MariaDB.com is a for-profit commercial flavour of MariaDB.org, the non-profit that owns the open-source products and code base. It was founded by Michael “Monty” Widenius, who was one of the original developers of MySQL.
According to staff, Widenius, and MariaDB.com CEO, Michael Howard, don’t get on very well. Widenius hasn’t attended a company meeting for ages, and the pair had slanging matches in front of staff.
In July last year, Widenius was voted off the board, enabling Howard’s hostile takeover. Widenius took his group of founders and database experts somewhere new while Howard pressed on with an IPO. One staffer told us that Howard told him that he "had always dreamed of” pulling off an IPO.
But things were turning ugly for Howard. In June 2022, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs withdrew from representing MariaDB because of a “high risk of liability.”
The original investors in AngelPond, the SPAC entity, filed lawsuits due to a material misrepresentation of the valuation and ability to operate as a company.
This news led to the stock’s sharp decline from $10 after the IPO to $1.24 today. MariaDB has $4.8 million in cash and cash equivalents. This is hardly enough for a company with 100 employees to function.
Recent SEC filings on 3 March show that things are worsening as MariaDB hoped for $266.3 million from the SPAC investors as operating cash. But that money is long gone. It is expected to receive $186.3 million from warrants contingent on the share price going up after the IPO. The warrants were priced at $11.50 per share and were not worth the paper they were printed upon. The fact that it is a public company makes fundraising harder too.
Meanwhile, staff have been leaving or being fired due to cost cuts. Some of those fired staff have sued, including the CFO. The original investors in AngelPond are apparently in active litigation against the company. A story appeared here. The article contains some material which Fudzilla has confirmed, but which the company claims was penned by a former employee and faked.
The article mentions a few things our sources did not know about – such as court cases involving racism and sexism making it difficult to hire staff.
One staff member who spoke to Fudzilla said the database was an excellent product and should have done well. Suse has close links with MariaDB and even considered buying MariaDB.com at one point, but Howard thought he could get more cash from his IPO and turned them down. If Suse were to buy it now, it would pick it up at a huge discount.
