Our mission is to make it astonishingly easy to store, use, and protect data.
The Backblaze Storage Cloud provides a foundation for businesses, developers, IT professionals, and individuals to build applications, host content, manage media, back up and archive data, and more. With over three billion gigabytes of data storage under management, the company currently works with more than 500,000 customers in over 175 countries. Founded in 2007, Backblaze scaled with less than $3 million in outside funding until 2021, when it made an initial public offering on the Nasdaq under the ticker BLZE.
From day one, the Backblaze founders brought our values to life, which has shaped the company and our staff.
Be good. Trust is paramount. Build a good product. Charge fairly. Be open, honest, and accepting with customers and each other.
Build for long-term success. Be rationally frugal. Invest responsibly. Keep profitability in mind, and build at a sustainable pace.
Think hard how to make things easy. Take extra time to achieve simplicity, minimize friction, and reduce complexity.
Default to sharing unless there is a strong reason not to. Transparency builds trust and establishes leadership.
Refuse to take history or habit to mean something is "right." Consider novel solutions unrestricted by conventional wisdom.
Storing and using data shouldn’t be hard. Our Storage Cloud manages complexity so you can focus on what's important.
Nearly 500,000 customers trust our 15+ years of experience and track record as a neutral provider of storage. We welcome partners and don’t lock customers in a walled garden.
Our innovative software eliminates complex tiers, excessive fees, and lock-in, all at a fraction the price of others—freeing you to store and use data as needed.
Gleb Budman is a co-founder and has served as our chief executive officer since 2007, guiding the business from its inception in a Palo Alto apartment to a company serving customers in more than 175 countries with over an exabyte of data under management. Gleb has served as a member of our board of directors since 2009 and as chairperson since January 2021. Prior to Backblaze, Gleb was the senior director of product management at SonicWall and the vice president of products at MailFrontier, which was acquired by SonicWall. Before that, he served in a senior position at Kendara, which was acquired by Excite@Home, and previously founded and successfully exited two other startup companies. Gleb earned a M.B.A. and B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.
Brian Beach joined Backblaze in 2013 and has served as chief technology officer since 2022. As CTO, he brings decades of engineering experience as well as a passion for building next-generation distributed storage solutions. Prior to his time at Backblaze, Brian worked as the vice president and principal engineer for TiVo, as well as holding senior engineering positions at Silicon Graphics and Hewlett-Packard. Brian’s experience at Backblaze ranges from being our first customer in 2008 to building our storage cloud’s vault architecture—the foundation for our durability, scalability, and performance. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in information science, and his Ph.D. in computer engineering from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Frank P. Patchel has served as our chief financial officer since early 2020. Frank brings a wealth of public company financial leadership to the team. Prior to joining Backblaze, Frank was chief financial officer and chief operating officer of Wintec Industries and chief financial officer of ABBYY USA. He began his career with Ernst & Young and has served as financial planning consultant for Kaiser Permanente and in various roles with ADP, including divisional chief financial officer and chief operating officer. Frank earned his B.S. in commerce from the University of Virginia.
Tom MacMitchell has served as our general counsel and chief compliance officer since early 2020. Prior to joining Backblaze, Tom led legal matters at Quantenna Communications. At Quantenna, Tom also helped lead the company's initial public offering, and its subsequent sale to a Fortune 500 company. Prior to Quantenna, Tom was at Intematix Corporation and Brocade Communications. Tom began his legal career at a prominent law firm in Silicon Valley. He brings 20+ years of experience in law, including heading the legal function for both private and public companies, to his role at Backblaze. Tom earned a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Stanford University and a J.D. in law from the University of California, Davis.
Tina Cessna has served as our senior vice president of engineering since 2018. In her role, she has guided our engineering efforts to open Backblaze’s services to ever broadening audiences, including the launch of the Backblaze S3 Compatible API. Prior to joining Backblaze, Tina led engineering and QA at Salesforce, Cisco, Linksys, and Oracle. She brings 25 years of software development experience to the role, building complex enterprise and consumer applications, as well as a blend of technology experience in PaaS, SaaS, embedded systems, and network routing. Tina earned a B.S.E.E in electronic and computer engineering from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.
Chris Opat joined Backblaze as our senior vice president of cloud operations in 2023. Before joining Backblaze, he served as senior vice president of platform engineering and operations at StackPath, a specialized provider in edge technology and content delivery. He brings a passion for building teams of experienced technologists who push the envelope to create a best-in-class experience for Backblaze customers. Chris has over 25 years of experience in building teams and technology at startup and scale-up companies. He also held leadership roles at CyrusOne, CompuCom, Cloudreach, and Bear Stearns/JPMorgan. Chris earned his B.S. in Television & Digital Media Production at Ithaca College.
