{"id":87015,"date":"2018-12-13T07:00:52","date_gmt":"2018-12-13T15:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/?p=87015"},"modified":"2022-07-14T21:48:22","modified_gmt":"2022-07-15T04:48:22","slug":"startup-tips-bootstrapping-to-30-million-arr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/startup-tips-bootstrapping-to-30-million-arr\/","title":{"rendered":"Bootstrapping to $30 Million ARR"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Backblaze<\/a>
\nBackblaze will be celebrating its 12th year in business this coming April 20th. We\u2019ve grown steadily over the years, and this year have reached $30 million ARR (annual recurring revenue). We\u2019ve accomplished this with only $3.1 million in funding, having successfully bootstrapped the company with founder contributions and cash flow since the very beginning.<\/p>\n

Last year our CEO and co-founder Gleb Budman wrote a series of posts on entrepreneurship<\/a> that detailed our early years and some lessons learned that entrepreneurs can apply for themselves. Recently, Gleb did a follow-on webinar on BrightTALK<\/a> covering many of the series\u2019 main points. Given the time constraints most entrepreneurs face, I\u2019ll highlight what I consider some of the key lessons for startups that Gleb outlined in both the entrepreneurial series and the webinar.<\/p>\n

\"Gleb<\/a><\/div>\n

Gleb’s webinar on BrightTALK<\/a><\/p>\n

Creating Your Product<\/h2>\n

Gleb\u2019s first article, How Backblaze Got Started: The Problem, The Solution, and the Stuff In-Between<\/a>, starts with one of the most critical aspects for any successful company: defining the real problem you\u2019re trying to solve. In Gleb\u2019s words, \u201cThe entrepreneur builds things to solve problems \u2014 your own or someone else\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

So the question is how do you go about defining the problem? The most obvious place to start is to look at pain points you\u2019re trying to address and then defining the specific elements that contribute to them. Can you solve the problem by taking away or changing one of those elements or multiple elements? Or, is it a matter of adding in new elements to shift away the pain points?<\/p>\n

In our case, there was an obvious need in the market for backing up computers. There were already solutions on the market that, at least in theory, provided a backup solution, yet the majority of people still didn\u2019t use one. The question was why?<\/p>\n

Just because solutions exist doesn\u2019t mean the problem is solved. After a series of deep dives into why people weren\u2019t backing up, we discovered that the major problem was that backup solutions were too complicated for most people. They recognized they should be backing up, but weren\u2019t willing to invest the time to learn how to use one of the existing services. So the problem Backblaze was originally solving wasn\u2019t backup in general, it was taking away the learning curve to use a backup solution.<\/p>\n

Once you have the problem clearly defined, you can proceed to design a solution that will solve it. Of course the solution itself will likely be defined by market forces, most notably, price. As Gleb touches on in the following video clip, pricing needs to be built into the solution from the outset.<\/p>\n