Earnings Call Transcript - BLZE Q1 2024

Operator, Operator

Hello, and welcome to the Backblaze First Quarter 2024 Conference Call. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the call to Mimi Kong, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Please go ahead.

Mimi Kong, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Development

Thank you. Good afternoon, and welcome to Backblaze's First Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. On the call with me today are Gleb Budman, Co-Founder, CEO, and Chairperson of the Board; and Frank Patchel, Chief Financial Officer. Today, Backblaze will discuss the financial results that were distributed earlier this afternoon. Statements on this call include forward-looking statements about our future financial results, use of our IPO proceeds, results from new features and offerings, the impact of price changes, partnerships and sales and marketing initiatives, our ability to compete effectively and manage our growth, and our strategy to acquire new customers and retain and expand our business with existing customers. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially, including those described in our risk factors that are included in our annual report on Form 10-K and our other financial filings. You should not rely on our forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. All forward-looking statements that we make on this call are based on assumptions and beliefs as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update them, except as required by law. Our discussion today will include non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP measures should be considered in addition to and not as a substitute for our GAAP results. Reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP results may be found in our earnings release, which was furnished with our Form 8-K filed today with the SEC. You can also find a slide presentation related to our comments in the webcast, which will also be posted to our Investor Relations page after the call. Please also see our press release or presentation for definitions of additional metrics such as NRR and gross customer retention rate. Before I turn the call over to Gleb, I'd also like to mention that in the latter portion of our call, as in prior calls, we will be addressing questions from investors that we gather through the Say Technologies platform. Thank you for joining us. And I would now like to turn the call over to Gleb.

