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!

Ignite is a “Fast-paced, fun, thought-provoking, social, local, global” evening of “high-energy 5-minute talks by people who have an idea.” Specifically, as the presenter you get exactly 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds. No running over. No slide remote control.

The theme of the evening was “Lean Startup” a set of principles (clearly communicated by Eric Ries) of building startups in a more efficient manner.

I presented the 5-step process of building Petabytes on a Budget. It was a blast and I highly recommend Ignite events and the Ignite format to anyone wanting to communicate an idea. As they tell you when you prep, a TV commercial tells an entire story in 30 seconds; if you’re crisp you can communicate a lot of ideas in five minutes.

Here is the presentation:

And here are the slides on SlideShare:

Thank you to O’Reilly for starting the Ignite concept and facilitating the community, Sarah Milstein for organizing the entire event, Tony Stubblebine for MC’ing, pariSoma for providing a great space, and DreamSimplicity for providing the video.

After almost four years in our original office in downtown Palo Alto, it was time to accept that we just couldn’t keep stuffing people in the space.

Now I’m thrilled to say that we have found and moved into a fantastic new office!

Thank you to all that responded to our request for office suggestions. Also, a special thank you to Hal Rucker who gave us the tip about the space we actually chose.

How does our office meet our initial criteria?

Not bad

We love San Mateo
Not only is downtown San Mateo a quick jaunt off the 101 and 92, and a bustling shopping and restaurant district, but it is also an active hub for tech startups.

A few of the companies located here that we know about:
* Admob – Mobile Advertising (recently moved after being acquired by Google)
* Backblaze – Online Backup
* Conduit – Toolbar Creation
* Coupa Software – eProcurement in the Cloud
* Epocrates – PDA Medical Software
* Fixya – Community Support Site for Products
* FreeWheel – Video Content Monetization
* Genius.com – Marketing Automation
* Greenplum – Data Warehousing (acquired by EMC)
* Keynote Systems – Mobile & Internet Monitoring
* Lucky Knives – Hal Rucker’s Good Ideas Company
* NexTag – Price Comparison Engine
* Oodle – Social Online Classifieds
* PBworks – Online Collaboration
* Quantivo – Behavioral Analytics Software
* Redbeacon – Local Services Matchmaker
* Spoke – Personal Connections Management Service
* Zeus Technology – Software Application Delivery Solutions

Did I miss your hot tech company or one you know about?
Send me an email and I will add it:

More Office Pictures

Yesterday a number of friends emailed me saying, “You’re on TechCrunch.”

I quickly racked my brain, “Did we announce anything new yesterday…?” Then I looked and saw that what they actually meant more specifically was that my face was on TechCrunch, along with a wardrobe I was selling.

Here’s the quick backstory:
* My wife wanted us to get rid of a wardrobe we were no longer using.
* I posted it on Facebook Marketplace, a social online classifieds service.
* Facebook Marketplace is powered by Oodle.
* Oodle was founded and still led by Craig Donato.
* I knew Craig from Excite@Home and he is a friend on Facebook.
* Through Oodle’s social aspect, Craig saw my posting.
* Craig asked if he could use my post in a preso.
* Four days later I get a slew of emails about being on TechCrunch (and VentureBeat.)

I love the serendipity of being in Silicon Valley.
Now if I could just find a tie-in here to online backup…

(Congrats Craig and team on the success with Oodle!)

FailCon takes place on Monday and if you haven’t signed up yet, I highly recommend you sign up now. (Use the code “20backblaze” to get 20% off your FailCon admission.)

You can attend a conference every day in Silicon Valley. Many would be interesting, entertaining, and provide an opportunity to network. But FailCon is different.

FailCon is all about learning from each others’ mistakes in order to achieve success.

Last year, Backblaze demo’ed at FailCon ’09 and when possible I would sneak away from our demo area to listen to the speakers. Most were candid in sharing what didn’t work, what they learned, and how to do it better. I wish I could have been there to listen to every speaker.

This year, FailCon ’10 has a great lineup of speakers with leaders from Twitter, Foursquare, FriendFeed, Zappos, and many others. On the “Navigating the Exit” panel I’ll also share what we learned from almost getting acquired.

If you are, or intend to be, a founder or leader in a startup, come to this event. And if you want to meet there, email me at or tweet me.

Backblaze was founded in a small office where we planned to stay for six months. But we kept finding creative ways to cram more people in. Three years later…we’re bursting at the seams.

So it is time to move out of our humble abode and move to…well, a slightly larger humble abode.

Do you have or know of a place that you would like to lease/sub-lease?

What we are looking for – in roughly priority order:
* Located between Palo Alto, CA and Milbrae, CA
* 1500 – 2000 sq ft
* Mostly just an open space
* One conference room
* Caltrain-accessible
* Close to restaurants/walking-district
* Good Internet access
* Funky

We are open to moving into a traditional office park-style building. However, Backblaze doesn’t exactly have a business suit and wingtips culture, so we would love a place with more character. Converted house or loft? Former car dealership? Amusement park? (Ok, that maybe going a bit far.)

A space with a significant server room could be interesting, but is not a requirement.

Send us ideas for places to: officespace@backblaze.com

Thanks – perhaps we’ll be your neighbor soon.

Yes, Backblaze was days away from being acquired – and then everything fell apart.

In this post, I’ll share why I am publicly sharing this, exactly what happened, the details of our acquisition process, how we are moving forward, and what we learned.

Why Am I Sharing This?
When all of this ended, a couple of our advisors said, “That really sucks, but I wanted to let you know that something like this happened to me in a past company as well.”

Our team has been through a few acquisitions and this had never happened to us. In fact, I had never heard of this happening before. But it does. And probably not as infrequently as one might guess.

So, why share this?
* Because we’re an open company by nature.
* Because hopefully for the people and companies to whom this happens, it’s a bit of a public, “That really sucks, but I wanted to let you know that you’re not alone…”
* Because for companies going into such a process, I hope this can shed some light and some lessons learned.

How Backblaze Started
After seeing a friend tortured by having lost data, we asked others, “What do you do to ensure you don’t lose your photos, music, documents,…?” The answer was consistent, “Nothing.” We knew other solutions existed, but people didn’t backup, so we brainstormed a really easy online backup service and Backblaze was born.

We wanted to build a successful, profitable company that customers loved – and did not want to risk being forced to “exit.” Thus, we chose up front not to raise VC funding. We wanted be able to take the company public, be acquired, or run it forever – whatever ended up being best for the team, our customers, and our partners.

How We Got The First Offer
First? Yes, first. We received a second offer shortly after the first.
Continue reading…