backblaze thursday friday ipo 650mnovetcnbc

Another competitor in the backup and storage space considering an IPO, Veeam, was funded to the tune of $500 million. And they each far surpassed Backblaze in revenue, reporting $318 million and $1 billion last year, respectively. From B2 to IPOīackblaze sells itself as the affordable cloud storage alternative. Its B2 storage service is comparable to that of cloud giants, but is much cheaper. According to Backblaze's website, B2 costs $0.005 per gigabyte of storage each month compared to $0.021 with AWS, $0.017 with Azure, and $0.020 with Google Cloud.

Now fourteen years after its founding, Backblaze believes its established the product and cultural foundation to go public, partially because of B2. Revenue for the service grew 65% year over year, bringing in $14.2 million for the company in 2020.īackblaze, however, isn't alone in IPOing with limited funding and revenue. Spanx, though in another industry, went public just last month without taking a dime in outside funding. And 16 companies valued at $1 billion or more have gone or are expected to go public in 2021 despite having zero revenue, marking an all-time high since the dot-com boom. On the flip side, other companies like Uber and WeWork, which have each raised billions only to struggle to find business models and turn profits, have shown that VC dollars don't guarantee a road to success.īackblaze intentionally sought to avoid VC funding, even though it took some over the years, according to Budman. The decision was partially a cultural one, as Budman thought employees would be more motivated to focus on efficiency and the product. It's hard to do so 'when you're sitting on a large pile of cash on day one,' he said.īesides making a statement, an IPO provides the opportunity to raise additional funds and invest in the company's products and go-to market strategy. But Budman said he hopes going public 'both means a lot and very little' to its employees. Backblaze offers stock options to all of its 228 full-time employees, according to Budman, but the company intends to keep the cultural status quo it built. 'What this doesn't change, is that we're committed to having a great culture.

Oppenheimer & Co., William Blair and Raymond James are the lead book-running managers for the offering.Underwriters also have a 30-day option to purchase an additional 937,500 shares at the IPO price.This has Backblaze expecting gross proceeds of $100 million from the IPO.It’s also worth noting that the offering includes 6.25 million shares.It’s pricing these shares at $16 each, which is the midpoint of its previous range of $15 to $17 per share.įirst off, the company plans to list shares of BLZE stock on the Nasdaq Exchange.And what it does is hopefully provide us more opportunity to bring more people in to work with us,' Budman said.Let’s jump into all the details traders need to know about the Backblaze IPO.

Backblaze thursday friday ipo 650mnovetcnbc