Gleb Budman, CEO

Thanks, Mimi. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We had a record start across our key financial metrics. This quarter, revenue grew at 28%, 8 percentage points better than last year. We achieved an adjusted EBITDA margin of positive 6% versus negative 12% a year ago. And finally, cash usage this quarter was only $600,000, a dramatic improvement from the $13 million of cash used in the same period last year. Not only have we delivered accelerated business growth and improved efficiency, but we have also delivered product innovations that serve our mission of supporting customers and partners with the best storage cloud. Before diving into our business results, I want to speak to a customer trend that we're already benefiting from today and which we see already. A few months ago, we conducted a survey of more than 400 IT decision-makers. A majority of the respondents indicated that they prefer to choose from best-of-breed solutions when selecting vendors, and yet the cloud landscape has been historically defined by Cloud 1.0, where a few diversified cloud providers aim to lock customers into their platforms and take away customer choice. You may have heard that Google Cloud, AWS, and Azure recently announced free egress for their customers. They may have done this to modify regulators because the cloud 1.0 model is a walled garden by design, but this move does not at all address what customers actually want because it only applies to customers who leave those platforms completely. What customers really want is to freely use their data with multiple cloud services. These fake free egress announcements are only free exit, not free egress and underscore that cloud 1.0 just doesn't work that way. Businesses want Cloud 2.0, an open cloud ecosystem where businesses can use their data wherever and however they want to. It's better for them, better for innovation, and ultimately, better for the broader economy, and Backblaze is built for Cloud 2.0. First, our egress is actually free, allowing customers to use their data without fear of crippling bills or limits on who they work with. Second, we have a robust partner ecosystem, which gives customers easy access to the best-of-breed platforms they need. Third, we provide a trusted, durable platform that provides strong performance. And last, we continue to deliver innovations that support customers in using the best-of-breed services they want. A great example of this last point is our newest innovation called Event Notifications. Event Notifications gives customers the ability to build automated workflows across different best-of-breed cloud providers. For example, a customer can upload a video to B2 cloud storage, and event notifications will automatically trigger a compute process at another provider that prepares the file for streaming. Currently, similar offerings in the market only trigger actions within one platform or require complex and restrictive workarounds to work with other providers. We designed Event Notifications to be platform-agnostic, empowering customers to build workflows from the services they want, cutting out significant inefficiencies and costs in the process. The product launched in private preview just 3 weeks ago, and we already have over 100 organizations that have requested to join the early release. Event Notification was also recognized as product of the year for cloud computing and storage at the National Association of Broadcasters Conference, a major trade show for the media and entertainment industry. I'm very encouraged by the early reception and the potential for our services to become increasingly strategic for our customers. Including Event Notifications, Backblaze has announced 4 major releases over the past 6 months from the charts-performance upgrade to enterprise control for business backup to our power buy Backblaze program. I am proud of our team for delivering features that differentiate us and strategically position us as the de facto cloud storage provider for the open cloud. In Q1, we also made significant progress in our compliance and security programs, including state ramp and the Motion Picture Association's trusted partner network. Focusing on compliance and security is another key element in our effort to make our services as easy to adopt as possible. In this case, for the state and local government, educational industries, and the media and entertainment industry. At the same time, we continue to expand and enrich our partner network. Recently, Backblaze and Carahsoft, which is one of the largest privately held IT software and services companies in the world, announced that we've been added to their NASPO value Point contract, which eases the procurement process in government and education. Our partners also continue to help us facilitate and win deals with larger customers. Recently, the media team of one of the world's largest retailers needed a trusted location to hold their creative work. Their preferred reseller recommended adopting Backblaze. Our performance, ease of use, and affordability won the deal. In addition, our sole focus as a best-of-breed provider for cloud storage means that this retailer doesn't need to worry about any conflict of interest with a vendor like Amazon; that obviously wouldn't be the case. Additionally, a number of meaningful partners have already joined our powered-by Backblaze program, which we announced just last quarter. One of the most recent companies to join Powered-by is AXL AI. Their new AXL AI cloud leverages our cloud platform to deliver AI-powered media search tools. In the broader AI space, we're seeing a growing number of partners and customers utilizing the value of B2 cloud storage for AI workflows. Since the beginning of 2023, the number of AI companies using B2 for data storage has doubled, with a wide range of use cases, such as wildfire management and monitoring, manufacturing optimization, satellite data analysis, and much more. I'm very proud of what the team has achieved to not only reach our record financial results but to also deliver our platform and product innovations. I believe these put us in a strong position to deliver the transformational power of Cloud 2.0. I love seeing what businesses can do after we help to free the data from legacy platforms. Before I hand off the call, today, we announced that our CFO, Frank, is planning to retire this year. A search for his successor is already underway, and Frank intends to remain with us to help ensure a smooth transition to our new CFO. We're all hugely thankful for everything Frank has brought to the team but will save our gratitude and celebration of his many accomplishments for his departure later this year. Until we hire and onboard his replacement, Frank will continue to help us drive great results. I'll pass the call over to Frank to review our financial results.

