backblaze raises pricing personal backup

The style continues the parsimonious ethos of the company, which earlier in its history was evicted for running some of its operations from an apartment building.

At that point, the company likely will have expanded to 25 employees, he said. 'By the end of the next 12 months, we don't need to raise again, because the company will be profitable at that size,' Budman said. 'Over the last five years, we've had probably 50 VCs who contacted us,' Budman said.ĭespite higher offers, the company decided to take a relatively small sum of money - $2.5 million now and another $2.5 million a year from now - so that it can expect to be profitable when the new funding is used up. The company has had lots of chances to bring in outside funding, but until now has decided against it so it can preserve its independence, executive team, and focus on pleasing customers rather than venture capitalists. That's unusual, but not unique Crashplan and AltDrive, for example, also offer flat-rate unlimited plans. TMT said in its announcement today that Backblaze had profit of $202,471 before taxes for 2011.īackblaze competes with better established rivals such as Mozy and Carbonite and with synchronization services such as Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, and Microsoft SkyDrive, but it distinguishes itself by offering unlimited data-storage capacity. The 16-employee company, founded in 2007 ago and headquartered in San Mateo, Calif., has been profitable with plans that cost $5 a month, $50 for a year, or $95 for two years. The funding will be used for advertising, promotional partnerships, and hiring engineers to bring new features such as an iOS app to market, Chief Executive Gleb Budman said. BackBlaze, an online backup company that for the last five years bootstrapped itself with its own funding, has taken a $5 million investment from U.K.-based TMT Investments to speed its growth.

Backblaze raises pricing personal backup