Wasabi is on a mission to store all the world’s data by making data storage simple, affordable, predictable, and secure.
Michael Welts, EVP & Chief Marketing Officer, shares the details on Wasabi and what it’s like to work there.
In This Video
We discuss:
- Details about Wasabi
- What differentiates Wasabi from other platforms
- Customer Examples
- The latest at Wasabi
- The culture at Wasabi
- Why Wasabi should be on someone’s radar
Video Transcript
Mike, thanks so much for joining us.
Pleasure to be back, Keith. Uh it’s great to connect because it’s been a while since we’ve talked about Wasabi which when I think about the company and what has happened now okay the the founders David friend and Jeff Flowers they are entrepreneurs that consistently skate to where the puck is going to you know quote the great Wayne Gretzky versus where the puck is you know and when I think of the company when it originated the importance of data but now so many years ahead with AI and where data is now and the explosion it’s extraordinary So if people aren’t familiar with this Wasabi, talk about the company.
Chapter 2: Details about Wasabi
Yeah, thanks and thanks for the opportunity. You know, one thing I love about Venture Fizz is you give entrepreneurs like ourselves the opportunity to tell these stories and as they actually become reality. It’s, you know, it’s it’s venues like yours that allow us to say imagine if and actually watch it become reality. So it’s it’s a cool opportunity. Thank you. Um, so to your point, you know, back geez, it’s hard to believe it’s nine and a half years ago now that we launched this thing and uh when we launched um we introduced a book we called the bottomless cloud and the B and it was ghostritten um actually co-written and ghostritten but uh co-written by a um a futurist alongside David Friend, our CEO with this vision of what if the cloud was literally bottomless and could store unlimited amounts of data. How would that change your world? Meaning that the price point of storing that data was so cheap that why not? Let’s just store everything. Don’t worry about it anymore. And he made predictions in this book alongside this futurist of how that would transform things like anything from medicine to manufacturing to autonomous vehicles, all those kinds of things. And we said underlying all this is this emerging technology called AI. And what if AI gets traction in the market in such a way that AI is actually built on the more intelligence it can gather meaning the more data stored the more predictive it allows companies to become about which path to pursue. Nine and a half later years later, lo and behold, everybody in the world is spelling everything starting with AI. And so now because you’ve saved all that data, and fortunately a good percent of it is now coming through Wasabi, we can tell you where your data is, how to look at that data, and how to transform your business ahead of the curve like you opened up by saying, right? So now you could become more predictive instead of wait and be reactive to something that you may not know you have in terms of data.
Yeah. And I remember in the earlier days of the company when we would chat you know it was like you know life sciences they were a heavy user of data but now every industry has been transformed and to your point AI and data is everywhere. So how does Wasabi differentiate and compete versus the other platforms?
Chapter 3: What differentiates Wasabi from other platforms
Yeah. So again, back to the original value proposition, we called them the Wasabi P’s, price, performance, and protection, right? And affordable cloud storage was really what it’s called about. But one thing that’s happened with the result of um if you will a commoditization, which again was a vision point that Dave had, a commoditization of the price of cloud storage is um more data has been moved into these clouds. Now, when we talked a few years ago, we talked about this David Goliath thing. It’s this little thing called Wasabi against the three Goliaths called Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. Well, the more data you save now has caused this problem. It’s referred to as data gravity. And data gravity is all about I’ve got this huge weight of data, but I need to analyze that data now to leverage the the promise of AI, but I can’t move my data because it costs too much to move it into different clouds to do that analysis. And where Wasabi has differentiation is a the you know cost and b what’s called egress fees. the ability to move your data in and out of our cloud at no cost. We’re the only ones that do that. If you try to think of it this way, if you store your data in Amazon, Google, or Microsoft, anytime, and by the way, research shows that 52% of your cloud storage costs are associated with just accessing your own data. So, let’s let’s let’s say Keith that you you store your data in your VentureFizz cloud and you say, “I’ve got a particular episode I want to run and I got to access that data to to to get up to speed on how I’m going to interview that client.” And but it’s going to cost me to get access to my own data. That’s literally the way 90% of the world operates right now with the exception of if you put it through wasabi with us and the more important that AI is becoming in in your life now you you’re not charged for accessing that data. That’s massive differentiation going forward around data portability, data affordability.
Now we need to talk about customers for Wasabi being that you are working at such a massive scale. Who are who are good examples of customers that you’re working with?
