With its 15 percent share, Balderton Capital cashed out big on Sun's $1 billion MySQL acquisition yesterday. But Benchmark, from which Balderton was spun off, took an even bigger risk on open source back when doing so seemed more than a little crazy."When we first invested in Red Hat it was thought to be totally insane. When we funded MySQL it was only partly insane," Benchmark Capital's Kevin Harvey told the FT after Sun announced its buy. Benchmark owned 26 percent of MySQL before yesterday's sale, providing the firm a much-needed big hit, the likes of which the firm hasn't seen since eBay.

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