The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
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Bootstrapping Is Often a Better Path to IPO Than Venture Capital
“I think bootstrapping is actually, in many ways, a better way to get to be a public company.”
Top Banks Assign C-Teams to $100M IPOs and Drop Them Quickly
“If you are you know, 50, 60, a hundred million dollars in, in revenue, and you're raising a hundred million dollars, those banks are going to give you the C team if you go with them, and they will drop you at the in a second, if they have a different opportuni…”
IPO 'Testing the Waters' Meetings Are High-Stakes Evaluations
“The testing the water is you're talking to investors, and when you talk to the investors, if those investors don't come back and tell the banks, hey, we're really excited about investing in this, the banks go, eh, I don't think that there's an IPO here to be d…”
Budman: Backblaze stores about half as much data as Dropbox
“And at this point we are storing about half as much data as Dropbox.”
Backblaze Founders Banned Pitching and Spreadsheets in Year One
“We said for one year, we're gonna do nothing in terms of venture funding. There's gonna be no PowerPoints. There's gonna be no, no spreadsheets. There's gonna be no pitches. Just focus on product, focus on customers, see how it goes.”
Venture Funding Would Have Prevented Backblaze From Building Custom Hardware
“If we had raised a whole bunch of venture funding, we probably would have done it and said, we'll figure it out later. Somehow we'll figure out how to make the math work. But we didn't have any money. So we had to start from first principles and figure out how…”
Backblaze Went Public With Just $65 Million in ARR
“When we went public, this was the chart that we went out on the roadshow with. A few different numbers on there, but focus on the one that says sixty-five million of ARR. It was not 300. We still went public.”
Preparing a Company for an IPO Often Takes Two Years
“Thinking about the kind of the story of timing and the metrics, but you got to start early, because it still takes often like two years to actually get ready.”
Founders Should Choose IPO Banks Based on Their Research Analysts
“The analysts at these banking firms are who are hopefully going to be with you quarter after quarter after quarter after quarter. And so when you're picking your banks, you're actually picking your analyst. So start with the start by looking at the analyst, th…”
A Key Roadshow Partner Launched a Competitor Days Before Backblaze's IPO
“One of our key partners who was involved in our IPO roadshow launched a competitor like a week before we were going public.”
IPO Share Allocations Require Short-Term Traders to Create Stock Liquidity
“Well, something that was non-intuitive is you want some of the investors who are actually going to hold for the long term, but you want some investors who are absolutely not going to hold for the long term, and part of the reason you don't want them to hold fo…”
Budman: Backblaze Storage Costs One-Quarter of AWS and Google
“And so we actually introduced a, an offering where you can use storage for anything, similar to an Amazon or Google or a Microsoft offering, but one quarter of their price point.”
Budman: Thailand flood came closest to putting Backblaze out of business
“And the thing that came closest to putting us out of business in all 10 years was actually a flood in Thailand, which was not anywhere on anyone's radar screen.”
Budman: Backblaze consumer churn is only about 10% annually
“Our consumers churn at only about 10% a year.”
Backblaze's Technical Storage Blog Grew to Three Million Annual Readers
“We started writing a blog that was focused on storage and had about three million people a year that started reading it.”
Backblaze Paid $10M to $15M in Fees for Its IPO
“So it cost us, you know, 10 to fifteen million dollars to take the company public. Kind of a big number. Most of that went to the banks because they take seven percent of what you raised, but there are lots of other places where you actually have to spend mone…”
Investor Sentiment Flipped From Growth to Breakeven Two Months Post-IPO
“When we were on the roadshow, every single solitary conversation was, hey, how can you spend more money
To grow faster. That was the only thing anybody cared about. Our very first earnings call, which was like two months later, nobody was asking that. You know…”
Budman: Backblaze Is Growing Revenue at Roughly 50% Year-Over-Year
“We're growing about 50% year on year.”
Budman: Backblaze has raised only $3 million in outside capital
“So we've raised a total of three million.”
Budman: Backblaze spends 6 to 12 months of revenue on CAC
“So it depends on the product line, but in rough numbers, we'll, we'll spend about somewhere between six and 12 months worth of revenue to acquire a customer.”