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Upthere

Other B2B Software · Redwood City, United States · Founded 2011

Upthere was a consumer cloud storage company established in 2011 by a team of seasoned technology executives: Bertrand Serlet, Roger Bodamer, and Alex Kushnir. The founders brought a wealth of experience from major tech firms, shaping the company's direction. Serlet, who holds a PhD in Computer Science, had a distinguished career at Apple as the Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, where he was instrumental in the development of Mac OS X. His journey also included significant roles at NeXT and Xerox PARC. Bodamer is a serial entrepreneur with deep expertise in database architectures, having held leadership positions at Oracle, Apple, and MongoDB. Kushnir's background is in medicine and research, with an MD and PhD from Columbia University, focusing on molecular cardiology and developing computer programs to analyze heart rhythm data. The company's core offering was a cloud storage platform designed to function as a user's primary storage, rather than a secondary backup or sync location. This was enabled by their proprietary UpOS technology, a full-stack system with a direct write feature that stored all data directly in the cloud, aiming to make access feel as fast as local storage. Upthere's service provided a unified home for a user's photos, videos, documents, and music, accessible across iOS, Android, macOS, and Windows devices. A key feature was 'Loops,' which allowed users to create shared spaces for collaborative content sharing, where items could be viewed and edited by multiple users in their original quality. The business model was subscription-based, offering a free trial period followed by a monthly fee for a set amount of storage, with options to purchase additional capacity. Upthere secured a significant $77 million in funding from investors including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Elevation Partners, GV (formerly Google Ventures), and Western Digital. In August 2017, Western Digital, a prior investor, announced its acquisition of Upthere's assets for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition was intended to enhance Western Digital's consumer portfolio with new cloud-based offerings, and Upthere's then-CEO, Chris Bourdon, joined Western Digital to lead these strategic initiatives. However, by September 2019, Western Digital had discontinued the Upthere cloud storage service. Following the acquisition, some of the underlying technology, specifically a storage system component named 'Blb', was open-sourced on GitHub. Keywords: Upthere, cloud storage, personal cloud, Bertrand Serlet, Roger Bodamer, Alex Kushnir, Western Digital acquisition, UpOS, direct write technology, file sharing, data storage, consumer cloud services, mobile storage, digital asset management, Loops, cloud-based offerings, technology acquisition, VC-backed, Kleiner Perkins, Elevation Partners