately $1.5 Million according to Wikipedia, Forbes and Business Insider among other analysts.

9. Arthur Has Abilities to Navigate and Deconstruct New Technologies

Arthur had unmatched ability to steer a company and his peers through difficult but rewarding technological endeavors.

That ability is only matched to his ability to navigate and deconstruct new technologies.

At TiVo, Arthur was the architect of the TiVoToGo project which allows video content to be transferred between a TiVo DVR and a PC in addition to working on the TiVo Content Distribution Service among others

10. Arthur Is One of The Most Inspiring Programmers and An Astute Leader

Turing Institute Building. Photo by Petermowforth. Wikimedia Commons

In the 1980s, Arthur worked at the Turing Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Glasgow where he stood out as one of the most inspiring programmers.

When programming, Arthur is full of ideas and knows how to implement those ideas.

At his startup Strangeberry he was instrumental in developing webservices, digital media applications, Digital Video Recorder Software and Hardware among others.

He founded Marimba and by the year 2000 he grew it to a 300-employee company from just 4 employees when he founded it.