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0 pointsevanelias1y ago0 comments

I'm usually skeptical of private equity, but in this case I see reasons to not be immediately cynical. The purchase price was only ~$37 million USD, which is quite reasonable considering MariaDB's reach and potential.

MariaDB plc has some really talented C++ engineers who are experts in database internals. Their DB has some compelling features that many competitors lack, for example system-versioned tables, Oracle DB compatibility layer, and soon a really nice multi-tenancy feature (catalogs). MariaDB plc has a strong presence in Europe, which I would assume is very appealing for potential European customers. And now they finally have an owner with deeper pockets, which hasn't been true in recent history; their previous financial state likely hindered commercial adoption.

If MariaDB can execute well on support and services, I'd imagine their new owners can get a good return on their investment as-is. No need for squeezing and strip-mining them, I don't see how that would even work in this case.

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stackskipton1y ago· 2 in thread

They are, let’s call it 40 Million in the hole. That’s not money invested in RD or anything. It was given to shareholders and they will pocket it.

evaneliasOP1y ago

The company sold at a considerable loss to shareholders. No one got rich there. Their SPAC was not good and should never have happened. Even if they hadn't sold the company, their stock would have been de-listed anyway, due to being deficient on both market cap and share price. A reverse-split can temporarily fix the latter but not the former.

There were, however, multiple interested buyers (at least 3 from what I recall reading over the past year) because there's a lot of potential upside if their execution improves.

If you think my statements are incorrect, what do you propose was the motivation for this purchase?

stackskipton1y ago

The motivation for the purchase is Enterprise Database software is extremely sticky. So what I said in my original post, jack up the licensing the costs and cut expenses and squeeze the customer base for more money.

It doesn't matter about loss to shareholders, money paid is NOT going to the company, it's going to shareholders unless the company is significant shareholder. K1 has -40Million on Spreadsheet about MariaDB BEFORE any additional investments and they want that money back. So how is K1 going to make its money back? My gut is my original post is more correct than some investing in the product to make a better database and beat out the competitors. I'll point out the new CEO, while having engineering degrees, seems to be more a business type person.

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