How MySQL Kicked Oracle's A$$

http://www.infochachkie.com Marten Mickos, former CEO of MySQL and current CEO of Eucalyptus Systems discusses how MySQL was almost put out of business TWICE, yet survived to ultimately beat Oracle

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Before that I was CEO of MySQL as I told
you, from 2001 to 2008.
And then I stayed a year with Sun as
senior vice president of the database
business.
And, and I thought I would share some
stories from, from the MySQL days.
I joined in the beginning of 2001.
I had known the founder since 1981
actually.
Because it turned out that one of the
founder studied technical physics at
Helsinki University of Technology just
like I did.
At, you know, same year, so we knew each
other and we'd be playing poker for many
years.
So he called me one day and said, Marten
we need a CEO and we think it's you.
And I said no.
[LAUGH] That was my first response.
but I said okay I can, I can come in and
help you with the strategy.
And because, I thought I knew something
about strategy at the time.
I'm not sure it's true but I thought I
did.
And why they call me?
I was probably the only person they knew
that had ever been a CEO of anything.
I had just come out of this sports
betting company that went bankrupt.
so I was a little bit vunerable and
wounded.
but I started helping them with a
strategy in 2001.
And then at some point I realized this
can be huge opportunity.
There were 12 people roughly spread over
three different companies.
We brought it all together.
We started working.
We got the VCs very interested.
They wanted to invest.
Customers.
I remember we closed a deal with Compaq.
A deal worth 15,000 dollars.
We were just celebrating for days.
That was such a huge deal to close with
an American company.
15,000.
We felt it was huge.
So in, in the summer of 2001, we got term
sheets from investors to make a first
investment in the company so we could
expand.
We signed the term sheet and the next
week, I traveled to the United States to
negotiate with a company that had tried
to become a partner of MySQL.
And where founders had written a
preliminary partnership agreement with
them.
And I negotiated with them for a few
days, I had a co-founder with me, and the
last day.
And it was tense because, they didn't,
they didn't really like the fact that
suddenly there was a CEO in the company
trying to build a business.
They would have liked to see MySQL as a
research team, hidden in Scandinavia.
So in the last day, they said, hey can we
take a break in the negotiation.
And I'm thinking yeah, sure but we do,
didn't get to to an agreement very soon.
But we took a two hour break and David
and I went back to our hotel.
And then we came back 4 or 5 p.m on
Friday afternoon to their offices in near
Boston.
And the person meeting us on their campus
was a local sheriff.
And he said, are you, David Axemark and
Martha Meekers.
I said yeah, sure.
And he handed us yellow envelopes, and
said you have been served.
They sued us, in the US court of law.
This company, that didn't really exist
yet.
We were operating under three companies.
We had a terms sheet of investors.
We had practically no money.
And we got sued in the US by a publicly
listed company for unfair trade
practices.
And contract violation or something.
In our mind, complete bogus.
So, we were shocked.
Well, we went back to the hotel and sort
of had made fun of it.
We took these criminal pictures, you know
jail pictures of each other showing the,
the lawsuit.
But, but it was sort of nervous laughter.
And, and then we traveled back and I
contacted our chairman and said, what do
we do now?
No VC will give us any money when we have
to fight the lawsuit in the US.
Even if we win, it can take years.
At that point MySQL could have died as a
company.
But our chairman, he was a smart guy, he
said, Marten, we must be very strategic
now.
And then we brainstormed a little bit.
We went back to all the VCs and said,
dear VCs, we have good news and bad news.
Bad news, we've been sued in the US.
Good news, we're giving you twice as many
shares for your money.
We're cutting our valuation in half
voluntarily.
And now dear investors who were from
Norway, Sweden and Finland.
The Nordic pride is at stake.
You must not spool out now.
You must never let the big bad American
company do this to you.
And we use all the persuasive power we
could and they didn't pull out.
They all signed and invested.
