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Thank you for the very insightful accounting perspective. I have a hard time understanding all the complexities of modern account and how a "loss" isn't always

by Osiris 5y ago

Thank you for the very insightful accounting perspective. I have a hard time understanding all the complexities of modern account and how a "loss" isn't always a loss. On a side note, I'm a very happy Backblaze customer and the same time curse Dropbox for not offering a 100GB $5/mn plan. Backblaze pricing is very customer friendly.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
PaywallBuster 5y ago
It's still a loss (for the current year). But this is a SaaS, working with recurring revenue. Some metrics to consider are: - Cost of Customer Acquisition - Lifetime Value They could spend 200$ to get an average customer, but they will renew their subscription for an average of 5 years and generate over 2000$ in revenue during that time. As long as you keep track of these metrics you know you're in a good direction or digging yourself a hole. Besides other costs R&D, Admin, Marketing and Sales can be scaled up and down as needed, and become a smaller part of the costs as the company grows.
- apple4ever 5y ago
  Based on my experience, that COCA is high, and the LV is low. They don't work hard to keep current customers.
helloworld11 5y ago
I tried Backblaze but couldn't get over its insistence on first backing up my entire primary hard drive instead of allowing me to simply choose directly my most important files in my external drives, or from wherever I prefer. Seems arbitrarily forceful to me, though the pricing and security options are good. Also, the interface of deselecting things to not back up via exclusions, instead of simply being able to specifically select what you WANT to back up is absurd, it complicates things unnecessarily if out of dozens of folders, you only want to select a few essentials for cloud storage. As far as pricing goes, $5 per month for 100GB seems steep. SpiderOak offers 400GB for less than that and so does Nordlocker (though Nord has its own problems). On the other hand, iDrive has been offering a whopping 5 terabytes for a whole year for just $3.98 in a deal I saw just a few days ago. Overall, zero knowledge backup is the best route, Backblaze plays at that, on the other hand I wouldn't touch any backup offering by Google with a 10 meter cattle prod. Grotesque that they reserve the right to snoop right through your files unless you first encrypt them externally via third party apps.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  Has Backblaze ever published their EOL costs? At some point, I'd imagine it's an optimization problem between (cost of failure) vs (liquidation value) vs (revenue per GB), where running them all the way into the dirt doesn't make sense. Or maybe it does?
- Moral_ 5y ago
  This is the exact reason why I didn't use backblaze, that and their linux support. I didn't want my entire PC backed up, and wanted to hand select a few hefty folders.
  - UI_at_80x24 5y ago
    You can specify what gets backed up by using rclone.
- jpalomaki 5y ago
  This is core part of their business model. They can provide unlimited backup capacity, because you can only use them to backup stuff from drives that are connected to your computer. So this effectively limits your storage space. Unfortunately services where you can backup whatever files for fixed price attract "data hoarders" - people who are storing data just for the sake of storing it.
  - UI_at_80x24 5y ago
    >because you can only use them to backup stuff from drives that are connected to your computer. This is not accurate, please see my response to helloworld11
- UI_at_80x24 5y ago
  This is not accurate. You are not forced to backup your entire hard-drive. There is a 3rd party program called: rclone That program let's you choose which files/directories get copied over to BackBlaze. We have 150+TB (+10TB/week) stored at BackBlaze and I use rclone exclusively to upload our content for backup. Note, it's a CLI program that works on Linux/BSD. I'm not aware of any other platforms that it works on.

by Osiris 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

PaywallBuster 5y ago

It's still a loss (for the current year). But this is a SaaS, working with recurring revenue. Some metrics to consider are: - Cost of Customer Acquisition - Lifetime Value They could spend 200$ to get an average customer, but they will renew their subscription for an average of 5 years and generate over 2000$ in revenue during that time. As long as you keep track of these metrics you know you're in a good direction or digging yourself a hole. Besides other costs R&D, Admin, Marketing and Sales can be scaled up and down as needed, and become a smaller part of the costs as the company grows.

apple4ever 5y ago
Based on my experience, that COCA is high, and the LV is low. They don't work hard to keep current customers.

helloworld11 5y ago

I tried Backblaze but couldn't get over its insistence on first backing up my entire primary hard drive instead of allowing me to simply choose directly my most important files in my external drives, or from wherever I prefer. Seems arbitrarily forceful to me, though the pricing and security options are good. Also, the interface of deselecting things to not back up via exclusions, instead of simply being able to specifically select what you WANT to back up is absurd, it complicates things unnecessarily if out of dozens of folders, you only want to select a few essentials for cloud storage. As far as pricing goes, $5 per month for 100GB seems steep. SpiderOak offers 400GB for less than that and so does Nordlocker (though Nord has its own problems). On the other hand, iDrive has been offering a whopping 5 terabytes for a whole year for just $3.98 in a deal I saw just a few days ago. Overall, zero knowledge backup is the best route, Backblaze plays at that, on the other hand I wouldn't touch any backup offering by Google with a 10 meter cattle prod. Grotesque that they reserve the right to snoop right through your files unless you first encrypt them externally via third party apps.

ethbr0 5y ago
Has Backblaze ever published their EOL costs? At some point, I'd imagine it's an optimization problem between (cost of failure) vs (liquidation value) vs (revenue per GB), where running them all the way into the dirt doesn't make sense. Or maybe it does?
Moral_ 5y ago
This is the exact reason why I didn't use backblaze, that and their linux support. I didn't want my entire PC backed up, and wanted to hand select a few hefty folders.
- UI_at_80x24 5y ago
  You can specify what gets backed up by using rclone.
jpalomaki 5y ago
This is core part of their business model. They can provide unlimited backup capacity, because you can only use them to backup stuff from drives that are connected to your computer. So this effectively limits your storage space. Unfortunately services where you can backup whatever files for fixed price attract "data hoarders" - people who are storing data just for the sake of storing it.
- UI_at_80x24 5y ago
  >because you can only use them to backup stuff from drives that are connected to your computer. This is not accurate, please see my response to helloworld11
UI_at_80x24 5y ago
This is not accurate. You are not forced to backup your entire hard-drive. There is a 3rd party program called: rclone That program let's you choose which files/directories get copied over to BackBlaze. We have 150+TB (+10TB/week) stored at BackBlaze and I use rclone exclusively to upload our content for backup. Note, it's a CLI program that works on Linux/BSD. I'm not aware of any other platforms that it works on.