Francis Patchel, CFO

Thank you, Gleb, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today. As Gleb mentioned, I'm planning to retire once we've identified my replacement and completed the onboarding process. There will be time for goodbyes when we get there, but until then, it will be business as usual. And I'm happy to turn to the record business results we have to share today. As a reminder, unless otherwise noted, I will be referring to non-GAAP metrics and the growth rates mentioned are year-on-year. We remain focused on 2 key metrics: revenue growth and adjusted EBITDA, which is defined in our earnings release. As Gleb mentioned, we have made significant strides in strengthening our financials from a year ago. This quarter compared to last year, we accelerated our growth rate while expanding our adjusted gross margin, significantly improving adjusted EBITDA margins, and meaningfully reducing cash usage. The tremendous strides made over the year were positively impacted by the operating leverage inherent in our business. We have continued to execute and build a strong and consistent track record as a public company. Our Q1 revenue totaled $30 million, an increase of 28% year-over-year versus 20% in the same period last year. B2 Cloud storage revenue was $14.6 million, reflecting 47% growth. Computer backup revenue totaled $15.3 million, reflecting 14% growth. Turning to our net revenue retention, or NRR. Total company NRR was 112% with B2 cloud storage at 126% and computer backup at 101%, which continued to show quarter-on-quarter improvement. Working down the P&L, adjusted gross margin increased about 500 basis points year-over-year to 77%, reflecting the price increase we put in place in Q4 of last year and further operating efficiencies at our data centers. This quarter, adjusted EBITDA was a positive $1.9 million or 6% of revenue, reflecting a substantial 18 points higher than the same period last year. Over the past year, we have significantly grown revenue while carefully managing expenses and increased operating efficiencies. This quarter, we also had slower headcount additions, which was offset by an increase in payroll taxes related to the recent stock price appreciation. Turning to the balance sheet. Cash and short-term investments, including restricted cash, totaled $32.8 million at the end of Q1 2024 versus $33.4 million at the end of Q4 2023, reflecting just $600,000 in cash usage. Even after removing the benefit of options proceeds, cash usage for the quarter was about $4.9 million compared to $13.7 million in Q1 of last year and almost a $9 million improvement. The reduction in cash usage benefited from the price increases we put in place last quarter and operating expense discipline. Moving on to our guidance. For the second quarter, we expect revenue to be in the range of $30.7 million to $31.1 million. We expect Q2 adjusted EBITDA margin between 6% and 8%. For the full year 2024, we are reiterating revenue guidance of $126 million to $128 million and adjusted EBITDA guidance range of 8% to 10%. For year-end 2024, we continue to project having at least $20 million in cash. So to wrap it up, we are very pleased with our Q1 performance. We had a record start to the year where we accelerated growth and continued to drive more operating leverage. I will now pass the call back to Gleb.

Gleb Budman, CEO

Thanks, Frank. I'm proud of our record financial results and technology innovation. Thank you to our employees, customers, partners, and investors for joining us on this journey as we help lead the industry shift to Cloud 2.0. I'm excited to see many of you at the Oppenheimer Conference tomorrow and the Needham and Craig-Hallum investor conferences later this month. And with that, I'd like to open it up for questions. Operator?

Operator, Operator

Today's first question comes from Simon Leopold with Raymond James.

W. Chiu, Analyst

This is Victor Chiu in for Simon. I wanted to follow up on the egress fee comment that you guys made. Acknowledging that Google and AWS free egress has a number of strings attached. Do these moves at least slightly alleviate concerns from customers whose primary concern was vendor lock-in and maybe close the gap slightly versus Backblaze when considering egress?

Gleb Budman, CEO

This is Gleb. So the short answer is no. So what they've really done is free exit, not free egress. And the thing about it is that in the past, before these customers could exit the clouds, some of us as open cloud vendors would actually cover the cost of having them leave those traditional cloud providers. But what customers really want is to be able to actually use their data. So the barriers that they have put in place for what they're doing is you have to fully 100% stop using their platforms. That's not what these customers are trying to do. They're trying to actually use their data. And so an example I think I've shared in the prior earnings call was a customer that had previously been entirely on AWS had some outages and wanted to use multiple cloud services to improve durability. They actually added Backblaze, made us the primary, made AWS the secondary, and decreased their cost in half overall because our partnership with one of the cloud CDNs enabled them to transfer data for free, and therefore, they could double their durability, decrease their overall cost in half and improve the overall infrastructure. So that's the kind of thing that the customers want. These free exit moves don't help with that at all for customers.

W. Chiu, Analyst

Okay, I understand. So you're suggesting that the complete migration away was never really a concern? Exactly. That because... Okay. And just Francis, can you give us an update? I don't know if you spoke about this in your prerecorded comments around the AI-focused solutions that you mentioned last quarter that you guys are working on in developing. Can you give us an update around that and kind of your progress around that?

