Announcing my bootstrapped startup: RestBackup
Published in 2010, this chronicle by @mleonhard details the mechanics of building a profitable, self-funded business without venture backing.
Core Principles for Independent Builders:
Charging customers from day one acts as the ultimate filter for building software that solves genuine, high-urgency problems.
Keeping fixed overhead low and leveraging lean infrastructure allows founders to stay alive until market tailwinds kick in.
Small, repetitive improvements in customer retention and conversion rates yield massive returns over multi-year horizons.
Community Debate Themes:
The community focused on B2B customer acquisition channels, cold email vs SEO distribution, and balancing full-time employment with side-project development.
CATEGORY Bootstrapping & MRR →
HISTORICAL ERA Web 2.0 Genesis (2007–2013)
COMMUNITY SCORE 78 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 36 comments
Not sure if I missed it in the API documentation but what happens if I PUT a file with a file name that already exists?
One thing that drives me nuts about a lot of backup services is that they say that the data is encrypted. It is important to recognize the two places where data can be intercepted:
* In transport, unless it's done over TLS/SSL. Most services provide this. * Once stored. This is done very rarely and if it is done, the provider is the one that has the encryption key.
With your service you can actually take care of both by simply instructing your users to encrypt the file before uploading it.
Another bits of functionality I'd say you are missing are "diff" backups. I don't necessarily want to upload my entire 300GB multimedia library each day when I want to back it up (especially if I'm being charged for traffic). I'd rather upload a small diff.
A very cool use of this technology would be a FUSE plugin for browsing your storage area.
Technicalartup point of view - what value are you adding, and what are you doing that someone else can't duplicate with a minimum of effort?
Right now this is a fairly transparent re-use of S3 with some clever features on top - I can see the appeal - but I'm thinking "Yeah, we could rig that up over the weekend and do the same thing here.... no need to pay double the price for S3 storage when a few hours of in-house work will take care of it.
Also - as to "never delete" "Never" is an awfully long time. Mistakes are made, and while "never" might seem like a safety net, there also might be a time when I need to delete data that's been stored offsite -for legal reasons or because someone screwed up.
It looks like something targeted at technically-savvy users, and those users are probably equally capable of doing this themselves with S3 or otherwise.
- I love clean REST APIs so I can clearly see the value in your service over others (e.g. using S3 directly). But the benefits probably aren't immediately obvious to most potential customers. Maybe consider a side-by-side comparison of steps involved.
- Do you encrypt the data before storing it to S3 or store as-is? I need to think about it more but assuming you store as-is, I think I prefer that over Tarsnap's approach. You may want to consider a comparison between this service as well. (As a side note, I would be using Tarsnap right now but I'm in Canada)
- What is the need for charging for Request Processing? I guess that would prevent storing many small files, but it complicates the pricing model. It will be easier to communicate your offering if all costs are included in the data transfer and storage prices.
It looks interesting, but at this point it feels more like a "web app" than a "startup". Granted, the two are often interchangeable these days, but to me the difference is one of formality and commitment.
For example:
What happens to my data if you decide that this isn't fun anymore? What happens if you get sign-ups that store a bunch of data but don't pay their bills? What happens if you get sued, are you personally liable or is this an entity? What are the terms of use? What kind of support is available?
From your site, it appears that you are in the process of solving these questions, but there's likely to be a lot more road to cover before it goes from web app to startup in my mind.
Good luck!
Cool, way to go. Is this much different from the free open source tool s3cmd? http://s3tools.org/s3cmd ↗
Tell you what I do have a burning need for: automatic backup of my free, CPanel-based shell account. This includes my databases, my crons, my home directory... I want to be able to jump webhosts in a jiffy if necessary. I would definitely pay for that.
I would also just be comforted in knowing that ALL my data is backed up off site! I'm sure other people have similar concerns. I'd be delighted to pay $5-$10/month for such a service and I wouldn't use hardly any download bandwith so your variable costs would be low.
Consider it.. please?