Mårten Mickos: Essential Lessons From A Legendary Tech CEO

0:00the spring of 2003, Facebook had started. I went to see Mark Zuckerberg, and I asked him, okay, Mark, so how did you decide on building all of Facebook on MySQL? And he looked at me as if I were stupid and said, Martin, I grew up on MySQL. That's Martin Mikos, best known for leading MySQL into a$1 billion success and providing the open source database that ended up powering Facebook, Google, and YouTube, and virtually all the other defining companies of the web as we know it. He's pioneered remote-first teams, scaled cloud and security companies, and proved that trust, bold leadership, and community can rewrite the rules of technology.

0:46This is Mike Maples Jr. of Floodgate, and it's Go Time with Martin Mikos.

0:53This is Mike Maples Jr., and welcome to the Pattern Breakers podcast, where we explore why some founders radically change the future and how they stand apart. Together, we'll learn about the counterintuitive mindsets and actions behind their remarkable success. Brace yourself for a world where chaos is welcome, naysayers are often a positive signal, and movements galvanize misfits who transform the impossible to the inevitable.

1:31Martin isn't the kind of CEO who tries to dream up world-changing ideas or invent brand new markets. The first thing he'll tell you is that he wasn't the originator behind MySQL or Eucalyptus or HackerOne. But time and again, he's shown an ability to convert the potential energy of an idea into the kinetic energy of execution. He knows how to close a deal, create order out of chaos, and give a startup its best chance at greatness. The lesson in Martin's story is clear. If you know your genius, own your gaps, and surround yourself with people who carry the tools you don't, extraordinary success is within reach.

2:10And you can do it more than once. Let's talk to him.

2:23All right. Well, Martin, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Mike. I'm very happy to be here with you today. Yeah, I'm excited about this one too, because obviously you're very renowned in the field of entrepreneurship and have had a lot of successes. I think I've known about you for maybe the better part of 25 years now. But I think what a lot of people don't know about you is that they often think of you as the founder or CEO. but rather than be a serial founder, in some ways, you've kind of been a serial CEO. What's up with that? How is it that you managed to join these companies in progress, and how did you find the ability to do that over time consistently?

3:02It's such a good question because for the longest time, I did not know it was happening, and I couldn't analyze it myself. It's only now with decades of retrospection that I can say, oh, this is me and this is how I operated. 38 years ago, I started my first company. I was a co-founder. But now when I think about like, no, I was invited to co-found. The idea was not mine. But back then I was like, okay, I'm a co-founder. We're building it with three good friends. We're building a business. We built an amazing business. We all felt like founders. But if I'm honest, It was just one of us who had the idea that the two other of us sort of joined and latched onto it.

3:46I think it was a little bit of my maybe arrogance or confidence or whatever it was when I was hired as CEO of MySQL. I was like, yeah, I am a businessman. I go to businesses that already exist and I can build them. And so I did that. And coming out of MySQL, I realized, hey, I could do this again. My brain does not invent business models. But once somebody gets me excited, I can immerse myself so much that people think I'm the founder. But I don't have the seed. How did you hook up with MySQL in the first place? The founder, there are three founders, but the main guy who wrote the product, Monty, he and I started studying technical physics at Helsinki University of Technology the same year.

4:36So I knew him from 1981. So 20 years. I had worked a few years earlier at the Finnish database company. And for a short, short time, we were the most popular download on Linux. And I realized this thing, Linux, will take over. And this was like 94, 95. But then the company I worked for, they didn't want to do it. They said, no, we're focused on telco instead, like enterprise sales. I'm like, that's so stupid. So I left. And then I get a phone call and it's Monty saying, hey, Martin, I'm sitting here in my kitchen with my co-founders. We've decided we need a CEO and we think it's you. I had this feeling in me that, OK, this is now the wave I saw.

5:19I started seeing. This is where the world is going. So like if you just had to explain MySQL in simple layman's terms in the year 2001, what was it and what was your draw to it? And how did you think about creating an open source movement around it? So first of all, we were shifting from the first wave of web to the second one, and the web 2.0, where you had interaction, you had e-commerce, you could buy and sell on the web. Suddenly, every web application and later every mobile application needed a database because it was communicating with the user. The user was giving data, taking data, sorting data.

