Gleb Budman is the co-founder and CEO of Backblaze (NASDAQ: BLZE), a cloud storage and data backup company he successfully scaled from a scrappy, self-funded startup operating out of a one-bedroom apartment into a massive, publicly traded enterprise. A three-time exited entrepreneur, Gleb is a passionate advocate for first-principles thinking and building companies on sustainable, organic growth rather than relying solely on early venture capital. Known for his steady, even-keeled leadership style and strong commitment to corporate transparency, he has successfully steered Backblaze through massive industry shifts—including pioneering long-term viral content marketing strategies, competing head-to-head with trillion-dollar tech giants, and intentionally transitioning his 400-person workforce into a highly effective, remote-first organization.
Shifting from Venture Capital to Bootstrapping: The Backblaze Story
The Problem They Solved: In 2007, Gleb and his co-founders realized that while everyone was moving their lives and data onto laptops, almost nobody was actually backing up their files. Recognizing a massive disaster in the making, they decided to create a simple, affordable solution.
Saying "No" to Venture Capital: Even though the team's past successes made them a dream target for investors, they made a strict pact to avoid venture capital (VC) funding for their first year. They worked with no salaries out of a one-bedroom apartment.
Why Avoid Investors? Gleb explained three major risks of taking VC money too early:
Distraction: Founders spend all their time pitching investors instead of building a great product.
Loss of Flexibility: If the business needs to pivot, early investors might not agree with the new direction.
Wrong Motivations: Having millions in the bank causes teams to focus on how to win the next round of funding, rather than how to earn their first dollar from a real customer.
Gleb highlighted how a massive bank account on day one can accidentally warp a startup's priorities:
"If you start on day one, you've raised your funding, you've raised $10 million. Now you have $10 million sitting in a bank account. The decisions you make as a team become in some ways optimized toward how do you raise the next round of funding, as opposed to thinking about how do you get a dollar from your next customer."
From Ramen Noodles to Wall Street: The Realities of Going Public
The "Rice and Beans" Phase of Startup Life
Even though Gleb and his co-founders had successfully sold two previous companies, they weren't independently wealthy. Choosing not to take investor money meant making major personal sacrifices:
The Reality of No Salary: The team committed to a full year without pay, cramming five people into a one-bedroom apartment.
The Invisible Costs: Unlike pure software companies, Backblaze was an infrastructure business—meaning any early cash they generated had to go toward buying physical servers, not paying themselves.
The Long Slog: After a year, they still couldn't afford normal salaries. They had to ask each other to commit to another six months of zero pay, eventually graduating to minimum wage, and then twice minimum wage over a multi-year stretch.
Why Choose Wall Street Over an Acquisition?
Gleb notes that while they drew up many possible paths for the company early on, their past experiences heavily influenced their decision to finally go public on the NASDAQ:
"We've been through the process of selling a company twice before, and in both of those cases... the company basically vaporized. As an entrepreneur... you want this thing to matter. If you sell it, oftentimes it vaporizes. Taking it public is one way to at least help ensure that that could happen [for a long time]."
The Whiplash of the Public Market
Host Alex asks about the biggest surprises after taking the company public in late 2021. Gleb explains that the hardest part isn't managing the business, but managing the whiplash of investor expectations:
Late 2021 (The IPO): Every investor and analyst asked them, "How can you spend money faster to grow quicker?"
Early 2022 (The First Earnings Call): Just a few months later, the market shifted drastically. Suddenly, every investor demanded, "How can you stop spending money so you can become profitable?"
David vs. Goliath in the Age of AI: How Backblaze Competes with Tech Giants
Standing Up to Amazon: A First-Principles Bet
When Backblaze was founded, the initial plan was to build software on top of Amazon’s cloud storage (S3). However, the math didn’t add up—Amazon's high fees meant Backblaze would lose money on every customer.
Instead, they took a massive gamble: they ignored the skeptics who said they couldn't compete with Amazon, and built their own physical storage infrastructure from scratch.
For 19 years, critics asked, "What if Amazon lowers their prices?" Yet, Backblaze kept growing by focusing on one simple truth: standard hard drives aren't that expensive if you write smart software to manage them efficiently.
Selling "Picks and Shovels" in the AI Gold Rush
Today, the explosion of AI has completely validated Backblaze’s independent approach. Massive tech ecosystems are being reshaped by "Neo-Clouds"—hundreds of new, specialized companies providing the heavy-duty computing power (GPUs) needed to train AI models.