Kevin Gavin joined Backblaze as chief marketing officer (CMO) in 2022. Before joining Backblaze, He served as CMO for Five9, ShoreTel, Talari, Canto, and others. A versatile and seasoned CMO, Kevin brings more than 30 years experience with broad leadership in marketing, branding, lead generation, and strategic planning. He has deep expertise in leading emerging and rapidly growing companies through IPO and beyond. Kevin earned his B.S. in entrepreneurial management from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Nilay has served as our vice president of sales since 2009. Nilay was part of the founding team at Backblaze and launched Backblaze Business Backup and the partner programs. In early 2011, Nilay left to co-found Selligy, which was acquired by Veeva Systems (NYSE: VEEV) in mid-2015. Soon thereafter, Nilay returned to bring his unique background in development and sales back to Backblaze. In addition to Selligy, Nilay was the first employee in Europe for both Electric Cloud and MailFrontier. He opened up the territories by selling products to Nokia, Ericsson, Siemens Medical, Bertelsmann, and other large enterprises. Nilay earned a B.S. in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley.
David Ngo joined Backblaze as our chief product officer (CPO) in 2024. Before joining Backblaze, he served as the global chief technology officer (CTO) for Metallic, a division of Commvault, which provides data protection and cyber resilience as a service. David brings to Backblaze a passion for developing scalable methodologies, best-in-class user experiences, and go-to-market strategies based on the latest industry best practices. With more than 25 years of experience in building technologies, product development, and positioning, David is a recognized industry leader in helping companies identify areas of opportunity for innovation and architecting how new technologies are integrated. David earned his B.S. in Electrical Engineering at Rutgers University.
Anu Patil joined Backblaze as a senior business intelligence analyst in 2019, and was promoted to Vice President, Revenue Strategy & Operations in 2023. Before joining Backblaze, she led analytics teams at companies including NextDoor, Concur, CREDO Mobile and others. As an incisive and innovative revenue leader, Anu brings more than 15 years of experience in growth and retention analytics, predictive modeling and forecasting, and revenue optimization. Anu earned her bachelor's degree in economics from Tufts University.
Mark Potter has served as our chief information security officer since early 2021. He brings experience from over 30 years working in cybersecurity, IT, governance, risk management, regulatory compliance, and data protection and privacy program design and implementation. He previously served as the chief information security officer at multiple federal healthcare contractor organizations, and also served as the Director of IT Security at a publicly traded international satellite radio company. Our CISO is an IAPP Fellow of Information Privacy and holds over 35 security, privacy, and risk management certifications.
Robert Fitt joined Backblaze as the chief human resources officer (CHRO) in 2022. Before joining Backblaze, he led HR functions for Turntide Technologies, 360 Behavioral Health, Mobilitie, Broadcom Corporation, and others. A versatile and seasoned CHRO, Robert brings more than 20 years of global leadership in strategic HR, talent management, technology, organizational design, compensation and benefits, and DEI. Robert earned his bachelor’s degree in human resources management from Staffordshire University, and his Master’s degree in employment law from the University of East Anglia.
Barbara Nelson is an experienced storage industry executive, with over 15 years of GM and P&L leadership in cloud services, SaaS businesses, and over $3 billion divisions at companies including Western Digital and Quantum. Nelson held the role of CEO twice, for Element Labs and NeoScale Systems, and has served on five corporate boards. She will serve on various committees at Backblaze, including as chair of the nominating & governance committee.
Jocelyn Carter-Miller brings invaluable go-to-market scaling knowledge and deep board experience, having previously served as a board member for NETGEAR (over nine years), and currently on the boards of Principal Financial Group, Interpublic Group, and most recently, Arlo Technologies, in roles including chair of the finance committee, compensation committee, and nominating and governance committee. Previously, Carter-Miller was executive vice president and chief marketing officer for Office Depot, Inc. Carter-Miller is a NACD Directorship 100 recipient. She will serve on various committees at Backblaze, including as chair of the compensation committee.
Evelyn D’An is an experienced board director and financial leader with extensive corporate governance, financial oversight, and accounting experience with a range of technology companies. D’An currently serves as a member of the board of directors of Summer Infant, Inc. and is a former partner of Ernst & Young, where she spent 18 years serving clients in retail, consumer products, technology, and other sectors. She will serve as chair of the audit committee and will also serve on other committees in her role at Backblaze.
