Paul O’Brien named CEO and Board Member, and
other executive additions
MariaDB plc (NYSE:MRDB) today announced Paul O’Brien has been
appointed as the company’s new CEO and will serve as a member of
the board of directors, effective May 26, 2023. Michael Howard, the
company’s current CEO, will remain on the board of directors to
provide strategic planning and oversight. The board has also
appointed Tom Siegel as chief revenue officer (CRO) to lead the
sales, consulting, support and training teams, and Jonah Harris as
chief technology officer (CTO), effective June 5, 2023.
“Paul and Tom both have a track record of building successful
SaaS companies as well as a broad understanding of how to drive
growth and profitability at companies such as MariaDB,” said Alex
Suh, chairman of the board, MariaDB plc. “Over the course of seven
and a half years, Michael has expertly architected the
transformation of MariaDB from an open-source offering to a cloud
business that successfully competes with the hyperscalers. It’s
thanks to his leadership and accomplishments that we enter the next
growth phase, which is already reflected in our robust Annual
Recurring Revenue (ARR) growth. With the additions of Paul and Tom
to our already strong management team, we are confident we can move
further and faster toward our ambitious goals.”
“MariaDB is headed in the right direction – look at the amazing
talent we’ve attracted, the differentiation of our products –
momentum is building and it’s the start of something spectacular,”
said Howard. “For the next phase of growth, bringing in a fresh set
of eyes is what’s needed to get to the next step. After many years
of everyone’s hard work – from engineering to sales and marketing,
and everyone in between, it’s all coming together. My heartfelt
thanks to everyone.”
O’Brien has served as SVP, sales and field operations of the
company since March 2023. Prior to joining MariaDB, he served as
VP, Operations at NetApp, Inc., a storage and data management
company and VP, Business Intelligence and Operations at Symantec
Corporation, a security company. Prior to that, O’Brien held
various management positions at EMC Corporation, a storage and data
management company, and HP Inc. (then Hewlett-Packard Company), a
technology company, and also served as a partner at Prism Venture
Partners, a venture firm. In all these roles, O’Brien was
responsible for successfully guiding companies in their evolution
from on-prem deployments and perpetual license software to
subscription and cloud-based models.
“Having guided MariaDB sales, I've personally witnessed the
immense value we deliver to customers through our products and
people,” said O’Brien. “There is a huge opportunity at MariaDB’s
fingertips and I am confident in our ability to capitalize on this
potential and achieve unprecedented growth. Michael led us through
significant milestones – we are now a publicly traded company with
a strong cloud product. This facilitates a smooth transition to a
focused go-to-market strategy to accelerate the business toward a
targeted $100 million ARR by the end of 2025.”
Siegel has an impressive background as a sales and operations
executive, coupled with extensive experience building and leading
high-performance teams for both private and public SaaS companies.
He was most recently CRO at Bringg, a SaaS delivery management
platform. Prior to that, he was chief sales officer at Fuze, a
cloud communications software company and VP of worldwide sales
operations at PTC, a global software company. He has also held
sales leadership positions at EMC and BMC Software. Siegel has
successfully driven accelerated growth for SaaS companies through a
combination of go-to-market strategy, sales leadership and
adherence to key performance metrics, with demonstrated ARR growth
from $50 million to $100 million.
“MariaDB has gone through an incredible transformation to become
a prominent cloud company with MariaDB SkySQL, a second generation
cloud database,” said Siegel. “This presents a remarkable
opportunity for the company to take a larger share of the
relational database market, expected to be $72 billion by 2026. I
look forward to working with the stellar team at MariaDB to
continue driving value to customers, whether its cloud services
such as backup and observability to community on-prem users or
multicloud benefits with exceptional scale and resilience.”
About MariaDB
MariaDB is a new generation cloud database company whose
products are used by companies big and small, reaching more than a
billion users through Linux distributions and have been downloaded
over one billion times. Deployed in minutes and maintained with
ease, leveraging cloud automation, our database products are
engineered to support any workload, any cloud and any scale – all
while saving up to 90% of proprietary database costs. Trusted by
organizations such as Bandwidth, DigiCert, InfoArmor, Oppenheimer,
Samsung, SelectQuote and SpendHQ, MariaDB’s software is the
backbone of critical services that people rely on every day. Learn
more at mariadb.com.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains “forward-looking statements” within
the meaning of the “safe harbor” provisions of the United States
Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking
statements often contain words such as “expect,” “anticipate,”
“intend,” “plan,” “estimate,” “believe,” “seek,” “will,” “would,”
similar or comparable expressions, and variations or negatives of
such words. Forward-looking statements by their nature address
matters that are, to different degrees, uncertain, such as the
benefits of management changes, future opportunities for us and our
products and services (including increased business in the cloud),
and any other statements regarding MariaDB’s future operations,
anticipated growth, financial or operating results or condition,
market opportunities, strategies, anticipated business levels,
planned activities, and other expectations and targets for future
periods.
As a result of a number of known and unknown risks and
uncertainties, our actual results, condition, or performance,
including ARR, may be materially different from those expressed or
implied by these forward-looking statements. Some factors that
could cause actual results to differ include: (a) successful
integration of new management; (b) our ability to continue as a
going concern and to secure additional financing needed to meet
short-term and long-term liquidity needs; (c) our ability to
compete in an increasingly competitive environment and grow our
business; (d) our ability to retain and recruit qualified
personnel, including officers, directors and other key personnel
(including those with public company experience); (e) our ability
to realize the anticipated benefits of being a public company and
effectively operate as a public company; (f) any regulatory actions
or litigation relating to, among other things, the business
combination with Angel Pond Holdings Corporation; (g) our ability
to maintain the listing of our ordinary shares, public warrants or
other securities on the NYSE; and (h) other risks and uncertainties
indicated from time to time in our SEC filings, such as on Forms
10-Q and 10-K, including those under “Risk Factors” therein, and
other documents filed or to be filed with the SEC by us.
Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are
made. Readers are cautioned not to put undue reliance on
forward-looking statements, and we assume no obligation and, except
as required by law, do not intend to update or revise these
forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information,
future events, or otherwise. We give no assurance that we will
achieve our expectations or plans, which may change over time.
Source: MariaDB
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230530005578/en/
Investors: ir@mariadb.com
Media: pr@mariadb.com
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