Alex notes that Backblaze is effectively selling the "picks and shovels" in this modern gold rush. Gleb explains why AI companies are fleeing the tech giants and turning to them:
The Problem with Tech Giants: If an AI company stores petabytes of data on Amazon, Amazon makes it incredibly expensive to move that data outside their ecosystem ("egress fees").
The Backblaze Advantage: Backblaze allows AI companies to store massive amounts of data cheaply and transfer it instantly to whichever specialized AI computing cloud they need next, without punishing financial penalties.
"We are becoming this kind of core storage infrastructure layer for these AI companies, both the ones building the infrastructure as well as the ones using it."
Finding the "Ideal Investor Profile"
The episode wraps up with Gleb comparing investors to customers. Just like a business needs to find its ideal target customer, a public company has to find its Ideal Investor Profile.
Instead of wasting time trying to convince Wall Street firms that are legally only allowed to invest in Fortune 500 companies, Gleb focuses on finding the specific investors who understand their unique, independent lane—and then maintaining absolute consistency in telling the Backblaze story.
From 5 Readers to 1 Million: The Secret Sauce of Backblaze’s Viral Growth
Avoiding "Shiny Object Syndrome" on Wall Street
Picking up on their discussion about investor relations, Gleb explains that the secret to building trust with Wall Street is absolute consistency. As a public company, you cannot constantly chase the next trendy idea.
When Backblaze decided that Artificial Intelligence (AI) was a core path for their future, they committed to it fully by launching specialized products like B2 NEO and B2 Overdrive. By repeating the exact same message and showing steady progress quarter after quarter, they proved to investors that they were executing a real, long-term plan rather than just chasing headlines.
The Blog Post That Changed Everything
The conversation then shifts to Backblaze’s legendary marketing strategy: content creation.
When the company started in 2007, Gleb—who isn't a software engineer—took over everything that didn't involve writing code. He started a company blog about data backups. At first, it was a ghost town.
"For a while, if five people read any one of my blog posts, that was great. And it usually required me to send an email to my brother and my parents... they were three of the five."
But because Backblaze's cloud storage was so affordable, skeptics online started whispering that the company was a scam or burning through hidden venture cash. To prove their infrastructure was real and highly efficient, the team decided to do something radical: they completely open-sourced the blueprint and wiring diagrams of their custom-built storage servers.
They packaged this into a highly detailed, deeply researched blog post titled "Petabytes on a Budget."
Over a Million Views and a Growth Engine is Born
Gleb didn't just hit publish and hope for the best. He painstakingly pitched tech journalists on Twitter. The results were explosive:
Day 1: Major tech outlets like TechCrunch and Ars Technica wrote about it, bringing in 300,000 readers in 24 hours.
Days 2–3: The article went viral on internet hubs like Reddit, Slashdot, and Digg, pushing the total to over 1 million readers.
The Result: Even though Backblaze wasn't selling physical servers, the massive wave of trust and brand awareness resulted in a record-breaking 1,000 new customer sign-ups in just a few days.
Turning a Viral Moment into a Sustainable Muscle
After the initial rush, the team faced a dilemma: they couldn't invent a groundbreaking new server every week. How could they keep the momentum going?
The answer lay in their community. Thousands of readers flooded the comments with highly technical questions about heat, vibration, and hardware reliability. By turning those individual questions into follow-up blog posts, Backblaze built a continuous content engine.
Today, what started as a blog read by Gleb's parents now attracts several million readers a year, serving as the company's number one tool for finding new customers and securing their place as an industry leader.
Building an Unshakable Business Moat and Surviving the Chaos of the Stock Market
The 15-Year Blog: An Unfair Advantage Against Tech Giants
When companies go public, investors constantly worry about copycats or industry giants crushing the business. Gleb explains how Backblaze used its famous technical blog to silence those fears during their initial public offering (IPO):
The Common Fear: Investors always asked, "What stops Amazon from slashing prices, or a well-funded startup from copying your technology?"
The Reality Check: While code can be rewritten, trust cannot be bought. Gleb pointed investors to their blog.
The Moat: A brand-new startup could raise $50 million on day one, but they cannot buy 15 years of continuous, authentic community engagement, millions of annual readers, and massive brand authority. The blog wasn't just a marketing tool; it was a permanent business defense system.
Managing the Stock Ticker: Cortisol Levels vs. Real Metrics
Transitioning from a private company to a public one completely changes employee psychology. Because employees are compensated with company stock, a dipping stock price can trigger panic.
