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Backblaze IPO

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Re: Backblaze IPO

#201

Post by simonebrunozzi »

femto113 wrote: post #180

This is an interesting moment to reflect on the wacky nature of IPO vs ICO valuations. Backblaze and Filecoin are, roughly speaking, in the same business (providing bulk file storage). Backblaze is looking to raise ~$100 million at a valuation of about $0.7 billion. Filecoin raised $250 million in their ICO, and the coin has a current "market cap" of about $7 billion. Backblaze owns about 1.8 EiB of storage, Filecoin…

This is a brilliant comment, and despite it doesn't answer or address every question or concerns, it points our brain to an interesting direction of thought.

Re: Backblaze IPO

#204

Post by ksec »

crossroadsguy wrote: post #186
ehsankia wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused here. How does a threat of deleting your data in less than 7 days and not even canceling your billing makes you a loyal customer? That seems quite awful, miss the email and your data is gone, and you end up paying without them even storing any data.

This is a very Backblaze Personal Backup fan thingie. Some kind of twisted Stockholm syndrome? Just like Apple fans. I have rarely met Apple “users” and Backblaze Personal Backup “users”. I’ve mostly met their “fans” - they speak of these companies as if it was the second coming in their lives; as if it brought the light with it - which is very unhealthy imho. I wonder whether it’s their marketing and PR spin/strateg…

>I wonder whether it’s their marketing and PR spin/strategy.

I have rarely read any fandom about Backblaze. There may be just a few mentions whenever there is a topic of backup or S3 alternative.

But I remember vividly there were at least a few hundred if not thousands of hateful comments on HN when they swear to god they will never use them again because of a mistake they made with Facebook analytics. Anyone who defended Backblaze at the time for its possible engineering mistakes were borderline being attacked. I dont know if there is any Stockholm syndrome on Backblaze but I definitely see Facebookphobia on HN and on Twitter.

Re: Backblaze IPO

#205

Post by timwaagh »

dnautics wrote: post #105
dougSF70 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly you cannot short an IPO..no one has shares to lend until it is public.

IPOs usually pop quickly regardless, if you believe in shorting it, you can get even better value for your short.

How could they not pop if people can't sell?

Re: Backblaze IPO

#206

Post by distances »

Scott_Sanderson wrote: post #182
robbiemitchell wrote: post #127

Apropos of nothing, I'll share one of the reasons why I've been a loyal customer since 2010. In 2013 I booted up a dormant 2006 Macbook to prep for lending to a friend. Shortly thereafter I received the following email: === Hi Robbie (first name guessed from email address)- This is NOT an automated email, I'm typing this live. You have the very very last computer on earth running an ancient version of Backblaze (vers…

Brian is the man. Love his web page on dutch bikes in Amsterdam. Inspired me to get a real dutch bike and put 30k miles on it! https://www.ski-epic.com/amsterdam_bicycles/

Somehow very refreshing blast from the Old Internet. I feel a modern version of this would be divided to 15 pages, all filled with ads, and below a section of toxic comments instead of these very human responses.

Re: Backblaze IPO

#207

Post by [deleted] »

femto113 wrote: post #180

This is an interesting moment to reflect on the wacky nature of IPO vs ICO valuations. Backblaze and Filecoin are, roughly speaking, in the same business (providing bulk file storage). Backblaze is looking to raise ~$100 million at a valuation of about $0.7 billion. Filecoin raised $250 million in their ICO, and the coin has a current "market cap" of about $7 billion. Backblaze owns about 1.8 EiB of storage, Filecoin…

[deleted]

Re: Backblaze IPO

#208

Post by tinco »

Scott_Sanderson wrote: post #182
robbiemitchell wrote: post #127

Apropos of nothing, I'll share one of the reasons why I've been a loyal customer since 2010. In 2013 I booted up a dormant 2006 Macbook to prep for lending to a friend. Shortly thereafter I received the following email: === Hi Robbie (first name guessed from email address)- This is NOT an automated email, I'm typing this live. You have the very very last computer on earth running an ancient version of Backblaze (vers…

Brian is the man. Love his web page on dutch bikes in Amsterdam. Inspired me to get a real dutch bike and put 30k miles on it! https://www.ski-epic.com/amsterdam_bicycles/

Ha that's great. He'll be pleased to know that having your cellphone out on a bike in Amsterdam is now illegal and strictly policed. He was right to point it out, it was (and still is) really dangerous.

Re: Backblaze IPO

#210

Post by ksec »

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…

It is similar how insurance works. And the maths work just fine over a large enough sample size on Windows and Mac. And the reason why they dont support Linux.

I think B2 is a leverage of their scale to offer something that is profitable per unit cost. At the end of the day they need to chase economy of scale. So it is a great addition.

My biggest concern is the cost of HDD not failing as fast as they have predicted, and that is part of the reason why they raised the price from $5 to $7. The recent announcement from WD only aims at 2.5x platter density increase by 2030 without using EAMR, suggest to me EAMR is expensive, and while HDD capacity will go up, unit cost wont go down as much. This is similar to NAND. We may be arrive at the end of the S curve in terms of storage cost reduction.

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