MariaDB plunges nearly 40% in NYSE debut after SPAC merger(bizjournals.com) |
MariaDB plunges nearly 40% in NYSE debut after SPAC merger(bizjournals.com) |
What was the intended differentiating hook?
Don’t ask me why startups are designed this way.
It’s dumb.
Retail launches are always designed to let them cash out with big multiples no matter what the price does.
I remember buying something I thought was “early” for $5 a share and later we learned the real earlies got in for $0.25. I was able to sell somehow at a price of $12 in the mania after it launched, but of course it eventually bled out down to $0.25 and beyond because of the constant selling from the insiders. They were always in profit, what did they care?
he can probably do neither
- sponsors create a spac selling shares+warrants for, say, $10
- they have two years to merge with a company
- when the merger is sorted, shareholders can choose either (a) to get their money back + 3%, (b) to get their share in the resulting company and discard their warrant, or (c) to get their share and exercise their warrant to buy another share at some potentially good price
- the sponsors get 20% of the pre-warrant equity in the spac’s investment. I think they might have a long lock-out period before they can sell too
- if no merger happens, investors get back their money with interest.
So maybe I don’t understand what you mean, or maybe I don’t understand what a spac is, but isn’t it bad for the sponsors if the shareholders don’t like the merger? Maybe it’s more subtle and it is a lot worse than coming up with a good merger but still better than not doing the spac at all.
I'm sure they meant 'eponymous open-sourced', as named is implicit in the meaning of that word, but I'm less confident whether an eponym can be granted based on a familial naming attribution?
A few years ago I had a weird exchange with someone on these forums who enlightened me about the maxscale licence change, and identified this as a key turning point (not in a good way) for the MariaDB community's shift in attitude. [0]
I grew up with MySQL, even met Monty one time at a London meetup, moved to MariaDB at the appropriate time (around when Debian switched over), but have since embraced the joy of PostgreSQL (mostly because that's what we use at work). Not that PostgreSQL is without architecture / licensing complexities on the HA front.
[0] https://www.infoworld.com/article/3109213/open-source-uproar...
> During a 2020–2021 boom period for SPACs, they attracted prominent names such as Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, and Deutsche Bank, in addition to retired or semiretired senior executives.
Now, why retired or semi-retired senior exec who are most probably already swimming in money and have a certain age are even thinking about these investments instead of just spend the fortune they have and enjoy life? I guess I'll never be such an exec...
The problem is not many of them want to pay for it. $40 million in ARR after 13 years and $227 million in funding isn't great.
Read the valuation of MariaDB earlier today in the paper paper (so before trading had started) and immediately thought: It can't be worth that much: Speculation, hype! Of course the new value determined by "the markets" is also a result of speculation. Just a different type of and less hype.
Edit: Forgot the "just to be smart and hardworking"
$10 a share to $0.96 in 2 weeks, 90% loss.
That only leads to the inevitable next-quarter-itis that has taken down once great companies like HP and Bell Labs.
Are you excited by the fact that Mark Z doesn't suffer from this disease with Meta and is spending $25B/yr on a virtual reality platform that won't provide returns for many years, if at all?
Quarterly reporting (and the inevitable over-weighting of it) is there to PROTECT small-time investors.
Our current model of “must have quarter over quarter growth” is a good a check in theory but it’s too easy to cut corners in the short term instead of solving systemic, organizational problems which just kicks the can down the road.
Keeping companies private just limits who can own them and doesn't help.
The bar is too high and there are huge numbers of really decent companies that need some kind of liquidity.
We're just not set up for it. Maybe it's a matter of just bringing more attention to small caps, I don't know.
Or another vehicle.
There are just too many truly great value creating business out there whereupon it's very difficult for founders to get their accumulated value out of it. People have devoted their lives to doing some good thing, but it's pointless if it's hard to market the company. This absolutely has effects on the industry because it's literally not worth the devotion required to do so many things if there can be no upuside even a good scenario of making a decent company.
