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Backblaze IPO

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Re: Backblaze IPO

#231

Post by durnygbur »

reacharavindh wrote: post #225
durnygbur wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In big shortcut - usually there are few banks and institutions involved in the process of the IPO. Some of them offer individual brokerage accounts and let their customers to subscribe to shares pre-IPO at the subscription price.

Re: Backblaze IPO

#232

Post by tallanvor »

Chilinot wrote: post #218
teraflop wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For many years, they were consistently and very diplomatically saying that they had no plans to offer Backblaze Personal Backup to Linux users, because Linux users would use a disproportionately large amount of storage and it wouldn't make sense to offer them a flat-rate alternative to the pay-per-GB B2 option. e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/backblaze/comments/jsrqoz/personal_... It seems that they may be changing the…

As a linux user, i have just setup my own backup solution to backblaze using Rclone and their S3 compatible storage.

Which is fine and all, but then you're paying per gb/month. Depending on how much you want to back up, it can cost you a lot more than the personal plan.

Re: Backblaze IPO

#233

Post by muzz »

darksaints wrote: post #140
henning wrote: post #8

> We have a history of cumulative losses, and we do not expect to be profitable for the foreseeable future. Fundamentals seem solid, gotta get me some of those shares!

Well, before IPOs became a way for founders to cash out, they actually served a purpose for raising money for the kinds of companies that won't be profitable for a while.

Selling into C rounds (and beyond) is the new way for founders to cash out

Re: Backblaze IPO

#234

Post by kjaftaedi »

olalonde wrote: post #229
kottaram wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Likely some sort of encryption/privacy issues.

Since the software version no longer works, they wouldn't be able to do a restore anyway. Keeping their old data on the live servers longer could be a liability.

(just a guess, but i imagine it's something along these lines)

Re: Backblaze IPO

#235

Post by reacharavindh »

durnygbur wrote: post #231
reacharavindh wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In big shortcut - usually there are few banks and institutions involved in the process of the IPO. Some of them offer individual brokerage accounts and let their customers to subscribe to shares pre-IPO at the subscription price.

Thanks for the explanation. That makes sense.

I thought the SEC filing shows X number of shares being brought to the IPO, which meant they would hit the market at open, but then it never is too simple ;-)

Re: Backblaze IPO

#236

Post by KaseKun »

dannyw wrote: post #212
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…

Note: the 13 EiB pledged are real storage capacity: miners must provide a cryptographic proof every day, that they are storing this much space; or it doesn't count. I still think crypto valuations are excessively, tulip-y high, but valuation/byte is pretty similar. The cryptographic system that enables people to prove storage is called 'Proof of spacetime'; which sounds cringey, but it's pretty clever (begins at page…

People have said "tulips and crypto" when bitcoin was at $800, $5000, $20000, and now at $50000.

I wonder when (if) it will stop?

I also wonder if crypto valuations are a reflection of truly "free market" economics. Where there is little-to-no barrier to entry as a creator or an investor, and there is complete impossibility of counterfeiting assets.

Re: Backblaze IPO

#237

Post by tinus_hn »

brianwski wrote: post #157
robbiemitchell wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I already had other (newer) computers being backed up, and this was a courtesy email to tell me I had failed to stop paying for monthly backups for a computer I had not opened (and thus synced) for years. He emailed me because the version running on that computer was considered so unstable as to be unreliable. Yes, they could have proactively canceled my bill. Maybe they would have! We'll never know, because I respon…

Hey Robbie- I am touched you saved my email and remembered me, and that at the time you didn't respond negatively to the message. Thank you for being a customer. The only thing I regret is that comment about version number of 2.3.1 and the claim that it would run flawlessly for a decade. Oh geez, please upgrade to 8.0.1, you won't regret it. -- Brian Wilson, CTO Backblaze, brianw@backblaze.com

But what about the part where you said you were going to delete their files in a week? I don’t understand why someone would say that.

Re: Backblaze IPO

#238

Post by BeFlatXIII »

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…

For whatever reason, Apple is the only company who has internalized the fact that price-sensitive customers simply aren’t worthwhile.

Re: Backblaze IPO

#239

Post by tallanvor »

ineedasername wrote: post #175
rsync wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am the founder of rsync.net. I don't think we are competitors. I have publicly criticized flat-rate storage pricing for many years[1]. That being said, I wish them good luck and will watch with great interest. [1] https://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2009/11/flat-rate-stor...

That's an interesting view on flat rate storage. Although if you happen to be within the target audience for their business model (like I am) then it works pretty well, especially as a secondary off-site backup option. But yeah, if there's a threshold of, say, 2TB and > 5GB/day bandwidth that makes someone an unprofitable customer, then they should just set caps accordingly rather than claim unlimited.

As far as I know Backblaze doesn't throttle. I have two computers being backed up (1.5TB and 33TB) and about 2TB being backed up from a NAS to B2. Honestly it's been working without a hassle. Granted, if I ever have to restore that 33TB, it could take a long time, but most of it wouldn't be critical to getting the system up and running again and if it takes a couple of weeks to restore, fine.

Re: Backblaze IPO

#240

Post by goatherders »

ehsankia wrote: post #131
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…

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.

It is not the SaaS providers job to try and decipher a user's intentions. Lots of services (Pipedrive for example) will let users pay indefinitely for licebsed not in use. Sure, it works to their advantage from a revenue standpoint. But it also presumes that the user is paying attention to their expenses and making a decision. In Pipedrive's case they do this so IT can provision new users on their first day without having to create an internal billing nightmare.

You can't have it both ways, demanding privacy and respect from software publishers then crying when the software doesn't serve your use case exactly and make assumptions about your intentions.

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