Tom Paine
In late June, Radnor-based software PE firm PeakEquity Partners announced the sale of its first investment, EnterpriseDB, to Great Hill Partners. Milestone Partners and NewSpring Capital invested along with Peak in 2014. I wrote about that deal then.
Bedford, MA-based EnterpriseDB is perhaps the leading branded version of the PostgresSQL open source database software. I don’t know the entry and exit prices, but imagine it was a timely buy because PostgresSQL is becoming more mainstream. AWS, which offers its own version of PostgresSQL as do other major Cloud platforms, probably paved the way for broader market adoption in general by providing better hosting options, making it easier for users to “just say no to Oracle”.
After Microsoft itself acquired another PostgresSQL provider, Citus, early this year, an industry consultant who sometimes works with Microsoft was quoted as saying that the only way the Redmond, Wash.-based cloud giant could have made that point [commitment to open source database] clearer would have been by purchasing EnterpriseDB.
PeakEquity said EnterpriseDB triple its annual recurring revenue during Peak’s tenure and lifted its growth rate to 40%.