Bitcasa
Company: Bitcasa, Mountain View, CA
Entry Submitted By: Blanc & Otus
Company Description: Bitcasa allows you to store, access, and share everything you’ve ever owned – every picture, every movie, every document, every song – without limits and without the worry of running out of space. With the Bitcasa Infinite Drive, you are able to access all your files, photos, playlists, videos and docs anytime, anywhere.
Nomination Category: Products & Product Management Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: New Product or Service of the Year - Consumer Services
Nomination Title: Bitcasa Infinite Drive
Tell the story about this nominated product or service (up to 525 words). Describe its function, features, benefits, and performance to date:
TEXT REDACTED FOR PUBLICATION
In September 2011, Bitcasa launched at TechCrunch Disrupt, and took runner up award in the Startup Battlefield competition. By the next day, the Beta invite list had grown to more than 50 thousand people. And Bitcasa was born.
2012 was a year in which Bitcasa made significant strides to realize its vision of killing the external hard drive. Bitcasa allows consumers to store, access, and share everything they’ve ever owned – every picture, every movie, every document, every song – without limits and without the worry of running out of space. With the Bitcasa Infinite Drive, consumers are able to access all of their files, photos, playlists, videos and docs anytime, anywhere.
Bitcasa raised $7M Series A financing in June 2012 from Horizons Ventures, Pelion Venture Partners, Andreessen-Horowitz, First Round Capital and others.
Near the end of 2012 and early 2013, Bitcasa made its cloud storage solution even more accessible with mobile support for Android, iOS, Mac and Windows 8/RT.
To drive the continued growth of its product and customer base, Bitcasa moved into a larger office space in Silicon Valley at the beginning of 2013. At this point, Bitcasa had four times the number of employees they had at the beginning of 2012 and the new office in Downtown Mountain View was necessary to support its growing business.
In February 2013, the company came out of beta and released the first and only encrypted Infinite Drive to the public – the response was tremendous. In less than a month, Bitcasa had paying customers in 114 countries. This included adoption in both large (US, UK, and Japan) and small markets (Switzerland, South Africa, and the Solomon Islands). These customers are currently storing more than 30 petabytes of encrypted user data. To put that into perspective, just one petabyte is equivalent to 20 million four-drawer filing cabinets full of text or 13.3 years of HDTV video.
Bitcasa is redefining how consumers are storing and accessing their data. The achievements the company has made over the course of the past year – funding, product enhancements, employee growth and customer adoption – all show that big things are ahead for this company. By the time all is said and done they will “kill the hard drive.”
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Video Interviews:
TechCrunch Interview, 3/5/13 “Bitcasa Launches to Public” http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/05/bitcasa-launches-its-infinite-storage-app-to-the-public-to-take-down-traditional-hard-drives-tctv/
Scobalizer, 10/20/11 “An Interview with Robert Scoble” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ImZWVxAQ_Q
TMCNet, 07/23/12 “Bitcasa Gives Your Mobile Device 2TB Storage”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqrwuF_b1vk
Sample Media Coverage:
TechCrunch, 3/5/13
"Bitcasa leaves beta, offers discount on Infinite Drive to celebrate”
Engaget, 3/5/13
“Newcomer Bitcasa Claims Provision of 'Infinite' Storage”
eWeek, 2/7/13
“The Best Cloud Storage Solutions”
PC Mag, 1/2/13
‘Infinite storage” firm Bitcasa debuts mobile apps; will exit beta in February and charge $10/month”
NextWeb
12/18/2012
“Bitcasa Moves Your Hard Drive to the Cloud”
CNET, 9/13/12
Demo of Bitcasa
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ty9fSGaJKts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdpQGsRRDLo&feature=c4-overview&list=UUt_SQb2gQczJ8ZRDhIfkiPQ
Provide a brief (up to 125 words) biography about the leader(s) of the team that developed this nominated product or service:
Bitcasa’s CEO, Brian Taptich joined Bitcasa in September 2013. Brian is a seasoned veteran in the consumer technology space and has a wealth of experience building strong and productive global teams and operationalizing vision.
Bitcasa was co-founded in 2011 by Tony Gauda and Kevin Blackham. Kevin currently oversees operational scalability, infrastructure automation and datacenter operations at Bitcasa. In previous roles, Kevin led global teams and technical strategy as Senior Manager of Cloud Network Operations at VMware, and Chief Operations Architect at Mozy.
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