[HN Gopher] Backblaze IPO
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Backblaze IPO
Author : hippich
Score : 111 points
Date : 2021-11-02 21:11 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sec.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sec.gov)
| jsploit wrote:
| Previous S-1 discussion (this is an amendment):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28912799
| braum wrote:
| Fidelity is handling the IPO and if you have been a customer of
| BackBlaze for a while apparently you will get to buy before
| public, up to 1,000 shares between $15-17 per share. That is my
| understanding.
| benburleson wrote:
| That seems pretty huge, if true.
| knowfilter wrote:
| bigly huge
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| A family member and I are both Backblaze customers, they
| received a surveymonkey link to indicate interest in an IPO
| share allocation through Fidelity. If there's a way to get on
| that list, I'm interested if anyone knows.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Here did you hear about this?
| braum wrote:
| Well I'm a BackBlaze customer and have been for a year or more.
| Not sure what else would qualify me to be part of the IPO
| before it goes public. Also AFAIK there is nothing preventing
| them from allowing customers to be part of it, but there may be
| a limiting factor. Some way to narrow the list. I have more
| than one computer subscribed, that could be part of the filter.
| FfejL wrote:
| Not sure where you're getting those numbers. I've been a
| Backblaze customer for 10+ years, and I was contacted about the
| directed share program. Have not heard about price or volume
| yet.
| tester756 wrote:
| how much time it takes to write document like that?
|
| also that formatting, damn.
| busymom0 wrote:
| They also released "Backblaze Drive Stats for Q3 2021" today:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29082379
| rsync wrote:
| I find this part interesting - of the ~500,000 customers, 70,000
| are B2 customers and 430,000 are "backup" customers ... which are
| flat-rate "unlimited" users.
|
| These flat-rate users are _very fickle_ and price-sensitive.
|
| If you peruse subreddits related to cloud storage or online
| backup, etc., they are filled with very picky users who expect
| the product to be free - or close to free.
|
| It's a fools errand to pursue this market and I assume the pivot
| to B2 was to build something more sustainable with a much higher
| price and usage ceiling.
|
| Regardless, roughly 85% of the user-base are paying $7/mo for
| "unlimited backup".
|
| I wish them good luck.
| matthewmcg wrote:
| "Fickle"? I've been a subscriber to the unlimited tier since
| seemingly forever, and I didn't realize it was now $7/mo
| instead of $5/mo. I think in the aggregate, subscriptions are
| pretty sticky due to inertia, etc.
| deanCommie wrote:
| I think the hope is that 420,000 of those users are Grandmas
| who installed backblaze because their son told them it's a good
| idea to make sure she doesn't lose all her important documents,
| and she's backing up a couple PDFs.
|
| And then the other 10,000 are data hoarders like me with
| Terabytes of data.
|
| I used to be a Crashplan customer - tried them and Backblaze,
| and liked Crashplan more. They eventually pivoted to Business
| only.
|
| I was at AWS Re:invent and came up to their booth and bemoaned
| the loss of a great service. They said "How much data were you
| backing up?" I told them. They said "yeah, we lose a ton of
| money on every user like you."
|
| Fair enough!
| delusional wrote:
| I don't think there's really any "unlimited backup" solutions
| left outside of backblaze. Back when storage was cheap I could
| see users switching if you upped the price, the datahoarders
| that actually use the storage don't really have anywhere to go
| anymore.
| kdasme wrote:
| Good luck Backblaze! It is a tough market for sure, especially
| with recent announcement from Cloudflare.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| Didn't know Backblaze offers cloud storage. Cool to know!
| henning wrote:
| > We have a history of cumulative losses, and we do not expect to
| be profitable for the foreseeable future.
|
| Fundamentals seem solid, gotta get me some of those shares!
| airstrike wrote:
| That's pretty standard for most young and fast growing tech
| companies
| AYBABTME wrote:
| It feels like Backblaze has been in the space for a while
| though? My uninformed picture of them was as a modest
| small/medium size business with a good niche product and
| probably some loyal customers type, not as an all-stop-sign-
| pulled-VC-funded-moonshot startup.
| [deleted]
| windthrown wrote:
| At 14 years old, is Backblaze still considered "young"?
| bpodgursky wrote:
| If you're confident, short it. Make some money.
| henning wrote:
| Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me. They also
| said the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay
| solvent.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| I guess the fundamentals are solid then.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Or they don't matter.