We took an investment of two million
Euros, we spent 1.6 million on the
lawsuit and we won.
We settled it ultimately, because we are
going to win it.
We didn't get all the money back, but it
was the best marketing campaign ever.
>> [LAUGH].
>> 'Cuz everybody saw this, and
everybody knew that we were the, the
small, nice guys from Scandinavia
unjustly attacked by this greedy company.
And it turned the whole world against
them and for us.
So, but those are scarey moments.
It, you know, you don't know whether you
will really succeed.
And, and I don't think you will find any
successful company that hasn't gone
through those moments where you, you are
ready to give up.
And that's why, you must have that
strength to never give up.
You must some how believe in yourself
more than you really should.
But then you must be arrogant.
You must also know, when to quit.
So, like all the advice, it goes both
ways.
On the one hand you must never give up.
On the other hand you mustn't be so
stubborn that you don't listen to signals
from the market if it is time to move on.
Sometimes you really need to stop, doing
something.
But,[COUGH] but this moment showed us
that you just must have a belief.
And you must remember that[COUGH]
whatever state your company is in,
although there are a million ways in
which it, it can fail.
[SOUND] There are always several ways in
which it, it can succeed,[COUGH] always.
And always more than one, and I believe
in this completely.
And of course it can never be proved.
But I, I believe that there's always a
way out.
And there's always more than one way out.
If you just believe in it.
So you must have this amazing ability to
believe.
And not many people have that.
You know managing your own nerves.
Is perhaps the most important thing you
can do in your life.
To have that strength to say, okay, so,
this company might be wiped out tomorrow.
But I'll just take a deep breath and go
out and have a beer and pizza with my
friends, and have fun and relax a little
bit.
To have that presence and strength and
confidence to keep going even when
rationally you shouldn't[COUGH] is really
important.
But it doesn't always, it's not always
enough, you need more than that.
You need somebody who believes in you
even more than you believe in yourself.
And of course, that happened at MySQL as
well.
We had this very close relationship and
dependency on a piece of technology
called InnoDB.
And some of you may know it if you are
users of MySQL.
Another Finnish company and we were going
to buy them.
And we practically had built the business
for Heikki, the founder and his two or
three guys.
So we said, hey, we'd like to buy you and
get you on board here with MySQL.
And you can be a shareholder and this
will be massive and fantastic.
And, we discussed and negotiated for
nearly a year.
But, but he wasn't sure and he wanted to
be independent.
And he wasn't sure if he could trust us.
And he wasn't sure how much he should
charge.
And, just wasn't comfortable with
negotiation.
Like many of you don't like to negotiate.
Especially if you are really technical.
You just like to deal with the technical
stuff.
And then you hope that the rest of the
world will sort itself out.
So we did this and we had an offer for
him and he accepted it.
And then we started negotiating.
And he said no, this is not what I asked
for I said okay what did you ask for.
Said well I don't, I don't know exactly.
I said well do you know roughly?
But you don't say that.
They get you know it's offensive to say
that.
And I was probably a little bit pushy.
So next day his brother calls me and
says, Marten we will do an auction.
We will sell the company at an auction.
And what is this, guys?
We've been working with you for years.
We built your business.
They're ready to pay you what you are
asking for.
Why do an auction?
We can't do an auction, we're a small
company like you.
And they said, we are doing an auction,
and they did.
They got an offer from Oracle, and they
took it.
So suddenly when we were building our
business.
And we thought that this very vital
component in our product would be part of
us.
Suddenly it was owned by our competitor.
And I was in London we had a board
meeting the board meeting had been
fantastic.
We're out having dinner and I remember
one of us is like, Marten when can we go
public?
And at that point I get a phone call.
And somebody tells me about this news.
And it was completely devastating.
The, the president of Oracle, Charles
Phillips was amazing gentleman.
He called me that evening and said
Marten, I wanted to let you know that we
bought InnoDB but we didn't buy it to
slow you down.