5:57So every app needed a very powerful database. And the traditional databases just weren't up to it. So therefore, there was an enormous opportunity for MySQL or some other database engine to take that place in the software stack and take care of all the data that was needed. Like if you are browsing on Wikipedia, it comes out of a database. If you are on Facebook, it comes out of a database. If you're on Google, you see an ad, it comes out of a database. All those databases were MySQL. So that's the need that we saw and we felt that we should just build it as much as we can. but Mike now we must also be clear that when somebody explains something afterwards 20 years later we make it sound so cool and so logical oh obvious yeah but in reality we were like young stupid uh like eager like whatever it's it's not like we had the clearest strategy at all times we were just doing stuff very very quickly and enjoying it and stumbling and standing up again So it's not that we had some divine insight.

7:03We had some basic beliefs, sure. But a lot of it was just, okay, let's see what happens if we do this. Let's see what happens if we do that. So you guys were kind of juking and jiving and figuring this out. Was there any palpable moment where you're just like, this is working. Now I know what working looks like. Okay. So coming to America was that point, like broadly. The spring of 2003, I contacted the only VC I knew in Silicon Valley. And I said to him, hey, we have this company called MySQL. What's your take on raising capital from a VC in Silicon Valley? A, no chance. B, maybe. Or C, absolutely.

7:42And here, Martin, it's A or B. Don't even try. You're a European company. Nobody will look at you. And then things started happening where like the movers and shakers of the world all conspired to make this happen. Like David Kirkpatrick wrote about us in Fortune in his column. So then Benchmark Capital contacted us. So then when we spoke to Benchmark Capital, I said, well, I don't know you guys. So who would be like a CEO who could be a reference? And they had me meet with Marc Andreessen and said, he can tell you how good we are. So I got to meet Marc Andreessen. And then when we closed the round and I came to Silicon Valley, one of the first things was to go and visit Eric Schmidt at Google.

8:24And he was like, Martin, tell me everything about your product. I want to know the roadmap. How are you doing? How can we help you? Well, it was a few years after that. Facebook had started. I went to see Mark Zuckerberg. And I asked him, okay, Mark, so how did you decide on building all of Facebook on MySQL? And he looked at me as if I were stupid, which probably is correct, and said, Martin, I grew up on my sequel. And like with all these things, I started realizing this is giant. Like these people who I've never spoken to, touched or anything, they are up and coming or already super successful.

9:01They're all swearing by this little product from Scandinavia. And there were these CEOs that I so looked up to, like Eric Schmidt, of course, at Google, Mark Leslie at Veritas, Bill Coleman at BA. These, like, amazing. Like, I thought if I could ever be even close to what they are, like, that would be my goal. So the world has changed, but then some things remain exactly the same. So it's so funny what I learned at MySQL about making money with open source. Now I have AI CEOs calling me and saying, Martin, can you repeat what you thought and did back then? We would like to learn from you. Okay.

9:40So MySQL worked out great. Get acquired by Sun. How long did you stay at Sun? 13 months. Okay. What made you decide that you weren't permanent for Sun? Or did you kind of know that? Okay. Okay. So I have joined every company ever in my life with a plan to be there forever. I joined Sun. I get to be part of rebuilding this company that has been the number one in the world, but it was sort of going down and we need to rebuild their business model and everything. And I get to be part of it. So then I was at Sun. I said, OK, I'm ready. I'm ready. My database business is running. Good. Give me something else.

10:14And Jonathan said, no, Martin, just run the database business. I'm like, no. I came here to help rebuild all of Sun. So that was a disappointment. And then my direct line manager, Rich Green, left Sun. And like, okay, now I couldn't find the energy to stay. And did you leave Sun with an idea of what you were going to do next? Or did you just kind of say, hey, look, need a change. And I'll find out what that is on the other side. The latter. Because now we come back to this, why I'm a suitable serial CEO. I don't walk around with those ideas. I have friends who have business ideas piling up and they're not sure which one to do next.

