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Backblaze S-1 IPO

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Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#71

Post by quickthrower2 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #50
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.

Why? It’s a pure commodity business. They are competing against your iCloud subscription and little USB drives that cost $30. Not sure what the long term strategy is, but I hope going public doesn’t kill them — seems like a nice little business that could just coast for years.

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 holding out, sticking with backblaze (I love the do-nothing and it's backed up workflow) and probably will go the iTunes YUK route for backing up.

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#72

Post by mcny »

qeternity wrote: post #60
jonas21 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't say they were profitable - they said they were cash-flow positive. And if you look at the cash flow statement in the S-1, they were indeed cash-flow positive in 2019. It looks like much of the difference comes down to stock-based compensation. This doesn't cost the company any cash, but under GAAP, it has to be recorded as an expense. (IANAA, so take what I say with a grain of salt).

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

Can the service itself be profitable but the company not be? I mean how do we define profitable?

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#73

Post by quickthrower2 »

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.

Less than an angel round, or a 2-pizza team's salary. Ok I exaggerate. Less than that in 2023.

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#74

Post by mkr-hn »

bryik wrote: post #70
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.

According to Backblaze's calculator[0], it would cost $4,800/yr to store 80TB on Backblaze B2 and you're storing it for $60/yr. Cases like these are why unlimited storage plans don't make sense... Also it irks me that the personal backup plan forbids network drives [1]. I can't backup my 4TB NAS but 80TB is fine because it's stored on one machine? 0 - https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage-pricing.html 1 - https:…

It makes more sense if you see it as lead generation, like the free plans for stuff like Slack or Notion. Some of those people will pick B2 or their group management platform if they do a startup and do well enough. They probably spend less on data hoarders than similar-size companies spend on free plans.

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#75

Post by CameronNemo »

mcny wrote: post #72
qeternity wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Can the service itself be profitable but the company not be? I mean how do we define profitable?

If the service is provided by employees who are compensated with equity, why would you not count that in profitability numbers?

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#78

Post by martinald »

mkr-hn wrote: post #14
encryptluks2 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the majority of their business is personal backups then the business is already in a decline. I've looked at them multiple times, and Google Drive and OneDrive are both much better deals.

Google Drive and OneDrive are sync services. Backblaze is backup. You can walk back to a specific day on Backblaze and download or ship a copy of all your files from before a disaster hit. Google's Backup is still live synced and has no rollback functionality. Sync is handy, but I still have the synced folders backed up.

I actually got rid of backblaze a while back because I realised I had moved machines twice and didn't bother restoring files with it. I've had backblaze for years (maybe even a decade+?!)

Code is all on GitHub, all my docs and emails are in gsuite (and don't get backed up anyway by BB). The only thing that does get backed up is a load of cruft and junk I've accumulated which is actually nice to start over on tbh.

I imagine more and more people are like this. Designers who used to have to be meticulous at backing up their source files now all work in Figma, etc etc.

The major weakness now is if GH or Gsuite had a catastrophic error (or your account gets booted off for incorrect reasons). I actually think that is the more pressing backup need than local files for many.

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#79

Post by marcellus23 »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #71
Spooky23 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? It’s a pure commodity business. They are competing against your iCloud subscription and little USB drives that cost $30. Not sure what the long term strategy is, but I hope going public doesn’t kill them — seems like a nice little business that could just coast for years.

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.
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