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Backblaze S-1 IPO

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Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#91

Post by mindslight »

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:…

Are we sure that the proprietary desktop clients don't use convergent encryption (allowing for deduplication), especially for media files?

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#92

Post by lmm »

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?

Presumably the employees are working below-market in exchange for equity, so the company is not really profitable yet - it's sort of "ramen profitable" in that it's profitable if you don't count the full rate of the workers' time.

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#93

Post by spullara »

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.

LOL. So S3 would charge $22k and you are paying them $60. Yeah, I am impressed that they let you steal the money. That is bad and you should feel bad. Just buying the drives to store that much is $1500.

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#94

Post by nemo44x »

Good for these guys and for Expensify and some other very small revenue companies. For those that say there aren’t opportunities to get in, these may be them. For those that say the market is getting kind of crowded - getting harder to argue.

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#95

Post by encryptluks2 »

hfern wrote: post #17
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.

I was under the impression that their business was $70/year to backup your whole computer (all drives, completely managed). Their backup service grew 23% yoy, so I wouldn't call it in decline. Can you go into why Google Drive is a better alternative? I can see 2 TB for $100/yr, but I don't think the products are exactly the same.

First, the $70/year backup is for personal use and Mac and PC only.. they do have limits, they just don't tell you what they are and they throttle even though they say they don't. The clients suck and are closed source. Also, the restore functionality is terrible.

At least with Google Drive, the 2TB plan you can store what you want and access it in the cloud like a regular file. It works with rclone and restic, so you can use it for regular backups as well and it is extremely fast. I can upload over 750GB per day in about 3 hours with Google Drive, but it would take over 3 days with Backblaze.

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#96

Post by sam0x17 »

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.

A lot of investors/backers in that industry though are backing it literally because they want one, not because they think it's a good investment per say.

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#97

Post by encryptluks2 »

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.

restic + rclone = Google Drive backup with snapshots and dedupe. Not sure if you are just unaware, or didn't take the time to look into anything else.

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#98

Post by encryptluks2 »

xmprt wrote: post #43
djbusby wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Backblaze is $70/yr unlimited. Did you save $-10?

I'm assuming they're using the other features that Office 365 offers.

No, not really.. I just got the family plan to have a 2nd restic backup in addition to my Google Drive, since it was the cheapest storage option.

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#99

Post by Osiris »

tgtweak wrote: post #88
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”

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.

Re: Backblaze S-1 IPO

#100

Post by encryptluks2 »

mkr-hn wrote: post #37
dreadlordbone wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you save a bunch of money when Backblaze is dirt cheap?

People are confusing backup and sync. Backblaze will run an incremental backup of 20TB and 20GB for the same price, but you have to have 20TB or 20GB of storage attached to the backed up computer. It won't let you access files not on your computer without awkward workarounds, but it also doesn't charge the huge premium sync services charge for the storage.

Backblaze does actually have caps, even though they don't publish them and they throttle even though they say they don't.
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