10:56I don't walk around with business ideas. My method in life is to find really intelligent and kind people and work with them. So then how did you decide your next gig then? Did you reach out to the guys at Benchmark and some of the folks you knew on Sand Hill Road? How did you figure that out? So I became an EIR at Benchmark. And then I thought, but I also want to do something for Europe. So I went to Danny Reimer at Index, said, can I be an EIR for you too? I'm like, that's weird, Martin. How would you be two EIRs at once? I said, but I would like to do something for Europe. So I was a European EIR at Index and at Benchmark.

11:38And then I looked at a lot of startups. And Kevin Harvey, who had been my chairman at MySQL, he came to me and said, Martin, here's the next thing for you. It's called eucalyptus. Go and check them out. They're very cool. And then I knew I would get to work with Kevin again. He and I found a way of communicating where we didn't say much, but we acted on the small signals. Kevin would just ask me a question. And then I knew, okay, I need to act. Because when Kevin asks a question, that's the same as some other VC yelling at you. He means something. So then I figure out what it means and I do it.

12:15But I really enjoyed the fact that it never had to go to any yelling or conflict. He's just very subtle. And so then, so Eucalyptus was a pretty different situation then, right? Because with MySQL, you knew the guys. This time, it's like, okay, Kevin says, hey, Eucalyptus, super cool, got to beat these guys. How do you navigate that? Because I've been, I'll just confess on my own side of things. I've met many companies before where I thought this product's going to be awesome. These people are super talented, but they can't run this. And I don't know how to say it. If I say it to them, they feel insulted, right?

12:57They're just like, well, who are you, Mr. VC money guy, telling me what I can and can't do. And so sometimes I find, you know, you just kind of have to say, well, they're just going to have to find out on their own, you know, kind of one of us is going to be right about this. What were these eucalyptus guys like when they met you and how receptive were they to the prospect of having you come on board? I had gotten to know them a little bit earlier. So the process took time. So I had time to observe them. And I did see that, OK, these are a professor with his Ph.D. students. So like my instincts immediately said, too academic, like this can't work.

13:38but as human beings, wonderful, like very, very open and humble and ready to do everything. They knew they needed a CEO. So all of that was in place. My failure was that the product wasn't ready. The market was eager to have a ready product but the product was not ready and nobody told me. And I was so stupid that I didn't validate it. So blame that on me. Like why would you hire a CEO who doesn't validate the product? But that's what they did. And then, what was it, six, seven, eight months into my tenure, Rackspace and NASA start the OpenStack project. And then they deliberately attack Eucalyptus, saying Eucalyptus is commercial.

14:21It doesn't scale. It's shitty software. Don't go with them. Come with us. We are free and open source and kumbaya. We love everybody. And it took the oxygen out of our growth so that we sort of, we recovered, but we never recovered fully. I made the mistake of joining the company and not first strengthening the product. I should have had the patience to say, okay, VCs, this looks very cool, but it's very early days. We need to work on just the product first. Let's not believe we can close million-dollar deals immediately. Speaking of benchmark, one of the guys that I like from there a lot is Andy Radcliffe, who has this saying that when I ignore the advice, I almost always harm myself, which is prove the value hypothesis before testing the growth hypothesis.

15:12Even when I work with startups today, I'm like, okay, let's prove the value hypothesis for one person first, right? Let's just unambiguously make them completely satisfied with our value proposition because one leads to 10, which leads to 100. But what I find is that we can sometimes confuse the false signal of them buying something from us without us yet having delivered as success. It's part of success. It shows that they're desperate, but it doesn't show that we can deliver. Exactly. And of course, I was blinded by my success. I had go into MySQL. The product worked beautifully. So like, okay, open source products work beautifully.

15:53I can assume they work beautifully. But it wasn't the case. And it's not like we had big fights about it, but there was sort of a design principle that was missing. When we should have built just a very usable, great user experience, simple product, we built it a little bit to standards too high. We fixed that. We hired some young people to Eucalyptus. They came in. They were rebels. They didn't care about what we old people had said and done. They were just doing. And then two, three years into it, we had this amazing product that was easy to install. We had a cloud in a backpack. We showed that you could run a private cloud in a backpack.