Gleb shares his philosophy on managing a team through the turbulence of the stock market:
The Reality of Stock Visibility: Gleb remembers a company he worked at 20 years prior where the daily stock price was plastered on the employee homepage. He banned this at Backblaze.
Focus on What You Can Control: To keep his team's "cortisol levels" low, Gleb ensures the company intranet only displays metrics employees can actually influence—like product growth and customer happiness—rather than the daily mood swings of Wall Street.
The Silver Lining of Being Public: Despite the stress, Gleb notes that being a public company offers incredible freedom. Employees can independently choose to sell shares whenever they need cash for personal milestones, like paying for their children's schooling, without waiting for a rare corporate buyout.
In Gleb's Words: Silver Linings in Market Dips
When market volatility temporarily drives a good company's stock price down, Gleb looks at it as a rare window of opportunity for his team:
"There have been times where we've had to kind of relook at it and go, 'Okay, based on where the stock is at, they're probably getting a very good deal right now because we believe that the stock is undervalued...' My hope is that all the employees and all the investors who have shares right now are basically getting a screaming deal."
The Steady CEO: Navigating Market Volatility and the Reality of Remote Work
Leading with an Even Keel and Total Transparency
When a company goes public, the stock price inevitably goes on a roller coaster ride. Alex asks how Gleb manages his own energy and protects his workforce from the anxiety of market noise. Gleb explains that his greatest strength is being naturally even-keeled—neither getting too high when things are great, nor too low when things get rough.
He points out that the true antidote to employee panic is intellectual honesty and absolute transparency:
The Late 2025 Market Crash: Gleb recalls a recent quarter where Backblaze's stock price tumbled after they missed an aggressive 30% growth acceleration target due to a single, unpredictable large customer.
The Transparent Fix: Instead of dodging the issue, management explained exactly why the miss happened, admitted they needed to adjust how they forecast their financial guidance, and outlined a clear strategy to secure more predictable, committed contracts moving forward.
By explaining the "why" behind the numbers, the leadership team was able to transform a moment of panic into a collective learning experience.
Acknowledging the Remote Reality: Closing the Office
Earlier in the year, Backblaze made headlines internally by giving up its corporate headquarters—a physical base the company had maintained for nearly 20 years. Gleb recalls that when he broke the news, employees were shocked. However, his framing of the situation completely changed their perspective:
"My comment to the team at that point was, 'We are not going remote. We are simply acknowledging that we are remote.'"
Gleb explains that from 2007 to 2019, Backblaze was proudly 100% in-office, with employees crammed elbow-to-elbow in a lunchroom every single day. But the post-COVID era changed everything.
He shares a ridiculous story from a colleague that perfectly illustrates the flaw of forced hybrid mandates: The colleague would drive 25 minutes to the office, sit down alone at a desk, and spend the entire day on Zoom calls with remote coworkers in other states, never interacting with a single person in the building. Realizing their massive office was entirely empty on Mondays and Fridays, and hosted only a tiny fraction of their 400-person staff on Wednesdays, Backblaze decided to stop fighting the trend.
Building the Playbook for a Great Remote Culture
To ensure that giving up the office didn't mean losing their tight-knit culture, Backblaze implemented a series of deliberate, remote-first playbooks:
WeWork Style Memberships: Employees are given access to flexible co-working spaces, not to work alone on Zoom, but as a tool to intentionally gather in small groups when they want to collaborate in person.
Traveling Management Meetings: Instead of flying everyone to a centralized California headquarters every two months, the executive team now rotates its meetings to various cities across the country where pockets of employees live—such as Washington D.C., Southern California, and Texas—using it as an opportunity to host local team gatherings, tour data centers, and meet regional customers.
Random Coffee Chats: To replace the organic "watercooler moments" of a physical office, the company introduced an opt-in system that randomly pairs two employees from different departments every two weeks for a casual, 20-minute virtual chat.
How to Connect with Gleb
If you want to follow Gleb’s insights on leadership, bootstrapping, and cloud infrastructure, you can find him through these main channels:
LinkedIn: Search for Gleb Budman. He frequently posts professional updates on company culture, scaling, and tech leadership.
X: Follow his handle @glebbudman for real-time industry takes and tech commentary.
The Backblaze Blog: Visit backblaze.com/blog to read his latest company deep dives, announcements, and storage insights.
Check the episode's Transcript (AI-generated) HERE.
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