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Backblaze S-1 IPO

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Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#111

Post by haggy102 »

ramesh31 wrote: post #86

>"We make it astonishingly easy to store, use, and protect data" What does this even mean? And how is their business even remotely competitive with the big 3? Bit pushing is a volume game, and it doesn't seem like they have much of it.

They essentially market themselves as "S3 without the surprise costs" as well as "trust as more than amazon" which I think they hold up to. What they lack is the insane amount of reliability and scalability that S3 offers. I'm not saying this as a fanboy of S3. They (aws) have their share of issues and AWS has never been transparent about their pricing structure. If you don't believe me there just Google "surprise AWS costs". Just like everything in life B2 is a tradeoff. I love healthy competition and I hope backblaze continues to crush it!

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#112

Post by thinkloop »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #41
bpodgursky wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty bold to IPO with those kind of revenue #s these days... I guess the iron is hot though.

Car companies are going IPO without any product at all and no track record showing they can run a sustainable business.

SPACs don't even have a business idea, and they trade above cash. They literally sell the potential of possibly getting into some sort of business one day.

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#113

Post by jhanschoo »

asdfaoeu wrote: post #83
qeternity wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Backblaze was tweeting about being profitable as late as 2020: https://twitter.com/backblaze/status/1242481625004273665

The figures above are with GAAP standards but as a private company do they actually have to use that?

Taxation, I guess?

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#114

Post by quickthrower2 »

marcellus23 wrote: post #79
quickthrower2 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes - and the danger for them is as an iPhone user I feel almost forced to use iCloud, and if I do that I might drop backblaze as I can use iCloud for everything. Why am I forced, because if I don't back up my phone using iCloud, then I need to back it up using iTunes, or not at all. That they have made copying photos off the iPhone terrible and iTunes terrible, is a good tactic to make me use iCloud. For now I am ho…

I believe iOS has always supported a “camera view” when plugged into a computer, where all videos and photos are readable as files. Doesn’t help for backing up anything else but seems like a straightforward enough path for backups.

Yeah copying files from there just crashes out on my pc.

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#115

Post by milleramp »

tiffanyh wrote: post #20

I love Backblaze. Kind of surprised they aren’t profitable. >” In the years ended December 31, 2019 and 2020, our revenue was $40.7 million and $53.8 million, respectively, representing growth of 32%. We incurred net losses of $1.0 million and $6.6 million for the years ended December 31, 2019 and 2020, respectively”

Me too, but maybe their lack of profitability and my happiness is correlated.

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#116

Post by [deleted] »

Osiris wrote: post #99
tgtweak wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if you consider the increase in assets (total value of the # of servers, racks, network gear etc) from the purchase of hardware to accommodate that growth, in order to satisfy those revenues and future revenues, it makes sense. It is entirely intentional and desirable for any gross margins to go fully back into growth or assets to support growth - especially in the cloud game where infrastructure costs and R&…

Thank you for the very insightful accounting perspective. I have a hard time understanding all the complexities of modern account and how a "loss" isn't always a loss. On a side note, I'm a very happy Backblaze customer and the same time curse Dropbox for not offering a 100GB $5/mn plan. Backblaze pricing is very customer friendly.

[deleted]

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#117

Post by wp381640 »

hatware wrote: post #42

I feel bad for taking advantage of their personal backup plan ($60/yr) now that I see they're struggling to gross a profit. I just can't find a better way to back up 80TB offsite with that value.

How did you ever think backing up 80TB for $60 a year was good for the company? You didn't need financial filings to know it wasn't.

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#118

Post by wp381640 »

antisthenes wrote: post #27

I'm surprised how small Backblaze is. Am I reading this right that they only had 53 million USD in Revenue in 2020? That's a tiny fraction of, say, Dropbox's revenue. I would have expected them to be in the 30-50% range of Dropbox on size. And with 164 employees to boot, that's only $323,000 revenue per employee. I wonder what the compensation is like there.

Carbonite - which is rarely mentioned on hn, had a $300M+ run-rate when they were acquired in 2019

I think brand awareness of Backblaze is insular - I remember Carbonite had the strategy of advertising on right-wing radio in the 00's which seems to have worked for them.

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#119

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

m0zg wrote: post #29
tiffanyh wrote: post #20

I love Backblaze. Kind of surprised they aren’t profitable. >” In the years ended December 31, 2019 and 2020, our revenue was $40.7 million and $53.8 million, respectively, representing growth of 32%. We incurred net losses of $1.0 million and $6.6 million for the years ended December 31, 2019 and 2020, respectively”

Sounds to me like prices will pretty much inevitably go up after they're public, and I'll finally have the motivation to set up my own remote backup by exchanging hard drives with a friend of mine on the other end of the country.

Try backupsy. Good prices.
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