Over the last 10 years, Silicon Valley startup Backblaze has quietly established itself as a useful and popular service, letting you back up your entire PC or Mac to the cloud for $5 per computer per month.
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How a startup went from building servers out of wood to a $20 million business — without giving control to outside investors
This is how five broke guys built a profitable, sustainable startup with their own money.
Backblaze CEO Gleb Budman
It's a far cry from the company's modest start, where its self-funded beginnings meant that they built their first storage servers out of wood (seriously). Now, with about 50 employees, including all five founders, Backblaze has gone from nothing to sustainable business, in an industry where profitability is not taken for granted.
The appeal of working at a lot of high-flying Silicon Valley startups is the notion that, thanks to their stock grants, they could possibly cash out big when their company goes public or gets acquired for billions. Basically, it's like playing the lotto, betting that long hours or frustrating management will pay off when your options vest.
Because Backblaze is taking that more considered approach toward a possible exit, it's unattractive to a certain kind of Silicon Valley programmer; Budman says a friend recently used the term "unicorn chaser" for engineers who just go from one billion-dollar to the next hoping to hit the jackpot.
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Instead, Budman is looking for employees willing to take a longer-term approach, not because they're locked in with stock options (though they do get equity in the company), but because they want to be there. Budman notes that unlike lots of long-running startups, all five founders are still in the Backblaze office daily, working.
"We are hoping this'll be the last job they'll ever have," Budman says, noting that it's a "weird concept" for Silicon Valley. "We hope Backblaze pays them well; we hope they will stick around for a while."
In the decade that Backblaze has been in operation, Budman says, he can think of four times when people quit the company of their own volition (as opposed to being otherwise let go). He says employees come to him with offers from competitors that they turned down.
He says that it's something he's particularly pleased with. As he gets older, he says, he appreciates more and more that having a dream job isn't about getting paid well or strategic career moves, it's "am I happiest here?"
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