Gleb Budman, CEO

Sorry, Victor, I'm not sure about an AI solution we talked about developing. But what I'll tell you is that we are focused on helping customers with their AI use cases. And we shared some of the examples, like the wildfire example and the satellite navigation example that I mentioned on the call, just to give maybe a little more color on those. So as customers are building their AI workflows, they need a place where the data itself lives, the foundational data platform for all that information and more, and more customers are coming to Backblaze to have that foundational data platform. So I gave a couple of examples of that on the prior earnings call. In the case of our customer that does wildfire analysis, what they're trying to do is take camera footage, look at all the potential wildfires out there, and then triage them using AI. And the data for all that underlying analysis is on Backblaze. What the satellite navigation company is trying to do is help create better global navigation, and they're using AI to make the models better, especially in places where tall buildings and other things get in the way of creating those models. They're using AI to make those models better. And they're using Backblaze as the foundational data platform for their AI workflows. So that's what we're doing. We're providing that really high-performance, highly durable, highly available platform, which supports them in building these workflows because of our support for the open quality ecosystem.

W. Chiu, Analyst

But didn't you mention some specific focus on investment? Last quarter, you said the head of sales is very focused on our AI initiatives, which are aimed at supporting customers. Got it.

Gleb Budman, CEO

Right. So as we bring on a new head of sales, our current Head of Sales will be stepping into the role focused on our AI initiatives. By AI initiatives, what I don't mean as product launches, what I mean is the opportunities in the AI space that we have to help customers because we do think that there are plentiful opportunities that we can help. There are many customers who are already doing it, and we would like him to take on the role of really understanding how we can further help more customers with it.

W. Chiu, Analyst

I see. So it's like a marketing initiative to help customers understand Backblaze role in being able to accomplish those things. That's more of what you're referring to.

Gleb Budman, CEO

It's a two-sided yes, it's both inbound and outbound. So it's both going out and helping educate more customers and also understanding what their use cases and needs are and bringing more of that insight into the organization so we can evolve with their needs.

Operator, Operator

The next question is from Zach Cummins with B. Riley Securities.

Unknown Analyst, Analyst

This is Zach Cummins. To start, could you speak a little about the different strategies you can employ to maintain your strong growth in the B2 Cloud storage sector?

Gleb Budman, CEO

Sure. I'm glad to discuss that. First, regarding our go-to-market strategy, when we went public, we noted that 80% of our revenue came from self-serve. Customers would visit our website, create an account using a password and credit card, and sign up without interacting with a representative. The remaining 20% of our revenue involved our sales-assisted approach, which catered to customers that were about 20 times larger. At the time of our IPO, we expressed our intention to focus more on this sales motion while also enhancing our efficient self-serve process. To achieve this, we have invested in improving the self-serve experience on our website, which has helped us achieve consistent growth in the number of paying self-serve customers year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter. We see more opportunities in this area. Additionally, we've expanded our sales initiatives by adding new salespeople this quarter to support our upmarket strategy and channel efforts, which we began developing last year. This overall go-to-market strategy is essential for driving growth. On the innovation front, I mentioned earlier the enterprise control powered by Event Notifications, among other innovations, which enable us to enter new markets, enhance our presence in existing markets, and upsell to our current customer base.

Unknown Analyst, Analyst

That's really helpful. And then, can you speak to maybe if there's been any uptick or downtick in churn?

Francis Patchel, CFO

This is Frank. I can speak to that. We're really pleased about the churn statistics that we've seen. We think of it as customer retention. Our customer retention has remained at 91% overall. And that considers the fact that we did do a price increase in quarter 4. So it's been very, very strong. We also look at it at our renewal rates. Our computer backup customers are continuing to renew at very strong rates, actually a little stronger than we thought. So it's actually kicking up our deferred revenue nicely, and the customer retention there is quite strong as well.

Operator, Operator

The next question comes from Jason Ader with William Blair.

