Management

Ulf Sandberg
CEO

Ulf is a 25-year veteran of high pressure Silicon Valley start-ups with already impressive exit events behind him. He played a critical role during his 5 years as Vice President and Senior Vice President of Global Services at MySQL in helping it grow from start-up to successful $1B acquisition by Sun Microsystems. Before joining MySQL, Sandberg was Vice President of professional services at Finaplex, an enterprise software company in the global financial services market. Prior to that he was Vice President, field services at Marimba which went through a high profile IPO in 1999 before being acquired by BMC. Earlier in his career, Sandberg held a number of engineering management positions in U.S. and European companies. He received his MSEE from Lunds Institute of Technology, Sweden and resides in Silicon Valley, California.

Ivan Zoratti
CTO

With 25 years of experience in computer science and IT, Ivan started his career at Digital Equipment Corporation, following his passion for the kernel of the PdP 11 machines, RSX and later with VAX/VMS Macro programming. Entrepreneur since 1988, he set up and managed several IT startups in Europe. He has been an independent journalist and author of technical books for 15 years. Since the early 90s, Ivan has been Chief Technical Architect and Chief Technical Officer for non IT companies in sectors like telco, manufacturing and retail.

Ivan joined MySQL in 2005 and led the European Pre-Sales team for the Software Infrastructure Group at Sun Microsystems. At SkySQL, he is responsible for the vision of the company and the evolution of new database solutions and services.

A native of Italy, Ivan has lived in Windsor, UK since 2000

Kaj Arnö
EVP Products

Kaj joined MySQL AB in 2001 after 14 years as an entrepreneur. His first position was VP Training, launching MySQL AB’s training department. Since then, Kaj has been VP Professional Services, VP Services, and VP Engineering at MySQL, before assuming his last pure-MySQL role of VP Community Relations in 2005. With MySQL AB being acquired by Sun and then Oracle, Kaj has decided to give into his entrepreneurial urges once again and joins SkySQL as EVP Products.

A native of Finland, Kaj has lived in Munich since 2006.

Michael Carney
Vice President of Sales

Michael joined MySQL in 2003 after 10 years as an entrepreneur. Michael initially lead sales in France helping to make that country the #2 market worldwide, after the US, in terms of sales. Michael then went on to lead the MySQL® sales efforts in Southern Europe for Sun and very briefly Oracle before leaving in the summer of 2010. He joins SkySQL as Vice President of Sales with global responsibility.

A native of northern England, Michael received his BSc from Bordeaux University and due to a weakness for fine wines and cheeses has never achieved escape velocity from France in the 20 years since he graduated.

Dean Ellis
Vice President of Technical Support

Dean joined MySQL Support in 2003, after several years as a software developer and DBA deploying MySQL® for enterprise applications alongside Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle. Initially a support engineer and developer, he moved into management for the Americas-based support team and eventually served as manager for the entire global support organization, earning a reputation for passionate customer advocacy.

A native of the USA, Dean lives near Nashville, Tennessee.

Matt Fredrickson
Director Sales North America

Matt was one of the first volume sales reps for MySQL covering North America, UK and Ireland. The team was relatively small in 2002 but grew quite rapidly along with the popularity of MySQL®. Matt grew and led a team of sales representatives mostly covering the eastern US and Canada, including Federal and renewal business. Matt successfully led his team through two major acquisitions by Sun Microsystems and then Oracle. He has over 10 years of experience in direct software sales and software sales management. He joins SkySQL as Sales Director of North America. Matt received his BA from Western Washington University and is a native of the Pacific Northwest, living near Seattle, Washington.

Boel Larsen
Sr. Director HR

Prior to joining MySQL in early 2002 Boel ran a consulting company with her two best friends. A MySQL Management Team member, Boel managed global human resources throughout her tenure, with the company growing from 30 employees to 425. Boel stayed with Sun as a Sr. HR Business Partner, working with VP's of Sales in Europe. She joins SkySQL as Sr. Director Human Resources.

Boel holds a Certificate in Law from the University of Uppsala, Sweden. A resident of Uppsala, she also spends as much time as possible in her island summer house, wrestling with mobile internet.

Max Mether
Manager Training Services

Max joined MySQL in 2001 starting as a Consultant and an Instructor. Max ended up creating the MySQL training program and managing the curriculum under MySQL Ab and later in Sun. Prior to joining MySQL Max did some business development work at an innovation company for mobile technology.

A native of Finland, Max received his M.Sc (Eng) in Physics and Maths from Helsinki University of Technology. Max has been drinking his wine in Paris, France for the past 6 years.  

Daniel Saito
Director Sales JAPAC

First introduced to computers at an early age in life at, 8 years old. Daniel took an natural affinity towards computers over the years. With his keen technical skills in computers; his past experiences varied from co-founding a Tokyo based ISP (RIMNET) to a security research engineer at NTT DoCoMo R&D. As a entrepreneur, Daniel has played a pivotal role in several startups globally and specifically in Asia. Daniel joined MySQL in 2005, recruited as the Representative Director for MySQL K.K. He was one of the first employees for MySQL in the APAC region, he was tasked to educate and expand the open source business for the MySQL database.

At SkySQL, Daniel is responsible for Japan and the Asia Pacific region. A native to the suburbs of Los Angeles, Daniel has lived in Tokyo, Japan since 1999.

Magnus Stenberg
Vice President of Sales EMEA

Magnus joined MySQL in 2003 after 15 years in leading Sales and Management positions with Digital Equipment, Cognos, Informix and Precise Biometrics. Magnus went on to lead the MySQL sales in Nordic, Benelux and Israel for Sun Microsystems and Oracle. Many large and strategic business contracts were managed by Magnus at MySQL, and he made his MySQL sales team the most sucessful region during multiple years at MySQL AB.

A native of Sweden living near Uppsala, Magnus joins SkySQL as Vice President Sales EMEA.