16:31And we went to AWS reInvent and Andy Jassy had the backpack on his back and showed it around. Like, finally, it worked. But at that point, OpenStack had taken over a lot of the traction in the market. Others had done as well. Then Kubernetes started to come out, and that actually became the infrastructure stack for your own cloud. So at that point, timing had played against us. And we did get a great outcome by becoming acquired by Hewlett Packard. So that put me back into the startup world. And then again, I did what I've done before. I tell my friends that, okay, in a few months, these two hands will be available for hard work.

17:16But because I don't know how to start a company, somebody has to tell me what I need to do. I don't mind if it is difficult. I don't mind if it is unlikely. I don't mind if it is obscure and new. Actually, I like it because I'm thinking, if I solve this, I will have solved something nobody else can solve. So I'm drawn to the improbable. So speaking of just working with folks, I've heard you talk before about this school of herring as a metaphor for leadership. So yeah, can you explain what that means and how it shaped your approach to building teams? Well, I'm Scandinavian, so I love herring. Pickled herring, smoked herring, fried herring, cooked herring, any herring.

18:01So I love Silicon Valley completely. But one thing where I'm not fully Silicon Valley-esque is this. In Silicon Valley, we idolize people and we have too many pedestals. Everybody's put on a pedestal. And I'm thinking, sure, you need to hire the best people. But even the best people, although they may act like a prima donna, they don't really want to be on a pedestal. They want to work with other smart people. They want to be on an even playing field. So my thinking is that, I come to Silicon Valley, everybody talks about big fish. Martin, you can meet some big fish. So as a counter statement, I say, no, small fish, herring, because a school of herring is more powerful than one big fish or one shark.

18:48If you have one big fish in the water and you throw a rock on it, it will die. If there's a school of herring coming along with a million herring, you can throw anything on it and it won't, you kill nothing. But leadership is about making everybody swim more or less in the same direction and create this movement of many, many people. And that is more lasting, more powerful, more fulfilling for everybody than looking for these individual big fish. That's my thinking. Yeah. And what I also like about it is like if you look at a school of herring or if you look at fireflies pulsing light at the same time or whatnot, the closer you get, the less in common they seem to have on the surface.

19:33If you were going to look at a school of hearing at a micro level, they wouldn't be exactly on the same vector at exactly the same time. But there's kind of this spontaneous order of seeming like that from a distance. And what I like about your metaphor is I think companies are a lot like that, right? Everybody is their own individual self, and you want to maintain some of that individuality, but you have to somehow convince a bunch of really different, smart, focused, opinionated people to sort of resemble a school of fish at a distance, right? You got to get some alignment of people. So then, so, you know, Eucalympus wasn't your last rodeo.

20:16You know, you ended up at Hacker One. So how did that happen? Same story again. I told everybody I'm soon ready to go. People brought me all kinds of ideas. I made a list of companies as well. I had my own list and I was thinking, okay, Slack, if they would need a CEO, I would take the job immediately. I'm still such a huge fan of Slack. I would wish that they would need a CEO. That was, to me, the ultimate example of how you get people to work together voluntarily in a distributed way. Things I really love. So that was on my list and companies I interviewed with. And then Benchmark brought HackerOne to me and said, Martin, there's this cybersecurity company.

21:01Would you like to take a look? I'm like, I don't like cybersecurity. Like negative, cynical, nitpicky people. Like I can't work with that. It's not me. They said, okay, fine. But could you just meet with them? Maybe they could need some advice from you. Okay, okay. I'll meet with them. When I met with the founder who was the CEO of them, Merine, he sold me in 30 seconds. And he somehow just twisted my mind in an instant. I was like, whoa, this is like MySQL. It's voluntary. It's positive. It's joyful. It turns the negative into a positive. It turns a vulnerability into strength. It is distributed.

21:37It's like it's the hacker community. And I know how to work with people who are too intelligent for their own good. But I was still not sure. So I called Danny Reimer, who some small moments in life, he has been by Bill Campbell, like not long-term, but he has this amazing understanding of the world and me. So I called him and said, Danny, I must ask you for advice. I'm in love with this early stage, improbable startup. And I don't know if I can take the job. Like, what would you say? And he said, what's the company? I said, well, it's a cybersecurity company called HackerOne. And then he said, HackerOne, you must take the job, Martin.

