![\"COVID-19](\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/bb-bh-covid-19-main.jpg\" "\\"Business")
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At the beginning of any given quarter, conference rooms fill with managers extolling the virtues of the key objectives and tactics for the next 90 days. I\u2019ve always been amused by the little voice inside my head as I stand up in front of my team for these talks\u2014in the best of times, it\u2019s saying \u201cC\u2019mon… The probability that this goes exactly as planned is something like 2%.\u201d But, you shrug it off because a good plan is one that creates a clear end point, proposes a viable way to get there, and has the agility to adapt when you come into contact with reality. 89 days later, you look back, chuckle a little at the twists and turns\u2026and, hopefully, celebrate a mission accomplished.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s in the best of times. Today is nowhere near that. Today, it\u2019s hard enough to know where the world will be in 90 days’ time, let alone where our business goals and initiatives will end up. To quote our CEO, Gleb<\/a>, who was borrowing an idea from \u201cFrozen 2,\u201d the best thing is to focus on doing \u201cthe next right thing.\u201d<\/p>\n So what, exactly, is that? Well, for Backblaze, it\u2019s to remember that we\u2019re Backblaze. Besides being the right thing, an advantage to being a transparent company<\/a> is that it\u2019s an easy thing to do even in uncertain times. Quite literally, it made a lot of sense to write a post that looks at the marketing and communications challenges for our business during a pandemic. Our hope is that in sharing what is happening behind the scenes, we might help those that are facing similar challenges.<\/p>\n Writing this post, I am very aware that some of our readers might be furloughed, laid off, or have their businesses entirely gone. I, and our team, hope that each day gets a little brighter and you get back to stable, soon. At the least, we hope you find something interesting or thought provoking here. At the most, we hope you\u2019ll find inspiration to tackle whatever the next right thing is for you.<\/p>\n Fundamental demand is unaffected:<\/strong><\/em> The earliest data points we have for Backblaze\u2019s business are that the top of funnel demand (web visits, account creates) have yet to be materially affected by the crisis. In March, those growth metrics hit the forecasts we created at the end of 2019.<\/p>\n These results are a bit head-scratching given the sheer dominance of pandemic news everywhere. Intuitively, one would assume data and cloud storage content wouldn\u2019t be as interesting to people. And yet looking at the data, for now at least, the market for cloud storage<\/a> is unchanged (more on that later).<\/p>\n Decision making by customers is affected:<\/strong><\/em> We can use our sales team\u2019s pipeline to look a little deeper into customer behavior. What we\u2019re seeing is that customers we were working on longer term projects with have largely paused or changed their decision-making approach.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s say you\u2019ve been planning some cool enhancement to your infrastructure since the beginning of the year and were just about to start executing. Well, migrating the archives off of those LTO tapes<\/a> isn\u2019t today\u2019s problem (setting aside the fact that you may not even be allowed in your office to do that actual work). So those types of projects are delayed. \u201cChange\u201d or \u201cenhance\u201d takes a back seat to \u201cstabilize.\u201d<\/p>\n This does mean that new projects are springing up very quickly\u2014all of a sudden you have a fully distributed workforce. Are your team members’ computers being backed up? How are they accessing mission critical data? While final decisions on existing projects have been delayed, new needs are being identified with accelerated timelines.<\/p>\n This is where a marketer\u2019s post to other marketers feels particularly awkward. But Backblaze is a business: we have customers that rely on the services we provide, families that rely on the salaries we pay, and a broader community that enjoys our occasional gifs<\/a>. In other words, we still have a responsibility to ensure the future success of the business. In a world where very little non-COVID related news seems to be relevant, what should our messaging look like?<\/p>\n There are three fundamental paths we could take with our outward messaging:<\/p>\n help<\/em><\/p>\n like the 2011 flooding in Thailand<\/a><\/p>\n Option one feels irresponsible. Option two is troubling on a number of levels. Option three is why this post was written (and will be followed up with similar posts covering the challenges faced by our Supply Chain and People Operations teams).<\/p>\n Tactically, we feel that option three means that we adjust our plans, speak to the moment in whatever manner we\u2019re uniquely able to, monitor the market for when storage news<\/a> becomes interesting again, and try to remain a good corporate citizen along the way.<\/p>\n Backblaze made the decision to move the majority of our workforce to work from home on March 6th<\/sup> (prior to California\u2019s \u201cshelter-in-place\u201d orders). Over that weekend, as our business continuity plans kicked in, a number of proposals were floated. Two broad themes emerged in those discussions:<\/p>\n Should we notify our customers?