There are a billion connected computers on this planet. About 4% of them are being backed up regularly in some shape or form online, two DVDs, two hard drives something and the rest of them are completely not backing up on any regular basis. And that is just a big problem to solve. Those are people who are losing data left and right, that is gone forever. Photos of the kids, songs they've written, just tons and tons of data. And so this is a big problem and it's a big problem that we're going to be working on for probably quite a while. We wanted to provide an unlimited backup service. And the reason for it to be unlimited was not specifically to attract people who had lots and lots of data. The reason for unlimited was so that people didn't have to think about ‘How much data do I need to get backed up’. We wanted to make your voice simple and just say ‘Unlimited, you backup everything, don't worry about it’. And stay laser focused on that ease of use and simplicity is something that we believe is going to make it easier to get everybody backed up. So then the question was how do we afford to start an unlimited amount of data for five bucks a month? And we looked at a variety of different options, we considered Amazon s3, we considered buying equipment from EMC, Dell, NetApp... And what we ended up doing was building our own storage servers, which we call storage pots, and actually building our home cloud storage system. There were various moments where it's like, oh, we're we're on the cusp, it seems like it's happening. It was probably mid oh nine, when I really felt like we hit our stride where customers were showing up every single day to try the service. And then signing up and continuing backing up data. Still stay up nights oftentimes thinking, you know, worrying about this thing, the other. Last night I was a bed at five in the morning going, wait, you know, there's this idea and there's that we should do it. What about at least for some piece of equipment and stuff. But sometime around the middle of all I felt like, you know what? We're in, we're in a rhythm, things are going to work. My name is Gleb Budman and I'm the CEO of Backblaze.