22:16It is you. And he knew the company. And with his endorsement, I thought, okay, I need to take this. No matter, it's unlikely, it's early stage. They told me they had like 4 million in sales or something. 2 million, they said. When I come on board, there were 600 ,000. And our competitors had more revenues and we're closing more deals. So it was sort of a messy place when I arrived. But we got it under my rule to 100 million in revenues and market leader and building out many things, whole product portfolio, AI product. So I'm very, very proud of what we built with that group and with all the founders, the three who are cybersecurity people all still at the company doing well, enjoying it.

23:00So that's, I guess, it was just amazing. And, you know, you've done this CEO gig a few times now. You probably have a pretty good sense of what it takes to succeed, but also some of the blind spots that people could have. What do you think that most founders don't recognize about what it actually means to be a CEO? Actually, first of all, I would say CEOs are so aware of their weaknesses that it nearly harms them. Like when I talk to first-time CEOs like, Martin, I don't know anything. I've never been a CEO. I have to learn so much. Like, tell me anything. I probably need to learn it. So they're already aware of a lot of their shortcomings.

23:41But if we go to blind spots, I think maybe the most universal one is as CEOs, we have difficulties understanding how we come across. And that applies to young and old, senior, tenured and not. The CEO says, yeah, I did this talk to the employees and I was really strong and strategic. And then people say, no, you were angry. Even when we try to know how we come across, we are not realizing what we look like and sound like. You have to have some trusted people around you who will come and say, hey, Martin, just a moment ago, you sounded a little bit stressed. Did you notice? Like, what? Did I? Or they say, you ignored this one person in an ugly way.

24:26Like, you should go back and apologize. choice and we need that sort of feedback even though we are omnipotent and wonderful and we are CEOs and we have all these skills we make these stupid mistakes because we don't realize what we are radiating we think we are strong but we are not we think we are soft we are not we think we are smart we are not like we would like to be look like James Bond 007 who never says anything stupid. But in reality, we say stupid things. So we must have honest, honest people around us who will come and whisper to us. And did you find that even more useful than, say, 360-degree feedback?

25:06Or there's kind of mechanisms that organizations have where you're, in theory, supposed to find your blind spots or at least understand your weaknesses? I enjoy the sounding board better because I feel I can correct it. If I do a 360 degree, this is what comes with experience. They point out the weaknesses that are so deep in me that I can't even fix them. Like they're giving you the same feedback that they gave 10 years ago. I'm like, I know this. I know I'm not good at following up on every action item to the end. Like I've known this for a long time. Why do you keep reminding me? Yeah. At Floodgate, there'll be times where I just kind of want to do something and I find myself telling the team, look, I could come up with a rationale for why I want to do this, and I could try to get you on board with the logic and the thought process, but I've just kind of decided I'm doing this.

25:59So I think I'd just tell you that. And you have somebody in your office who's whispering behind your back, yeah, that's Mike. He is like that. Yeah. And a lot of times they'll be like, okay, I understand that logic. Just don't take too much time on it. Right. But here, the profiling tools that exist are very useful. So like first we do Myers-Briggs and then we could do the Enneagram. At HackerOne, we did the Working Genius by Pat Lencioni. So he has come up with a new profiling where he has six particular geniuses, like skills or propensities that you need in business. And then he figures out which two are you really strong in, which two are you really bad in and which two are in the middle.

26:47And when that happened, my executive team looked at me and said, yes, Martin, we know. We know that those are your weaknesses. And my two weaknesses, one was the I'm not a finisher. Like I don't finish everything I start. I need other people to finish. So that's one. The other one, which is maybe more damaging, is discernment. If you give me two choices, I'll try to do both. I don't like picking just one. So I need help in cutting down choices to a fewer number. I can make decisions on strategies and scenarios, like complex strategy decisions I'm good at. But these simple ones where you say, okay, are we now going enterprise or mid-market, or are we prioritizing usability or speed?