It leaves way too much money in the hands of bankers and speculators and not those to took the biggest risks, made it work and likely created surpluses for everyone.
Definitely we need a new model.
Direct listing is most logical and if done right, the company will get the most of actual benefit.
I’m also not very convinced that IPOs are a rip-off FWIW.
ICOs were taking real money and exchanging it for tokens with no legally enforceable equity rights. It's GoFundme with a slicker landing page, but no oversight whatsoever. There's a reason they do that and it's not because doing it through the proper channels is impossibly onerous.
If shareholders think the C-suite and/or board are overcompensated, they can vote for a different decision. And if they don't have the majority to get their way they can sell, buying into a company that better reflects their priorities.
I'm not sure I see the case for further regulation of what are, essentially, private decisions and transactions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...
Nice stats haha.
Meta's structure basically makes Zuckerberg unoustable. He can continue to toss money into the ether chasing a particularly bad idea.
Conversely, it's possible to have voting power so diluted that nobody who has a long-term vision has any way to promote it.
Broad ownership allows people to call bullshit, but maybe something like a capital-gains surtax on shares held less than 5 years would make it too expensive to dive-bomb into a company just long enough to sabotage its long-term future.
In the United States we have "long-term gains" which are taxed preferentially at much lower rates. How about we just stop doing that.
Also for carried interest.
Also also the "never mind about those taxes at all" stepped-up basis for your heirs when you die.
All of these things simply distort the overall market as people modify their plans to account for these tax breaks.
If you don't like to see higher taxes, then replace these distorting, selective tax-breaks with lower overall rates to make up the difference. Or if you like higher taxes then don't do that.
But for gosh sakes can't we please get rid of these behavior-distorting tax laws?
Aside from expenses, there is a kind of 'stock populism' - big stocks get a lot of noise, which is a form of demand gen for the stock.
Companies with popular CEO's get a huge boost for example.
Both retail and bigger investors tend to prefer the bigger stocks.
This is part of the model which might possibly be improved.
We could adjust the taxation rules maybe, or, change listing rules, or literally just convince the banks that there is a huge opportunity in smallcap that's overlooked.
There are 100x mid-sized business opportunities for every big one - I see them literally every day.
I have told countless entrepreneurs that they have great businesses that are not suitable for VC because the growth and market is not there. And then what?
It's more economically efficient for them to nerd-out and compete for a 'Google Job' because they have all the power in the system.
Indirectly - there may be a bit opportunity with scale and regionality.
Large brands get a natural advantage in advertising as well, which doesn't work well for little regional shops.
I just bought a pair of winter boots on the high street out my door but totally by fluke - the are too small of an op to compete online.
There might be some taxation or international regs that we might want to put in place.
Perhaps I'm suggesting a bunch of adjustments that streamline financing for SMB and recognize the disproportionate power of conglomerates that it not always economically efficient. Often it is, but not always.
The fundamental change seems to have been circa 1960’or so, when stocks went from being things that earned a dividend - and the dividend is where most of the return came from, to most companies reducing and then stopping dividends altogether.
Liking to make money and liking to enjoy money are different traits, I suppose.
I get that. My dad was never that excited about making money, but he still described TurboTax as his favorite video game. Sometimes you just want to optimize the number, no matter what the number is.
https://www.skadden.com/insights/publications/2022/03/sec-pr...
Obsessive-compulsive disorder and self-worth insecurity that masquarades as 'success in business'.
They were saying "Americans pronounce it 'my' and that is wrong".
Got it.
Where MariaDB really shines and drives usage is around their ColumnStore[2].
Some of the downsides from a larger adoption and integration standpoint is the BSL license[3]. Relatively unknown and untested and as a result there's aversion to risk.
To get the direct answer to your question, I think a combination of the factors previously in conjunction with revenue being eroded from cloud offering their tech as a service, and SkySQL[4] not making up for the difference are serious inhibitors to revenue.
1: https://mariadb.com/resources/customer-stories/servicenow-ma...
2: https://mariadb.com/kb/en/mariadb-columnstore/