The owners of MySQL start a new fund for open source investment
The team that brought us MySQL and then sold it for a Billion dollars to Sun is looking to invest in the next big open source success story. Helsinki based Open Ocean Investments announced yesterday the launch of their Fund Three with Sixty Million Dollars.
The firm will primarily focus on European based startups and business with and open and community driven theme, but according to Patrik Backman, Open Ocean Managing Partner. “While we continue to focus primarily on European start-ups deploying community and open-source business models, we’re open to hearing from all disruptive companies that are interested in changing the world.” For instance, while they are not investors in it, the Square payment processing business is one they find disruptive.
Along with the announcement of the new round the company also unveiled their shiny new web site. One of the areas of the site is the MySQL story which details the rise, growth and sale of the MySQL business. The partners in Open Ocean all held important roles at various times in the growth and success of MySQL.
Perhaps none of the other partners are as well-known as Michael “Monty” Widenius, who was the original developer of the MySQL database and co-founder of the company. The other partners are: Patrik Backman, Ralf Wahlsten and Tom Henriksson. Monty Widenius has most recently been involved with the MariaDB project. The Open Ocean team though has also invested in SkySQL which is closely aligned with Maria. In addition to SkySQL, the firm has invested in 3 or 4 other companies. They are seeking to widen that now with this new fund.
While venture capital investment is certainly on the rise and investment in open source technologies even more so, I am not 100% sold on Open Ocean. To me I just get Déjà vu to the original internet bubble days when entrepreneurs would sell their companies and become venture capitalists. For the most part these would be venture moguls proved that sometimes it is better to be lucky then smart. Very rarely were they able to catch lightning twice.
Of course there are exceptions to every rule. Some “serial entrepreneurs” did repeat the success formula over and over again. With the money this group took down in the Sun-MySQL deal they certainly have enough to make some mistakes and still find a few nuggets. It may be though that different times, different world will have them doing things differently with some of the companies they invest in.