Jason Ader, Analyst

Just a few questions. First, just maybe some commentary on the macro environment and how it might have changed or not since last quarter? And then just some questions for you, Frank, just on the numbers. So 14% growth in computer backup, what is driving that? Is that just the price increase? But it's definitely a better growth rate than what we've seen over the last 4 quarters. And then on the B2 growth rate, it's a little bit worse than what we saw last quarter and then also last year ago quarter, 49% and 47% in this quarter it was 43%. So just what's going on there? How come we've seen some deceleration on cloud and why we've seen some acceleration on computer backup?

Gleb Budman, CEO

Jason, I'll start with the first peers, and then I'll let Frank answer the questions you addressed to him directly. So on the macro side of things, we aren't seeing anything massively different. What I will say is that I think we've all seen the Fed has kept interest rates where they are. The bulk of our focus, in terms of our customer base, is the small to mid-market customers who are certainly sensitive to the macroeconomic environment. And so we're being cautious about where that's headed, but we haven't seen anything too significant one way or the other with customers. We continue to sign up customers. Obviously, we had a strong quarter overall, and that's driven by customers continuing to stay with us and continuing to sign up.

Francis Patchel, CFO

I would like to discuss the growth rates of our product segment. We're quite satisfied with our growth rates. Specifically, in computer backup, we've seen a 14% growth this quarter, which is quite strong. This can be attributed to the price increase as well as our high renewal rates, with more customers renewing their 1-year and 2-year contracts every month. For the full year, we are maintaining our growth estimate at 10%, and we believe it will remain in the double digits. Additionally, our enterprise version, VIE, is beginning to contribute to revenue through upselling to existing customers, and we’re observing some positive responses despite its recent launch. We're also attracting new customers on B1, which is encouraging as we target larger companies. In terms of B2, revenue growth reached 47% this quarter, slightly higher than our expectations, thus placing us at the top of our forecast range. This growth is a result of both the price increase and new business. However, we anticipate that total growth for the year will be around 40% since we will be comparing to our price increase in quarter 4, which may result in a slight slowdown during that period. Overall, we are encouraged by the progress we are seeing.

Jason Ader, Analyst

Yes, I misspoke. I meant that the B2 Cloud ARR growth was lower than last quarter. It was 43%, compared to 49% last quarter and 47% a year ago.

Francis Patchel, CFO

I see. So ARR, it's not rate. It's not a perfect predictor for our business because of the ups and downs in the calculation of wobbles a bit. We calculate off of the last month of the quarter. So when you have a higher month because you have so much pay-as-you-go revenue, that every day is important. So it wobbles a little bit based on the calculation methodology, but we still think that our growth rates there are well above market or the growth rates of the market. So we do feel good about it.

Operator, Operator

The next question comes from Bruce Goldfarb with Lake Street Capital Markets.

Bruce Goldfarb, Analyst

Gleb, Frank, congratulations on the great results. In terms of the market segments, can you compare midsized company demand with SMB demand? What you're saying go ahead.

Gleb Budman, CEO

Yes. It's an interesting question, Bruce, and thanks for the question. What I'll say is that we've been doing the smaller size of the mid-market for a while, and we have volume there, right? We have about 100,000 customers overall using B2. So we have volume there. On the larger end of the mid-market, it's an upmarket momentum that we've been doing more recently. And so I think it's harder to gauge the kind of statistical significance of the number of deals in that part of the market to be a strong indicator of overall market demand. I think what we are seeing is that customers in the upper market are interested in the value proposition we provide, which is part of why we decided to put more focus there. The platform provides a lot of value for a larger customer because if they have more data, they have more needs around that data, and they have the opportunity to optimize their platform further by using Backblaze. So I think that while it's hard to address statistical significance from what we're seeing to the broader market trends, I think we're pleased with the interest and engagement that we're seeing in the upper mid-market. And just to make sure it's clear, when we talk about moving submarket, this is not Fortune 500 in the federal government. These are companies that are up to about 1,000 employees.

Francis Patchel, CFO

Yes, that does.

Bruce Goldfarb, Analyst

And then in terms of competition, have you seen competitors? Have they kept their rates stable? Or have they also rolled out price increases?