So, the next day I flew back to US, and
that was the worst flight I've ever been
on.
You know, I was thinking that this
business is over, a key piece of our
technology is with our competitor.
We have no credibility in the market,
everybody needs InnoDB.
They can do whatever they want with it,
it will just destroy our business.
And it, I was ready to completely give
up.
And that's why it was important that
others believed in me more than I did.
So when I landed in San Francisco, our
executive team had already been at work.
And they came home to me.
We had a Saturday session in our home on
a Saturday and Sunday and said, Marten,
we completely believe in you.
And we stand behind you.
We'll support you.
Here's our plan for how to deal with it.
Attack is the best defense.
Here's our new pluggable storage engine
architecture which will allow any
component to be component to be connected
to MySQL .
And this one that was acquired is just
one of the many.
And my management team got me back on my
feet over that session of a few hours.
And on a Monday when we were interviewed
by the Press and they said, what is this,
will this kill you?
We gave to the Press this statement.
We said, and you know MySQL's mascot and
logo is a dolphin.
[COUGH] And we said, trying to kill MySQL
by buying in InnoDB is like trying to
kill a dolphin by drinking the ocean.
And that was such a powerful message that
it went all over the world.
Everybody quoted it.
Everybody repeated it all over the world.
And it didn't take more than a few weeks.
And suddenly there were three other
projects developing alternative
technologies for MySQL.
And then we started driving that
initiative, the pluggable storage engine
architecture.
And we had lots of storage engines.
And we realized that, this was a decision
that we should've made anyhow.
We were stupid to not make the
architecture pluggable long before we
did.
But this forced us to do it, and we
managed at the time to turn it into a
strength of MySQL.
So much so that next year when we had our
users conference.
It turned out that Oracle really didn't
do it to slow us down.
They never did any, any harm to us.
So when we had our user's conference.
Of course they didn't like to be shown
as, as really endorsing us.
But at our user's conference we surprised
them by announcing them MySQL partner of
the year.
And we forced them up on stage to receive
the prize.
And that again showed how we turned
around this situation and showed that we
had the guts to play that game.
And then people were fine and they
realized it's open source software.
It doesn't matter who owns it.
We trust MySQL and the business kept
growing.
But it was a very scary moment, and I for
a moment lost faith in myself.
I was, I was asking myself whether I
should resign voluntarily.
Because I had screwed it up for all my
colleagues.
All the people I had hired into the
company, I had betrayed them.
By not being capable of closing the most
important deal that we had.
So, so that's why I like this quote by
somebody wise where it says if it happens
it's good, if it doesn't happen it's
better.
And whatever happens is best.
Meaning you are influencing the world as
much as you can.
But once it's beyond your influence, you
just must live with it.
And there is something good in
everything.
There's a learning, when it's as, at, at
worst.
And now I'm so confident in many
situations where I wasn't confident
before because I've seen much worse.
And we've had some scary moments at
Eucalyptus, and I'm sure we'll keep
having them.
And I have colleagues who come to me and
say, hey Marten, what does this mean?
What does the CEO now think?
And I'm sitting here, saying okay, could
be much, much worse.
Let's get our heads together and decide
on what to do next, and how to figure it
out.
So I find that, that's very, very
important in any business you do to, to
get there.
And again it's all about managing
yourself.
Figuring out who you are, how, where
you're strong, where you're weak.
How you deal with your own freaking out
moments.
How you manage yourself.
How you program yourself.
How you, how you, you can start the day
by demanding a lot of yourself but you
must end the day being nice to yourself.
You must accept your weakness so that you
can deal with them.
Because otherwise, the next morning when
you wake up, you're not ready for the big
challenges.
This, but of course, you shouldn't be
reckless or irresponsible you need to, to
live up to your promises.
But still, when you've done your best,
you have a right to be happy and content
with yourself every night when you go to
bed.