Backblaze

About Backblaze

Founded in a Palo Alto apartment in 2007 by Gleb Budman, Billy Ng, Nilay Patel, Brian Wilson, Casey Jones, Tim Nufire, and Damon Uyeda, Backblaze, Inc. provides cloud storage and data backup services. The founding team, having previously built and sold two companies, aimed to create a simple and affordable data protection solution. CEO Gleb Budman's background includes roles at SonicWall and MailFrontier, along with an MBA from UC Berkeley, shaping the company's focus on user-friendly products. The company was bootstrapped for its first five years, a deliberate decision to maintain control over its product and culture before taking on its first venture funding of $5 million in 2012.

Backblaze operates on a subscription and pay-as-you-go model, serving individuals, businesses, and enterprises across more than 175 countries. The company's revenue is primarily generated from two core products: Backblaze Computer Backup and Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage. The Computer Backup service offers unlimited, automatic backup for laptops and desktops for a fixed monthly fee. B2 Cloud Storage is an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offering that competes with major providers like Amazon S3 and Google Cloud Storage, but at a fraction of the price, targeting developers, IT professionals, and businesses that need to store, use, and protect large datasets. This service is used for application development, AI/ML workloads, media archives, and ransomware protection.

A key element of Backblaze's strategy is its purpose-built infrastructure, which utilizes commodity hardware to keep costs low, an advantage passed on to customers. The company is also known for its transparency, regularly publishing detailed reports on the performance and failure rates of the hard drives in its data centers. A significant milestone was its initial public offering (IPO) on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker symbol BLZE in November 2021, which raised approximately $100 million. The platform offers S3-compatible APIs, allowing for seamless integration with a wide range of existing tools and workflows, and provides features like cloud replication for geographic data redundancy. All Computer Backup accounts include a 30-day version history for files, with options to extend it to one year for free or indefinitely for an additional fee.