Gleb Budman, CEO

So I would say that some of the competitors have rolled out price increases. A number of them have kept their rates the same. But when we talk about the same, the traditional 1.0 providers like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, their default rates are 3x, 4x, 5x our rate for storage. And on top of that, they charge a lot more transaction fees. And then on top of that, they charge egregious egress fees. So while they may not have raised rates, their rates are much, much higher than ours.

Bruce Goldfarb, Analyst

And then do you still anticipate cash generation by mid-2025?

Francis Patchel, CFO

Yes, that's right. At the end of 2024, we said that we have at least $20 million, and that we will have total cash flow breakeven or approaching that by mid-2025.

Bruce Goldfarb, Analyst

Great. Congrats again on the results.

Operator, Operator

I would now like to turn the call over to Mimi for some questions scattered off the line. Mimi?

Mimi Kong, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Development

Thank you, Ajay. First question is for Frank. This investor would like to know. I would really like to see dividends. Are there any in the future?

Francis Patchel, CFO

We're not planning dividends for the foreseeable future. And the reason is that we are in a $50 billion market that's underserved and small and midsized companies. So we really are investing in our growth, and we think that's best for our investors.

Mimi Kong, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Development

And the next question is for Gleb. Does Backblaze have a plan to attract younger clients like university or secondary school students, granting them a special fee? Thus then Backblaze would happen for years to come?

Gleb Budman, CEO

So as far as keeping customers for years to come, I think it's a good point because of the high retention, Frank talked about 91% of gross customer retention, which means customers stay with us for something like a decade. Certainly, having customers join the platform is great as they stay on for a very long time. In terms of university and secondary schools, our products and platform work really well for them by default. In part that's because on the computer backup side, it's unlimited. So it's just easy, and they don't have to worry about it. On the B2 side, we actually provide a free tier, so they can start with a limited amount of data and just use it for free, and it's very, very inexpensive to use it at their scale typically. So it's actually a great set of services specifically for their use cases as it stands.

Mimi Kong, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Development

Next question is also for you, Gleb. Will there be any plans this year to pioneer any revolutionary strategies that will put Backblaze ahead of its competitors?

Gleb Budman, CEO

In terms of revolutionary strategies, we've discussed the trend towards Cloud 2.0 and how we can facilitate this shift. Most traditional competitors are still focused on a walled garden approach, but we see that an increasing number of customers prefer an open cloud with top-tier providers to access the best features. Our strategy, including Event Notifications that enable customers to automate workflows across different providers, plays a significant role in leading this transition. This is a key highlight for us. Moreover, our strategies are already helping us grow faster than the market and gain market share. With our go-to-market efforts and product innovations, we are well positioned for success.

Mimi Kong, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Development

And again, what are the most important goals for the next 12 months?

Gleb Budman, CEO

So in terms of goals, I guess first was financial. So financial goals, we want to continue driving revenue growth. It's like what Frank said, it's a $50 billion market. We believe there's a lot of opportunities in driving revenue growth is key. The second part is continuing to drive efficiency, and that's reflected in our positive EBITDA growth. And the third financial one is driving towards that total cash flow positive stature, so that the business is just running on its own steam. So that's on the financial side. On the business side, we continue to drive that upmarket growth. So with the new sales executives that we've hired in Q1 with a new head of sales that were in the process of hiring right now, driving that upmarket growth. The second is continuing to drive the overall go-to-market motion and the channel motion. And then the last one is really taking those innovations that we shipped and getting them into the hands of more and more customers. I think those are probably the main ones that I would like to highlight.

Mimi Kong, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Development

The next question we have is a follow-up from last quarter. Last quarter, my question received an incorrect answer. Backblaze cannot back up files synced by OneDrive due to BP's point flags as signed by Microsoft. Will Backblaze develop a solution such as a B2 integration to back up OneDrive cloud to cloud? Or are we left with the safe versus synced files?

