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

221–230 of 300 posts

Re: Backblaze IPO

#221

Post by biztos »

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…

I wonder, how should content risk (for lack of a better term) be factored in?

As a storage service you don't know what you're storing, generally. Maybe you're storing proof of extrajudicial assassinations, or hilarious Winnie the Pooh memes, just to name two things that can get a person locked up forever.

At this point it's all equal, neither Backblaze nor Filecoin has any idea about it.

But if The Government discovers you're storing this stuff, suddenly you have a big problem. They will "stop at nothing" to make you give them all the metadata and delete the goods.

If you're Backblaze and you're on NASDAQ and you have a relationship with regulators, etc. etc., you can throw up your hands and do whatever they tell you. You'll be fine.

If you're a decentralized crypto-storage conglomerate, you probably can't actually do anything. At which point, The Government's best hand may be to declare everything you do illegal and everybody doing it a terrorist. And then all your miners/storers/whatever flee (or are captured) and the system shuts down, at least anywhere The Government can reach.

Thus it seems like Filecoin has a built-in risk to its longevity that is completely separate from its financials, whereas Backblaze really just has to make more than it spends.

Re: Backblaze IPO

#222

Post by doh »

I always though that Apple should’ve acquired the company and offer Time Machine in the cloud. The seamlessness of the TM is at another level, but the missing cloud backup made it always somewhat limited option.

Apple has a history of buying “feature” companies (the famous feedback Jobs gave to Houston on Dropbox).

Apple eventually built this itself for iOS and it doesn’t seem like MacOS has much priority these days.

Re: Backblaze IPO

#223

Post by simonh »

doh wrote: post #222

I always though that Apple should’ve acquired the company and offer Time Machine in the cloud. The seamlessness of the TM is at another level, but the missing cloud backup made it always somewhat limited option. Apple has a history of buying “feature” companies (the famous feedback Jobs gave to Houston on Dropbox). Apple eventually built this itself for iOS and it doesn’t seem like MacOS has much priority these days.

iCloud Drive on the Mac with desktop and documents sync is pretty decent. I know it's not the same as full system backup. Yep, cloud Time Machine would be nice but probably a bit expensive, but meanwhile I'm happy with Backblaze. The iOS client is dead handy.

Re: Backblaze IPO

#224

Post by durnygbur »

jterrys wrote: post #83
rvz wrote: post #72

Let's just say that if you missed CloudFlare [0] and DigitalOcean [1], BackBlaze is another instant buy in my books. Another real tech IPO once again. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20707306 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26262799

I picked up 400 shares on their IPO back in 2019. And then 100 more when they hovered around $14. Suffice to say I'm pretty happy with my portfolio with them today.

Jeez why in Europe we cannot have nice things:( Only IPO available to me and resembling a tech IPO was of ecommerce website in 2020, they used the money to paid their debts and share price currently is at the subscription price level.

Re: Backblaze IPO

#225

Post by reacharavindh »

durnygbur wrote: post #7
cinntaile wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He wants to be in on the IPO I think, buying when it's reached the stock market is too late for that.

yes, this is my intention

Sorry, I am a newbie to this sort of thing. I only ever buy stocks in the open market for my small portfolio of personal investments.

Is it even possible to get shares _before_ an IPO? I thought there were only private investments and shares(after an IPO). One wouldn't call private investments the same as "shares" would they? Even if so, then why is the same bank/financial institution that manages the IPO involved in making a private investment in a company? Wouldn't you need to contact the founders of the company as they are the owners until the IPO?

Re: Backblaze IPO

#226

Post by Synaesthesia »

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…

Yeah well, the market is well known to do irrational things, people are speculating highly on all things crypto.

Re: Backblaze IPO

#227

Post by vaughan »

SahAssar wrote: post #46
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'm sorry if I missed something, but you twice paid for long subscriptions for a service that did not work for you? What made you choose the two year plan when trying it the second time? Why did you pick the two year option at all the first time before trying it?

I forgot it didn't work the last time, and I needed an offsite backup solution. I was optimistic that I could configure the right excludes so it would work, but the sys pref change made this impossible.

It takes a few weeks to upload everything, and by that time the trial has expired.

Re: Backblaze IPO

#228

Post by vaughan »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #81
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…

> Entire backups of 4TB drive in less than This drive must be mostly empty, otherwise 4TB/(20*60) yields on the order of 3GBps. That's B as in Bytes.

Incremental backup + file watching = very fast. See: https://9to5mac.com/2021/05/19/carbon-copy-cloner-for-mac-ov....

Re: Backblaze IPO

#229

Post by olalonde »

kottaram wrote: post #162
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.

The CTO just said the truth. How else would he say that the customer's data will be deleted? Sure it was straight up blunt, but I think he was just speaking casually.

I am very confused by the email, especially the second point. I've never used Backblaze so maybe I'm missing some critical information. To me, it sounds like Backblaze was happily keeping a backup for a paying customer until said customer booted their laptop. They then threaten to delete the backup if customer doesn't update their software. I understand about warning that the software no longer works but why threaten to delete the backup?

Re: Backblaze IPO

#230

Post by doh »

simonh wrote: post #223
doh wrote: post #222

I always though that Apple should’ve acquired the company and offer Time Machine in the cloud. The seamlessness of the TM is at another level, but the missing cloud backup made it always somewhat limited option. Apple has a history of buying “feature” companies (the famous feedback Jobs gave to Houston on Dropbox). Apple eventually built this itself for iOS and it doesn’t seem like MacOS has much priority these days.

iCloud Drive on the Mac with desktop and documents sync is pretty decent. I know it's not the same as full system backup. Yep, cloud Time Machine would be nice but probably a bit expensive, but meanwhile I'm happy with Backblaze. The iOS client is dead handy.

True on all. I think that’s where Apple eventually landed. The value of restoring the full file system is low in a rigid environment like the MacOS (they nudge you to use specific folder structure, etc).

It would’ve been interesting if DropBox would sell to Apple back in the days, what would’ve the OSs looked like today.

Post reply on HN