How One Startup Managed Its Investment Cash Flow

Backblaze, a leader in cloud storage, just celebrated its fifth anniversary. While the company is now profitable and its seven founders are getting paid salaries, that wasn’t always the case. We got a chance to look deep into the company’s balance sheet and see exactly how it managed its cash flow over the past five years. The tale offers insights for all kinds of entrepreneuers. Contrary to popular belief, the road to startup success isn’t always paved in gold: Instead, founders often work for years without getting paid at all.

This isn’t the first time we’ve written about Backblaze’s distinctive red storage pods. The company now boasts millions of dollars in revenue, and more than 30 petabytes of managed storage in its data centers. Incorporated in April 2007, over the course of two years – from June 2007 to September 2009 – the founders invested