Gleb Budman, CEO

I appreciate the nuanced nature of your question. It's important for us to hear from customers as we dig deeper into these topics. Currently, we do not have plans on our roadmap to create a direct cloud drive integration. However, we do collaborate with partners who provide such solutions, and we encourage the use of our partner products alongside B2. Our goal is to foster a broad ecosystem of partners with our B2 cloud storage. The computer backup service, which seems to be what you're primarily using, is designed to back up all data on the laptops and desktops of our customers, allowing them to rest easy knowing their machines and data are protected. B2, in collaboration with our partner ecosystem, can support various other use cases.

Mimi Kong, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Development

Next question for Gleb. The ongoing developments in AI present any opportunities for Backblaze?

Gleb Budman, CEO

I mentioned this earlier, but in short, I believe AI represents a significant opportunity for Backblaze that could span multiple years or even decades. AI applications require extensive data and analysis, so it's crucial to have a reliable, accessible, and efficient storage solution that is also cost-effective. Moreover, this data can be integrated with various high-quality AI services that are continually emerging. Being a leader in the open cloud movement and offering a strong storage platform positions us well to capitalize on this. I recently spoke with a company that is launching a service to create AI-generated videos at scale, and they are considering using our platform for its efficiency and connectivity with CDN providers. Additionally, one of our clients engages in web-scale data analysis for an AI firm and relies on Backblaze as their foundational platform. The potential use cases and opportunities here are truly limitless.

Mimi Kong, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Development

Next question is, what is the decision threshold to compete for larger clients, meaning companies above 1,000 employees?

Gleb Budman, CEO

We definitely have customers with more than 1,000 employees. However, our primary focus is on smaller customers since we believe this segment is the most underserved and presents a strong opportunity to address their needs. That said, we do support larger customers, especially those with substantial data and use cases that align well with an easy-to-use and affordable storage platform. We do not actively target Fortune 500 companies or federal government clients due to the complexity of the features they require, which differ from what mid-market companies typically need. Therefore, we feel we are especially well-equipped to serve smaller customers while being able to assist larger customers when it is a suitable match for their needs.

Mimi Kong, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Development

And at what point is the risk of hiring more sales and customer relations staff worth the reward?

Gleb Budman, CEO

In the first quarter, we hired several new account executives for the sales team because we recognize the potential to close more deals with large clients by expanding our team. We are confidently assessing our go-to-market strategies to identify what is effective and what can be improved. This ongoing evaluation influences our decisions regarding further investments in these areas.

Mimi Kong, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Development

And this is our final question. As a software engineer, Backblaze B2 API was much more difficult to integrate than I would expect from a company that boasts the simplicity of its developer experience. What are Backblaze's plans to improve developer experience and may be to adoption by the average developer easy?

Gleb Budman, CEO

Thank you for being a customer and for integrating with our platform. I appreciate it. I'm surprised to hear you found the experience more challenging than anticipated. It seems you may have been using the previous B2 API. We have since introduced an S3 compatible API that serves as a drop-in replacement for any service compatible with Amazon's S3 offering. Additionally, we launched a new documentation section on our website last year, which has been well-received, offering examples, sample codes, and more. We would also love to receive feedback, so if you have insights on your experience or suggestions for improvement, please email us at product feedback at backblaze.com. We look forward to hearing from you.

Mimi Kong, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Development

And that's the final question; I'm going to hand the call back to MJ. Mj?

Operator, Operator

Thank you, Mimi. At this time, we don't have any more questions in our queue, and this will conclude our question-and-answer session. So I'd like to turn the call back over to Gleb Budman for closing remarks.

Gleb Budman, CEO

I want to say thank you to everybody for joining the call. Thank you for hearing about our quarter and the innovations that we had there, and we will look forward to seeing some of you at the conference tomorrow and next month and the rest of you on this call next quarter. Thank you so much.

Operator, Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines.