Thanks to our great customers, Backblaze continues to grow. We are excited to announce that we have hired a Director of Product Marketing. Let’s spend a few minutes with Andy…

Where are you from? And where are you now?
I was born in Brooklyn New York and grew up on Long Island in Shirley, exit 67 on the Long Island Expressway – way out there. I spent 10 years in the Air Force and moved to California when I got out.
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I’m excited to announce we have hired a Director of Web Services (a position which morphed just slightly from the original title of Sr. Systems Administrator.) Below is a short interview with the latest addition to the Backblaze family: Kirk.

Where are you originally from? Why did you move here?

I was born in Washington D.C. and lived in Maryland for my first 37 years. In 1987 I got an opportunity to come out here to work for one year and I could bring the family. We fell in love with this area then but after the one year we returned to Maryland. In 1997 we moved out here after I got sick of the weather and pollen every year. It was a big move for us and since I was the main driver for the move I had to answer all the complaints about why we moved, etc. Fun!

Favorite place you’ve traveled?

My wife and I love driving trips and we have spent several vacations on the road. We drove on what is left of route 66 from LA out to Texas taking every side road and that was an awesome trip. We also drove to Mount Rushmore, seeing that awesome site. I love to drive. It represents true freedom, and boy, what a great big country we have!

Where do you go to think?

Driving! I figure things out while driving.

What is your personal mantra?

“I feel happy, I feel healthy, I feel terrific” I know its weird but I went to this seminar once that said if you said this out loud 5 times in a row daily it would make you feel better. Son-of-a-gun it works!

Were you always interested in technology?

YES! I grew up in the age of the astronaut in the 60′s and when I was a little kid that’s all I wanted to be. The space program was everything to me. I used to rig up my bedroom and turn it into a space capsule with any gadget I could find. A transistor radio, and an old cassette recorder made up my command console. I would take a dining room chair and flip it on its back up against the bed so I could lay with my head on the floor and legs up on the bed with my technology besides me making a “capsule”. As I got older and began college my first job and where I stayed the next 18 years was working at Goddard Space Flight Center for a contractor to NASA. Being around all this customer hardware and computers that filled whole rooms was so cool. I learned to operate all the equipment for the LANDSAT ground system. I went on to support other missions in various positions even working on a space shuttle mission at the JPL in Pasadena.

Of what achievement are you most proud?

Work/technical achievement: I wrote a paper called the “System Test Risk Assessment Measure” which I presented at International Test Conferences and it won the Best paper in the computer Sciences category where I worked. It was the first and only paper on QA ever to win the award in the computer science category.

Personal – I have suffered from being overweight my entire life . finally at 325 pounds I began to look after myself and work out losing 60 pounds and I continue to workout 4 times a week.

I can’t believe we’re already over a week into 2012. In the interest of listening to the quote “perfect is the enemy of good”, I am publishing these thoughts on Backblaze in 2011 now rather than waiting until my hindsight is perfect, which may take another year or more. So, without further hesitation, here are a a few of my favorite things from 2011:

1. Growing sales about 100%.
We’re in a market growing about 30% per year. Growing 3x faster than the market is a bit of nice external validation that the passion we put into helping people backup data is working.

2. Adding some awesome people to our team.
I’m looking at you SBrian, Ken, Yev, and Tasha. We continue to run lean, but have added some amazing people to help us as we scale.

3. Restoring 600,000,000 files.
Ok, if you want to be technical, we restored 598,652,186 files. That is an astounding number of photos, documents, and other critical files that customers lost and then restored in a single year. I remember how upset I was four years ago when I lost a single calendar file; and how thrilled I was to realize that I had been running the beta version of Backblaze and was able to recover it. It is hard to imagine the total emotion resulting from the recovery of those 600 million files.

4. Launching “Locate My Computer”.
After Mark Bao caught the thief who stole his laptop by downloading the thief’s video from Backblaze and Mat Miller recovered his laptop by restoring the thief’s college paper, we launched a free addition to the service: Locate My Computer. Just one month later, that feature helped crack an Argentinian counterfeiting ring and recover $1 million in counterfeit cash.

5. Launching “Backblaze v2.0: Unlimiting Unlimited”.
Listening to your requests, we added the ability to backup unlimited file types and unlimited file sizes. Backblaze v2.0 added a host of other enhancements that increased how quickly your data gets backed up. Video editors and virtual machine users cheered.

6. Open sourcing “Backblaze Storage Pod v2.0″.
When we initially open sourced the Backblaze Storage Pod, we figured five or six people might care. Instead, over 1 million people read the blog post and hundreds of companies and organizations started building these pods. In 2011, we published the designs for Backblaze Storage Pod v2.0 (which had twice the space and performance for the same cost) and a number of lessons learned.

7. Crowdsourcing our first billboard.
Historically we have grown almost entirely organically, but wanted to experiment with a billboard on Highway 101. We decided to crowdsource the billboard. You came up with hundreds of ideas and voted on your favorite. December 19th, our first billboard went live: “Kiss your lost files hello”

8. Adding Restore Downloader apps.
A small but very welcome addition was a downloader app for each of Mac and Windows, enabling you to download a huge restore.

9. Recommitting to unlimited.
In February, one of our competitors said it was impossible to continue offering unlimited online backup because people were storing more data. We strongly disagreed and recommitted to unlimited.

10. Moving to our new office.
Technically we moved in December of 2010, but it was in 2011 that we settled in to our new downtown San Mateo space.

What happens in 2012? We’re going to:
…need more great people.
…enhance the product while continuing to stay laser-focused on simplicity.
…further innovate cloud storage costs to continue offering unlimited online backup.
…expand the ways that people can get Backblaze on their computers.

Want to help us? Share your ideas in the comments below, apply for a job, and help your friends get backed up!

Yes, that’s how blazing fast Backblaze is at backing up your data! At least according to @joerocklin who gets a Backblaze bike jersey for finishing: “Backblaze is faster than…”

In addition to Joe’s answer, there were hundreds of other suggestions…many of which made us laugh out loud. Thank to everyone who submitted! For your perusing pleasure, below are all the ideas that came in by the time we finished looking.

Have a friend who could use a fast online backup service? Send them our way!

Thank you for voting on your favorite billboard! The votes have been tallied across the Facebook poll, comments, blog feedback, Twitter responses…and the winner is:

Kiss your lost files hello

Lee Robertson wins one-year of Backblaze online backup by voting/retweeting.

Congratulations Lee, thanks to everyone that voted…and look out for the billboard appearing on Highway 101 in two weeks!

We asked you to provide us ideas for a billboard and, wow, did you come through!
You submitted about 200 ideas!

It was incredibly difficult to narrow them down. But, after much deliberation, rigorous analysis, careful evaluation…and just some plain “I like that one!”…we came down to the six ideas below.

Now it’s to pick the final billboard that will go up on Highway 101:
Vote on Facebook for your favorite Backblaze online backup billboard!
Voting by Dec 5, 2011 at 10am PST enters you to win 1 year of Backblaze.

Peace of Mind. $5/month.

Yesterday, you said you would backup today.

Because there are some videos you don’t want to lose.

Easy backup. Quick restore. You can hug us later.

Kiss your lost files hello.

1 in 2 people will lose data. Which one are you?

So, which one is your favorite?

We will also be touching up the final picked one, so give us feedback in the comments.

Peace of mind means different things to different people. It might be knowing you can get the song your baby falls asleep to when you’re traveling or being able to find your lost or stolen computer.

At Backblaze, we believe that peace of mind comes from never having to worry about losing the video of your newborn’s first smile, the photo of your uncle passed out at Thanksgiving last year, or oops, that presentation you just deleted.

This holiday season, give the gift of peace of mind from Backblaze.

… And get rewarded for your generosity in return.

Every gift license purchased between now and midnight this Cyber Monday, automatically enters you into a drawing for your choice of hotel or flight ($250 gift card) for a little extra peace of mind of your own.

Can’t decide who to bestow with your generosity? Follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook to be entered into a drawing for a free year of Backblaze.

So kick up your feet and relax, we’ve got you and your friends covered.

* Anyone is eligible.
* Licenses can be used for new accounts only
* License is valid for one year of unlimited backup
* Contests end at 11.59 PM PST on November 28th, 2011

Meet the Backblaze Peloton.
From Wikipedia:

The peloton travels as an integrated unit, like birds flying in formation, each rider making slight adjustments in response to the riders around him or her…

I would say we started a Backblaze biking group because of the inherent efficiency, teamwork, and performance of a well-executing peloton; that this is both a way to develop our team and to demonstrate it’s excellence; that this was perfectly timed to coincide with Backblaze 2.0: The Performance Release

But, realistically, it’s just fun.

Want one of these fancy Backblaze bike jerseys?
In the comments below, on our Facebook page, or on Twitter simply finish the sentence:

“Backblaze is faster than…”

For example,
* Backblaze is faster than a cheetah jumping off a rocket ship.
* Backblaze is faster than a spinning hard drive.
* Backblaze is faster than a DeLorean hitting 88 mph.

We’ll pick our favorite and send you a jersey!