Today Redgate announced that we are partnering with Bregal Sagemount, a growth-focused private equity firm. There are no details of terms, and you can read the press release. It’s an opportunity for us to use this investment to drive growth forward in our products and solutions in the future.
I’ve been with Redgate since 2006, when they acquired SQL Server Central. At the time, a lot of people expressed concerns and worry about the acquisition. We announced it at the PASS Summit to a very mixed reaction from people who used the site. I tried to reassure people as best I could, noting that Redgate hadn’t expressed any plans to make major changes other than reduce external advertising.
They didn’t, and I’ve continued to run SQL Server Central for the last 18 years as a part of Redgate. While my job has changed in many ways, that has remained consistent, and I think we’ve delivered on helping the community learn, ask and answer questions, becoming better data professionals along the way.
The same types of assurances I gave are being given from various leaders at Redgate now, and I am taking them at face value. I know the founders of Redgate want to company to succeed and the fact that they didn’t sell outright is encouraging.
That being said, I’m nervous. I’ve been a part of restructurings, investments, sales, and more in the past, with mixed success. Whenever the foundations shift, I usually start looking for a new position. I’m not doing that today, but I am nervous because I don’t like big change.
I am hopeful this will mean that Redgate can tackle a few things that we’ve struggled to do and that we’ll invest in growing our company in ways that we struggled to do in the last decade. One of my hopes (selfishly) is an investment in SQL Server Central, which has languished a bit the last few years. We made a platform change in 2019 (not my choice) and we’ve had some lingering issues since then. Most things work, but some don’t work well. Some are broken, and there are lingering issues that are either annoying or I’d like to change.
I also think this investment may help spur some changes in products and solutions that help customers solve more database issues. We are a for-profit company and revenue will certainly matter, but more investment in staff is always needed and wanted. If there’s one thing I’ve seen in the last 18 years is that there is always a backlog of things to work on, and I’m hopeful we’ll be able to not only tackle some of those things, but continue to deliver more value every week.
I’m optimistic about the future at Redgate, and nervous, all at the same time, but for now, I’m not looking to make a change.