| Jenk wrote:
| Serious question asked from a place of naiveness: how do you
| short at IPO assuming one doesn't already have stock?
| vaughan wrote:
| I have paid for Backblaze for 4 years, after signing up for two 2
| year subscriptions a few years apart.
|
| I have never got it to backup my files ever.
|
| Their settings dialog integrates with macOS preferences and
| freezes while it scans for files to backup without giving me any
| status update. It uploads so damn slowly it's pretty useless. If
| I was to move/rename things around it would take weeks more to
| reupload. Every time I try to ignore some files so it's actually
| useful, it blocks my system prefs again and takes forever to
| rescan.
|
| I honestly don't know how anyone uses it.
|
| Carbon Copy Cloner on the other hand is excellent software.
| Entire backups of 4TB drive in less than <20mins. And excellent
| support.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Not a BB user, but 100% agreed that CCC is fantastic, reliable,
| fast, etc.
| SahAssar wrote:
| I'm sorry if I missed something, but you twice paid for long
| subscriptions for a service that did not work for you? What
| made you choose the two year plan when trying it the second
| time? Why did you pick the two year option at all the first
| time before trying it?
| nodesocket wrote:
| Here is their roadshow video for those like me that are more
| audio and visual. Great information in the video with their CEO
| and CFO. Funny that Matthew Prince (Cloudflare founder and CEO)
| is included in the roadshow video pumping up Backblaze when
| Cloudflare just announced a directly competing product.
| DigitalOcean (huge recent IPO and tendies) is also listed as a
| partner of Backblaze. I wonder if DigitalOcean object storage is
| built on-top of Backblaze?
|
| https://www.netroadshow.com/custom/IPO/Backblaze/retail/road...
|
| I applied for IPO shares from Robinhood. Robinhood is my play
| brokerage, but they do have the best IPO platform. I have no idea
| with my primary brokerage E*Trade how to participate in IPOs.
| moooo99 wrote:
| I love the Backblaze personal backup but never used another
| product by them. Wish them the best of luck, thats a super tough
| market for sure!
| jhack wrote:
| There goes the competitive pricing...
| singlow wrote:
| Right, because the existing owners were giving you that price
| as a favor, and now the evil stockholders will demand that they
| chase away all of their customers by raising prices.
| onion2k wrote:
| Typically existing owners have been spending those sweet,
| sweet VC bucks that go on "growth hacking", and after an exit
| event the business switches to actually trying to make some
| money instead of pretending MAUs are better than money for
| whatever reason they like this week.
|
| In the case of Backblaze they've only raised $5.3m over three
| rounds so that's unlikely. There wouldn't be much VC cash to
| hack growth with after 14 years.
| rudian wrote:
| Yes. Everything you said is correct. Often startups sell at a
| loss, this is not news.
| bigtones wrote:
| $65 Million in ARR to list on the NASDAQ seems really low,
| especially with the 32% YoY growth.
|
| I don't think I've seen a SaaS company with < $100 Million in ARR
| in the year it listed.
| nekoashide wrote:
| Your not wrong, there's been a huge number of companies listing
| over the last year and some of questionable size and
| profitability. Everybody sees the market as a huge money
| machine and all these companies want a piece.
| codegeek wrote:
| It happens. One of our competitors IPO'd at 30M in ARR.
| tomashertus wrote:
| How they have been doing?
| [deleted]
| bastardoperator wrote:
| I've been using their product for awhile, I even have my 72 year
| old mom on it. Solid backups, gets out of my way, great price.
| Congrats to the Backblaze team!
| durnygbur wrote:
| Any chance to subscribe for their shares for an EU tax resident?
| List of EU based brokers accepting the subscriptions?
| reacharavindh wrote:
| I am an EU resident, and I use Interactive Brokers to buy US
| shares. I hope I can buy Backblaze shares when they IPO.
| cinntaile wrote:
| He wants to be in on the IPO I think, buying when it's
| reached the stock market is too late for that.
| durnygbur wrote:
| yes, this is my intention
| odiroot wrote:
| Wouldn't you need to be a customer of one of the underwriting
| banks? Or, conversely, one level removed, so a customer of one
| of the big banks on the "VIP list" of initial buyers.
|
| I always thought retail-facing brokers are just too small
| fishes to be involved.
| durnygbur wrote:
| e.g. Degiro enables current share owners to subscribe to new
| issue of shares in case of dilution, so here is the little
| hope I have...
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