Really smart and talented individuals are always in demand, but not every company is a good fit for you. The purpose of this letter is to describe Wasabi – our goals, our culture, the kind of company we are – so you can get a better idea of whether this might be the right place for you.

Let me start by describing our goals from a product standpoint so that you can appreciate the magnitude of the opportunity before us. All we do is data storage in the cloud. I shouldn’t say “all” because data storage is one of the greatest opportunities in the IT industry. If we were to store 100% of the world’s data, we’d have over $10 trillion (with a “T”) in revenue.  Along with electricity, bandwidth, and raw computing power, cloud storage is fundamental to nearly everything we do. And it is growing like crazy.

Thanks to the genius of my co-founder Jeff Flowers and his team, we have found a way to do cloud storage faster, cheaper, and more securely than anyone else on the planet. We’re up against some big, entrenched competitors like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft who already have billions of dollars of cloud storage business. But they also have hundreds of other products, and no matter how big you are, you can’t be best at everything. We do the storage part better than any of them. We’re less expensive (1/5th the price) and significantly faster than the storage offered by Amazon. By the end of 2022, we’ll be introducing our 3rd generation storage that will put even more performance and cost daylight between us and the hyperscalers.

Big competitors don’t scare us. At Carbonite, our last company, we had EMC, Iron Mountain, and HP as entrenched competitors in the consumer backup space. We kicked their butts and they all ended up exiting the business.

As a prospective employee, you might want to know a little bit about Jeff and me, because as co-founders we set the tone for the kind of company we are. First, this is not our first rodeo. Jeff and I previously co-founded 4 successful companies. Jeff provides technical leadership, and I set overall strategy and raise the money we need to successfully launch ourselves. I’m also the primary spokesperson for the company.

We grow through partnerships. We have about 350 “Technology Alliance Partners” in our growing partner ecosystem. These are companies whose products produce data that needs to be stored somewhere.  For example, we partner with most of the world’s leading backup companies and surveillance companies.  Backups and surveillance videos need to be stored somewhere, and Wasabi is the ideal place.  We also partner with resellers – we have thousands of resellers who are increasingly selling Wasabi to their customers instead of on-prem storage hardware.

Jeff and I both have large families and lots of outside interests. My undergraduate training was in music composition and if you google me, you’ll see lots of affiliations with the Boston cultural scene. Jeff has been very active in philanthropic activities as well.  We believe in modesty and honesty. We don’t like boastful and arrogant people who flaunt their wealth or power. We have an almost upside-down view of organizational hierarchy. Rather than a pyramid with me at the top, I see it more like an upside-down pyramid with me at the bottom. My job is to create an environment in which the people who actually get all the work done can flourish. The engineers writing code, the QA people testing the product, the marketing people building our brand, and the sales people bringing in the orders, are the people who make us successful. Every day I think about what I can do to take away any friction that’s slowing them down.

We love our work. It’s such a thrill and a privilege to start with nothing and see a real company grow up. When we build a successful company, I feel like an artist must feel when they finish a great painting or piece of sculpture, or like a great baseball team must feel when they win the pennant.

Because we try to choose people who are bristling with ideas and ambition, we don’t have many work rules. Many employees prefer working from home because they can get more done. That’s fine as long as you are productive.  Similarly, we don’t have a formal vacation policy. When you need time off, take it. Nobody’s counting. Self-motivated people who love what they do never abuse such policies.

In the early years of any startup, everybody is involved with everything to some extent, so it’s a great educational experience. A lot of people who have worked with Jeff and me over the years have gone on to become successful CEOs or risen to the tops of their professions. I’m still on the boards of some companies founded by former employees. I would bet that among the people working at Wasabi today there will be future CTOs, CMOs, VPs of Sales, and probably even CEOs. We are willing and anxious to promote people as fast as they can grow. If you’re the kind of person who takes initiative before having to be told to do something, and if you are the kind of person that is always curious to learn and try new things, there are few limits to what you can achieve here.

Wasabi is already a successful and highly admired company. Customers love our product and our Net Promoter Score is higher than Apple, higher than Microsoft, and higher than Amazon. Employees find working here fun and exciting – we have won many “Best Places to Work” awards.  Someday all of us will be able to look back with pride at what we created and how the journey changed our lives.

So if after reading that, you feel Wasabi is the right fit for you? Please do reach out to us or take a look through our open positions.?

Dave Friend, CEO