Earl E. Fry has cultivated wide-ranging financial, accounting, and audit oversight experience as well as substantial insight into software and cloud businesses through a number of board and leadership roles. Fry serves as a member of the board of directors of Hawaiian Airlines and has served as chair of their audit and finance committee. Previously, Fry was chief financial officer, chief administrative officer, chief customer officer, and executive vice president, operations strategy at Informatica Corporation. He was also a board and audit committee member of Central Pacific Financial Corp. and served on the board of Xactly Corporation. Fry has served as a member of our board of directors since August 2021.
After working together for 20 years and successfully building two companies, the seven co-founders launched Backblaze with a vision: to create a business that’s equally fair and good for its customers, partners, employees, investors, and the greater community. It all started with our founders in a one-bedroom Palo Alto apartment...
Gleb Budman is a co-founder and has served as our chief executive officer since 2007, guiding the business from its inception in a Palo Alto apartment to a company serving customers in more than 175 countries with over an exabyte of data under management. Gleb has served as a member of our board of directors since 2009 and as chairperson since January 2021. Prior to Backblaze, Gleb was the senior director of product management at SonicWall and the vice president of products at MailFrontier, which was acquired by SonicWall. Before that, he served in a senior position at Kendara, which was acquired by Excite@Home, and previously founded and successfully exited two other startup companies. Gleb earned a M.B.A. and B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.
Brian Wilson is one of our co-founders and served as our chief technology officer until 2022. Brian’s inspiration that safeguarding data shouldn’t be hard lit the spark for Backblaze, and his code provides the original foundations of the Backblaze Computer Backup client. Brian served as a member of our Board of Directors from 2007 until 2022. Prior to his time at Backblaze, Brian was a co-founder and the chief technology officer of MailFrontier, which was subsequently sold to SonicWall. Brian also served in senior positions at Kendara, Silicon Graphics, and Apple. He earned his M.S. in computer science from Stanford University and a B.S. in engineering physics and B.S. in computer science from Oregon State University.
Billy Ng is a co-founder and has served as our full stack architect since 2007. He designed and built the original software layer that runs the network infrastructure for the Backblaze data centers and serves as a mentor for the Engineering team. Prior to joining Backblaze, Billy was a lead engineer at SonicWall, MailFrontier, and Excite@Home. Billy earned a B.S. in computer information systems from Hawaii Pacific University.
Casey Jones is one of our co-founders and served as our vice president of design until 2023. Casey’s design sensibility and user interface experience have informed the customer experience from our launch onward. Prior to Backblaze, Casey was the design lead for SonicWall’s products, where he developed designs that are deployed in over one million businesses worldwide. He led user interface and web design and development at MailFrontier and at Kendara through its acquisition by Excite@Home. Starting in design in the early days of the web, Casey developed event sites for companies, including Sun Microsystems, Cisco Systems, and PeopleSoft. Casey earned a B.S. in economics from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Damon Uyeda is a co-founder and served as Mac architect from 2008 to 2023. Prior to joining Backblaze, Damon held senior technical positions at three startups as well as Excite@Home and Oracle. Damon's technical vision, passion, and dedication to detail of development for Mac operating systems allowed Backblaze to be instantly accepted by the highly critical Mac community as a product worthy of their loyalty.
Tim Nufire is a co-founder and served as chief cloud officer until December 2022. He was a member of our Board of Directors from April 2009 to June 2023. Tim developed, built, and laid the first building blocks of the Backblaze Storage Cloud. Prior to his time at Backblaze, Tim was the vice president of engineering at Aplia, which was acquired by the Thompson Corporation. He was also a director at MailFrontier and SearchFox, and held senior engineering positions at Apple, Adobe, and others. Tim earned his B.S. in mathematics with the highest distinction from the University of Kansas.
Nilay has served as our vice president of sales since 2009. Nilay was part of the founding team at Backblaze and launched Backblaze Business Backup and the partner programs. In early 2011, Nilay left to co-found Selligy, which was acquired by Veeva Systems (NYSE: VEEV) in mid-2015. Soon thereafter, Nilay returned to bring his unique background in development and sales back to Backblaze. In addition to Selligy, Nilay was the first employee in Europe for both Electric Cloud and MailFrontier. He opened up the territories by selling products to Nokia, Ericsson, Siemens Medical, Bertelsmann, and other large enterprises. Nilay earned a B.S. in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley.
We’re a global company with headquarters in San Mateo, and locations across the US and Europe—serving more than 500K customers in 175 countries around the world.
We’re growing fast! We’ve built a culture where we care about each other, our work, and our products, and we have fun doing it.
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