Backblaze is a cloud storage and backup service company founded in 2007. Its headquarters are located in San Mateo, California, USA.
Where is Backblaze Headquartered?
Backblaze is headquartered in San Mateo, California. Specifically, Backblaze’s headquarters office address is:
500 Ben Franklin Ct
San Mateo, CA 94401
United States
San Mateo is a city in the San Francisco Bay Area, located about 20 miles south of San Francisco. It is part of San Mateo County and is situated on the San Francisco Peninsula.
Backblaze’s Founding and Growth in San Mateo
Backblaze was founded in 2007 by current CEO Gleb Budman, CTO Brian Wilson, and chief evangelist Yev Pusin. Budman and Wilson were colleagues at another tech startup and decided to start Backblaze when they got frustrated with how difficult it was to find an easy and affordable online backup solution.
The founders started the company out of their homes in San Mateo. The company grew quickly and they soon rented an office in San Mateo. Backblaze has expanded over the years but continues to keep its headquarters and a large office presence in San Mateo.
In 2011, Backblaze had about 20 employees all located in the San Mateo office. By 2015, the company had grown to over 100 employees, most of them still based in San Mateo. Today Backblaze employs over 200 people globally, with its headquarters and the largest office still located in San Mateo.
Reasons Why Backblaze is Headquartered in San Mateo
There are several key reasons why Backblaze chose San Mateo as its headquarters from the start and continues to maintain its largest presence there today:
– Founders lived in San Mateo – When starting the company, founders Budman and Wilson lived in San Mateo. Locating the business close to home made things logistically easier in the early startup days.
– Access to talent – The San Francisco Bay Area is a global tech hub, renowned for its concentration of tech talent. For a startup, it was an ideal place to launch and grow the business with access to world-class engineers and other professionals.
– Proximity to VC investors – Silicon Valley is the epicenter for venture capital investment in tech startups. Locating in the Bay Area gave easy access to the VC firms that eventually funded Backblaze’s growth.
– Tech ecosystem – San Mateo and Silicon Valley provide a thriving ecosystem of other tech companies, vendors, and infrastructure to support tech innovation and growth.
– Cost of living vs. SF – San Mateo offered somewhat lower costs of living and doing business compared to neighboring San Francisco. This helped make the economics work better in the lean startup days.
– Room for growth – Backblaze started small but knew they wanted to grow quickly. San Mateo offered office real estate and expansion options that met the company’s needs.
Backblaze’s Office Locations Beyond San Mateo
While San Mateo has remained Backblaze’s headquarters and largest office, the company has expanded to a few other office locations:
– San Francisco, CA – In 2016 Backblaze opened a small sales and marketing office in San Francisco. This supplements the headquarters 20 miles south in San Mateo.
– Austin, TX – In 2019 Backblaze opened its first office outside of California in Austin. This office focuses mainly on sales, marketing, and customer support.
– Sydney, Australia – In 2021 Backblaze opened an office in Sydney to serve the Australia and Asia-Pacific regions.
So in summary, San Mateo has remained Backblaze’s headquarters and main office for engineering, product development, and operations. The additional offices mainly focus on sales, marketing, customer support, and geographic coverage.
Backblaze Headquarters Information
Here are some additional details about Backblaze’s headquarters office in San Mateo:
Office Address and Contact Information
500 Ben Franklin Ct
San Mateo, CA 94401
United States
Phone: +1 (650) 352-3738
Email: [email protected]
The San Mateo headquarters office can also be contacted via the general contact information on Backblaze’s website at www.backblaze.com.
Description of the Backblaze Headquarters Facility
Backblaze is located near the San Mateo Airport and Bay Meadows Park in an office park comprised of several low-rise office buildings.
The Backblaze headquarters facility occupies two floors in a modern glass and steel office building:
– Total space: 50,000+ sq ft
– Floors: 4th and 5th floor
– Features: Open floor plan optimized for software development and tech workspace. Modern amenities include conference rooms, break areas, and indoor bike storage. Their office features an industrial chic design.
Backblaze started on the 4th floor of this building in 2009. After continued growth, they expanded up to the 5th floor in 2014. Backblaze currently occupies these two floors, giving room for over 200 employees in the San Mateo headquarters.
What Teams are Headquartered in San Mateo?
The San Mateo headquarters houses Backblaze’s main operations and most of its departments. Teams based here include:
– Executive leadership including CEO, CTO, and C-suite roles
– Core engineering team for developing the cloud storage platform and apps
– IT and operations for managing infrastructure and internal systems
– Product management and design for Backblaze’s consumer and business storage products
– Finance and legal departments
– Core marketing team and content creators
Customer support, sales, and regional-specific functions are located in some of Backblaze’s smaller satellite offices. But most of the company core functions are still run out of San Mateo.
About Backblaze and Its Products
Here is some background about Backblaze as a company and the products it offers:
Overview of Backblaze
Backblaze provides cloud backup and storage services, aimed mainly at consumers and small businesses. Their key offerings include:
– Backblaze Cloud Backup – Automatically backs up laptops, desktops, and external drives to the cloud. Works seamlessly in the background.
– Backblaze Computer Backup – Backs up Windows and Mac laptops and desktops to the cloud. Unlimited data for one flat fee.
– Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage – Cloud object storage service for businesses, developers, and partners to store data. Offered as pay-as-you-go.
– Backblaze Hard Drive Recovery – Allows customers to recover data from a damaged or failed hard drive through a hard drive mailing service.
Backblaze focuses on making cloud backup effortless, affordable, and customer friendly. They aim to protect people’s most important digital assets – their photos, videos, documents, and personal files.
The company currently has over 1 billion files stored on their cloud platform. They back up over 600 petabytes of customer data and complete over 12 billion files restores per year.
History and Culture of Backblaze
As mentioned, Backblaze was started in 2007 by Gleb Budman, Brian Wilson, and Yev Pusin. They bootstrapped the company for the first couple years out of San Mateo homes and garages.
The company culture is known for being ultra-transparent and promoting open communication. Employees work collaboratively in an open office layout.
Backblaze publishes regular “transparency reports” to share metrics like storage usage, financials, headcount, diversity stats, and more. The company values simplicity in both its offerings and internal operations.
Backblaze’s Data Centers and Infrastructure
A key reason customers trust Backblaze for backup is their proprietary cloud infrastructure. Here are some details on how they architected a secure, resilient, and cost-effective platform:
– Custom storage pods – Backblaze designed and builds their own storage pods using consumer hard drives, making them more affordable than competitor solutions.
– Highly redundant – Data is stored redundantly across multiple facilities and storage pods to guard against data loss.
– Geographically distributed – Backblaze data centers and storage pods are distributed across the U.S. west coast from Sacramento to Phoenix.
– Encrypted security – All files are encrypted via private keys before leaving a customer’s device and stored encrypted in the Backblaze cloud.
– Low cost – By building their own hardware and software, Backblaze achieves $5/TB storage costs – up to 75% lower than AWS, Google, or Azure public cloud.
This infrastructure allows Backblaze to offer “unlimited data for flat fee” pricing that remains exceptionally affordable on the consumer and SMB cloud backup market.
Conclusion
Backblaze was founded in the San Francisco Bay Area and has kept its headquarters and main office in San Mateo, CA since starting up in 2007.
Locating in the startup hub of San Mateo/Silicon Valley allowed the founders access to talent, funding, and ecosystems critical for launching and scaling a successful cloud tech company.
Over 15 years later, Backblaze has kept San Mateo as its main base of operations while expanding globally. The company continues to design innovative cloud backup and storage products from its headquarters at 500 Ben Franklin Ct in San Mateo.