Tessell Appoints Matt McDonough and Jeffrey Carter to Executive Team to Accelerate Enterprise Database Modernization

McDonough (Ex-Couchbase, scaled to $275M ARR) joins as President, GTM; Carter (Former AWS VP, RDS & Database & Migration Services) joins as Chief Strategy Officer

SAN FRANCISCO, May 04, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Tessell, the enterprise Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) platform that gives organizations unified control across any database engine and any cloud, today announced two senior leadership appointments: Matt McDonough as President, Go-to-Market and Jeff Carter as Chief Strategy Officer.

Modernizing legacy databases is time sensitive and business critical for enterprises and governmental organizations. Driven by AI transformation mandates, data center consolidation, cloud cost management, database licensing changes, and compliance, these initiatives have become urgent and critical investments. Tessell has emerged as the DBaaS platform for this transition. Enterprises and governmental organizations, including CSX, Moody's, Forbes, and Citizens Bank trust Tessell to keep their most mission critical data running, reporting 25 to 50 percent reductions in total database cost of ownership, up to 10x faster database provisioning, and up to 99.99% application availability.

"The market has reached an inflection point," said Bala Kuchibhotla, CEO of Tessell. "Enterprises know they need to modernize their database estates to take advantage of the cost and flexibility delivered by the cloud and the business transformation from AI. The question is how to execute with speed without breaking what is already working. Matt knows how to build the GTM motion that takes a platform to enterprise scale. Jeff knows database infrastructure from the inside out - he has seen it at a scale very few people have witnessed. Together they give Tessell exactly what this moment requires."

Matt McDonough - President, Go-to-Market

Matt McDonough joins Tessell after nearly nine years at Couchbase, where he was an early executive hire and scaled the company from early-stage revenue to approximately $275M ARR, guiding it through its IPO and subsequent acquisition. McDonough built the partner ecosystem, strategy and corporate development functions and spearheaded the product transformation that became the foundation of Couchbase's growth.

At Tessell, McDonough will lead all go-to-market efforts globally, with a focus on expanding enterprise reach, deepening partner relationships and building the commercial infrastructure to take Tessell to its next stages of growth.

"I have spent my career building key company capabilities that help data and infrastructure companies scale to best serve their customers and partners in meeting their own business objectives," said McDonough. "Tessell is the rare combination of a genuinely differentiated platform, proven customer outcomes, and a market that has reached the point where the urgency is real. The opportunity here is significant and the timing is right."

Jeff Carter - Chief Strategy Officer

Jeff Carter joins Tessell with four decades of experience in enterprise data. Most recently, he served as Vice President at AWS, where he led the entire portfolio of Relational Databases, Non-Relational Databases, and Migration Services—overseeing platforms that power mission-critical workloads at planetary scale. Prior to AWS, Carter spent nearly three decades at Teradata in senior engineering and platform leadership roles.

At Tessell, Carter will shape the company's long-term platform strategy and help enterprises navigate the increasingly complex database modernization landscape.

"Tessell is solving one of the most consequential challenges in enterprise technology," said Carter. "Enterprises are sitting on decades of accumulated database complexity and they need a path forward that does not require them to break what is already working, and provides flexibility for multi-cloud implementations. That is exactly what Tessell delivers."

About Tessell

Tessell is the enterprise DBaaS platform that gives organizations unified control across any database engine and any cloud. Tessell's control plane, phased migration methodology, and built-in governance help enterprises migrate, manage, and modernize without disrupting what is already working. Fortune 500 companies, global banks, and government agencies - including CSX, Moody's, Citizens Bank and Forbes - trust Tessell to keep their most critical data running, reporting 25 to 50 percent reductions in total database cost of ownership. Tessell is recognized as a Gartner Cool Vendor in Data Management and a Peer Insights Strong Performer in Cloud Database Management Systems (2025 and 2026).

For more information about Tessell and its DBaaS solutions, visit https://www.tessell.com.

Media Contact

Len Fernandes
Firecracker PR for Tessell
len@firecrackerpr.com

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Jeff Carter - Chief Strategy Officer

At Tessell, Carter will shape the company's long-term platform strategy and help enterprises navigate the increasingly complex database modernization landscape.

Bala Kuchibhotla - CEO

"The market has reached an inflection point," said Bala Kuchibhotla, CEO of Tessell. "Enterprises know they need to modernize their database estates to take advantage of the cost and flexibility delivered by the cloud and the business transformation from AI. The question is how to execute with speed without breaking what is already working. Matt knows how to build the GTM motion that takes a platform to enterprise scale. Jeff knows database infrastructure from the inside out - he has seen it at a scale very few people have witnessed. Together they give Tessell exactly what this moment requires."

Matt McDonough - President, Go-to-Market

At Tessell, McDonough will lead all go-to-market efforts globally, with a focus on expanding enterprise reach, deepening partner relationships and building the commercial infrastructure to take Tessell to its next stages of growth.

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