<\/strong><\/em> Sending an email out felt like the right thing to do. But what were we notifying people of? Our operations and services weren\u2019t changing from a customer perspective. We generally don\u2019t send out emails that say, \u201cHere\u2019s 500 words on something that will not affect your experience with Backblaze.\u201d Again, our approach was to speak when and where we could add value to our customers\u2019<\/em> lives. An immediate note didn\u2019t pass the sniff test.<\/p>\n Do we adjust our marketing plans?<\/strong><\/em> In the most literal sense, we wanted to tone down some celebratory messaging we knew was coming. We cleared an exabyte<\/a> of customer data under management, but it felt prudent to cancel the party (particularly with guests coming in from around the globe). We had a 5,300 word profile in Inc.<\/em> magazine (it\u2019s a fun read<\/a>)…but promoting that in the middle of everything else felt odd. But in the end, if we\u2019re working on products and releases that we think will help our customers, we should still get them out to market.<\/p>\n As we worked through those big picture questions, we arrived at guiding principles for ourselves:<\/p>\n As a business, it\u2019s always important to stay in tune with how our markets and public are feeling. So how do we understand where society stands? With some hope and a lot of science, eventually, we think there will be a vaccine. But what are the steps before then? Will evidence that we\u2019ve flattened the curve bring confidence that we\u2019ve done the right thing and bring people back<\/a> to more mundane topics?<\/p>\n At some point, we believe that there will be some leading indications that the recovery is starting from a psychological perspective. In that sense, we think that will be when customers will feel \u201cstabilized\u201d and begin thinking again about \u201cchanges\u201d and \u201cenhancements.\u201d Here are three things we are monitoring.<\/p>\n When I became part of the Backblaze family four years ago, we were a third of the size we are today. The growth and expansion of the business is incredibly energizing, but does bring increased costs around keeping the team on the same page. Writing this post started as an internal memo to help organize our team. We thought it was potentially interesting enough to merit sharing with you. In keeping with our principles, we\u2019ll continue to share our thinking as it evolves and whatever insights we believe might be helpful. We hope you and your family stay as safe and healthy as possible. As always, we\u2019re happy to engage with you in the comments below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" COVID-19 is rightfully filling the news cycle, but if you\u2019re coming to our blog, you\u2019re probably looking for some helpful information about backing up or entrepreneurship. Considering these novel circumstances and our tradition of transparency, we’re sharing the ways in which we’re thinking about how to best communicate with our customers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":131,"featured_media":95134,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[111],"tags":[470],"class_list":["post-95126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entrepreneurship","tag-newsletter","entry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhat Do We Know Right Now?<\/h2>\n
![\"COVID-19](\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/bb-bh-covid-19-section3.jpg\")
<\/p>\nWhat Can We Do?<\/h2>\n
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1. We could go dark. Trying to run a for-profit enterprise is odd during a pandemic. That said, infrastructure as a service is an increasingly relevant thing to<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
with the problems our customers are dealing with.<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
2. We could just blissfully execute against our pre-existing plans. Our business model is fortunate to be resilient against these types of events. But ignoring the elephant in the room is odd at best and, at worst, offensively tone deaf.<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
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3. We could attempt to be in conversation with the moment. Backblaze prides itself on being a transparent company. When other disasters have hit\u2014<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
\u2014we\u2019ve had a unique perspective to share. Just like every company, we\u2019re bordering on obsessive consumption of the news on the pandemic. Unlike a lot of companies, we have statisticians capable of running their own models. However, customers come to us for perspectives on data storage topics, not public health\u2014what unique, value added perspective, if any, can we offer?<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/bb-bh-covid-19-section1.jpg\")
<\/p>\nHow We\u2019ve Resolved to Do It:<\/h2>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/bb-bh-covid-19-section2.jpg\")
<\/p>\nWhen Is the Beginning of Whatever Is Next?<\/h2>\n
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