Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Backblaze IPO

sec.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 300 posts

Re: Backblaze IPO

#51

Post by jorams »

vaughan wrote: post #25

I have paid for Backblaze for 4 years, after signing up for two 2 year subscriptions a few years apart. I have never got it to backup my files ever. Their settings dialog integrates with macOS preferences and freezes while it scans for files to backup without giving me any status update. It uploads so damn slowly it’s pretty useless. If I was to move/rename things around it would take weeks more to reupload. Every ti…

> I have paid for Backblaze for 4 years, after signing up for two 2 year subscriptions a few years apart.

> I have never got it to backup my files ever.

Why are you signing up for a two-year plan twice if you can't get it to work? They offer a free trial, so it's not like they're forcing you to pay before figuring out if it works.

Re: Backblaze IPO

#52

Post by saghm »

matthewmcg wrote: post #40
rsync wrote: post #38

I find this part interesting - of the ~500,000 customers, 70,000 are B2 customers and 430,000 are "backup" customers ... which are flat-rate "unlimited" users. These flat-rate users are very fickle and price-sensitive. If you peruse subreddits related to cloud storage or online backup, etc., they are filled with very picky users who expect the product to be free - or close to free. It's a fools errand to pursue this…

"Fickle"? I've been a subscriber to the unlimited tier since seemingly forever, and I didn't realize it was now $7/mo instead of $5/mo. I think in the aggregate, subscriptions are pretty sticky due to inertia, etc.

Is it possible that the $7 rate was only for new customers from the point the price change was instated, rather than for existing customers?

Re: Backblaze IPO

#53

Post by matheusmoreira »

deanCommie wrote: post #45
rsync wrote: post #38

I find this part interesting - of the ~500,000 customers, 70,000 are B2 customers and 430,000 are "backup" customers ... which are flat-rate "unlimited" users. These flat-rate users are very fickle and price-sensitive. If you peruse subreddits related to cloud storage or online backup, etc., they are filled with very picky users who expect the product to be free - or close to free. It's a fools errand to pursue this…

I think the hope is that 420,000 of those users are Grandmas who installed backblaze because their son told them it's a good idea to make sure she doesn't lose all her important documents, and she's backing up a couple PDFs. And then the other 10,000 are data hoarders like me with Terabytes of data. I used to be a Crashplan customer - tried them and Backblaze, and liked Crashplan more. They eventually pivoted to Busi…

> They said "yeah, we lose a ton of money on every user like you."

Such an interesting statement. It's like they really think they can get away with offering "unlimited" storage without people taking full advantage of it. Like ISPs with their "unlimited" plans, they market that stuff and then they get mad if you actually saturate their link 24/7.

I actually emailed backblaze about this years ago. I asked them if they were really okay with me just dumping 10-20 terabytes of encrypted data that can't be deduplicated on their servers for such a low monthly price. I actually got a reply saying there was no problem.

> Thanks for writing in! Our system is truly unlimited.

> You can backup move than 15TB of data if you have that amount without hitting a cap or any extra fees.

> The business product just adds options for multiple backups and users.

Really surprising... I almost subscribed to their service on the spot. I gave up because transfering 20 TB over the internet is insane: it would take days to restore a backup. Also, they had no Linux software.

Re: Backblaze IPO

#54

Post by arsome »

saghm wrote: post #52
matthewmcg wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Fickle"? I've been a subscriber to the unlimited tier since seemingly forever, and I didn't realize it was now $7/mo instead of $5/mo. I think in the aggregate, subscriptions are pretty sticky due to inertia, etc.

Is it possible that the $7 rate was only for new customers from the point the price change was instated, rather than for existing customers?

No, they did increase it for existing users.

- One of those fickle users who bought all the extra credits he could at the original price.

Re: Backblaze IPO

#55

Post by thewebcount »

vaughan wrote: post #25

I have paid for Backblaze for 4 years, after signing up for two 2 year subscriptions a few years apart. I have never got it to backup my files ever. Their settings dialog integrates with macOS preferences and freezes while it scans for files to backup without giving me any status update. It uploads so damn slowly it’s pretty useless. If I was to move/rename things around it would take weeks more to reupload. Every ti…

Weird. I'm backing up on macOS and it works pretty seamlessly for me. Their website was a little (OK, very!) slow when I had to restore, but I ended up just having them send me a drive. I think I've touched the preferences maybe twice in the 5 or so years I've been using them, so maybe that's why I don't hit this issue? Just looking through the prefs right now, it seems to work fine.

> Carbon Copy Cloner on the other hand is excellent software. Entire backups of 4TB drive in less than That's not the same thing. That's a local backup. Of course a local backup will seem blazingly fast compared to a network backup.

Re: Backblaze IPO

#56

Post by lakecresva »

> all shares of Class B common stock will automatically convert into shares of Class A common stock on the earlier of (i) the seven-year anniversary of the closing date of this offering...

This is an interesting olive branch to class A shareholders, but is there a reasonable way for them to prevent class B holders from just extending the deadline by amending the articles?

Re: Backblaze IPO

#57

Post by jstx1 »

windthrown wrote: post #26
airstrike wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty standard for most young and fast growing tech companies

At 14 years old, is Backblaze still considered "young"?

The less successful you are, the longer you can get away with calling yourself young.

Re: Backblaze IPO

#58

Post by bpodgursky »

notyourday wrote: post #50
Jenk wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question asked from a place of naïveness: how do you short at IPO assuming one doesn't already have stock?

You cannot short an IPO. You cannot short post IPO until the stock becomes marginable. What you can do, if have a lot of $$, is have one of the desks immediately at after the IPO write you a synthetic short position using an over the counter option.

Yeah you can't do it through the platforms, but if you know someone bullish IRL there's nothing stopping you from making a meatspace agreement to sell them 100 shares of backblaze for $10 one year from today.

Re: Backblaze IPO

#60

Post by carlivar »

henning wrote: post #35
bpodgursky wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're confident, short it. Make some money.

Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me. They also said the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

In reality when debt/funding is exceptionally cheap, conditions exist for these sort of companies to be fine. Or to put it another way, when there's few options to park money and expect a reasonable return, risk threshold for unprofitable companies becomes lower.

So the market isn't really irrational. You might argue our interest rates and monetary policies are irrational. I would agree with you.

Post reply on HN