Chapter 4: Customer Examples
Um if you think about our customer base, it ranges anywhere from uh the number one market has been um higher education for years. Uh because a lot of development goes on there, a lot of stored data goes on there, a lot of interesting use cases all the way down to literally surveillance footage of what’s going on in campus. 80% of the Ivy League stores on us, you know, one of our our biggest customers is actually Davis Al alma mater, which is Yale. um Cornell uh a lot of education. It’s over 400 of them in America alone store their their content on us. Then of course you get into the sports industry you know 26 of the 30 major league teams Premier League all kinds of sporting leagues are storing their data their content for analytics on us. Then you can go into you know the different libraries around the in in terms of Congress and the world all those institutions are storing on us. So pretty diverse set of uh industries are are leveraging us and now as we move into AI we’re finding that manufacturing and tied to robotics are really t taking off and things tied to the whole internet of things movement as well.
Now I think what’s important to note with W wasabi is the company like the scale right so uh you recently announced a $70 million round of funding at a $1.8 billion valuation so what can you share as it relates to the the latest with the company?
Chapter 5: The latest at Wasabi
Sure. Uh again, rapid growth. It’s been a a a fun and wild challenging at times scary ride only in the sense that you know how do you keep repeating this, right? And um we have an incredibly talented team here that knows how to scale the business and equally as important are investors that believe in in in this vision. And again, um, there’s a literal graveyard of companies that have tried to compete against those three big players. And Wasabi has survived. Now, I mean, 10 years, not many businesses make it, as you know. Small businesses don’t make it typically 10 years. And we’re no longer a small business. We’re now over 500 employees. I think when you and I started talking, we were in the 100s, uh, maybe 200. Now we’re over 500. We’re now in over a hundred countries around the world. um we have 16 what are called storage regions or data centers. So we’ve got the we got the financial backing, trust and resources to really make this into a global powerhouse. Um and we’ve got the talent on board to to continue to grow the business at scale. So we’re in a good position to continue to uh to grow, lead and and challenge the traditional kind of market.
Now as part of that growth, obviously there’s a lot of hiring that needs to happen. So once someone joins the team, what’s the culture like at Wasabi?
Chapter 6: The culture at Wasabi
You know, if there’s one thing that we are probably more proud of than anything, it’s it’s it’s the culture, right? It’s uh we have something that we operate, it’s we call it our hot culture, hot values stands for humility, uh ownership, and togetherness. And it starts at the top. Right? If you were to meet our CEO, you’d find that he is one of, if not the most humble human beings you will ever meet, especially given his success. Uh, you know, fivetime either IPO or successful exit CEO, ne I mean, literally never missed. You would never get that sense from him. um across the entire organization. This this notion that it’s almost a bottoms up type of management style where the people at the early stages of the company are empowered to contribute their ideas in a way that it doesn’t make them feel that their jobs are at risk. They test ideas. It’s almost like an incubation and innovation engine itself the way we think because it allows us to be much more disruptive in our approach. The O in ownership is all about, hey, you know, if we’re going to be making disruptive decisions, we also have to be accountable for our actions. So, we have a when you talk about scale, we have to achieve a certain number to continue to fund the innovation and to fund the disruptive kind of thinking that we do as a company. So, there’s accountability to make sure you do your day job to pay the bills and your night job to innovate, to continue to challenge the market. And last but not least, probably the one that everybody loves the most is we have a great time together, right? We we we enjoy working together. I’m I’m in this process right now within my team. We call them mic drop moments and it’s a chance to say we we sit down for a half hour. I’ve got 64 people in my marketing organization. I sit down with each one of them for a half hour. It takes me about a month to get through it all. But in that moment, you come in and it’s an open forum and you drop on me what’s working, what’s not working, what you’re thinking, what’s next, where do you want to go, all that kind of thing. But that promotes this togetherness culture where people know that, you know, we’re working on this together. I’m not being dictated or mandated what to do next. Oh, yeah. I want to add one more thing, Keith. Um, it’s not just our our employees inside think this. the fact that over the last five I think it’s five years running now we’ve been named one of the top places to work in Boston and last year we were literally named the number one place to work in the the large category I mean we weren’t even the large category two years ago large companies to be named number one that’s that’s a real tribute and and the the best part about that honor is it’s employee driven right the employees are writing in and saying this is how we believe about our company it’s not leadership saying, “Answer this.” It’s them writing in and responding.
That’s awesome. That’s an amazing accomplishment. Now, top tier talent, regardless of market conditions, they always have options for their career. So, why shouldabi be on somebody’s radar?
Chapter 7: Why Wasabi should be on someone’s radar
It’s kind of what we were just talking about, right? This idea. I talk a lot, we talk a lot about this notion of franchising and your people are their own brands. They’re their own franchises. they get to operate that way. We all have our own little business plans that we work to about what you do in your role and how that feeds into the strategy of your respective role in the company. Whether it’s in business enablement or whether it’s in engineering or sales or marketing, you represent your franchise and that franchise becomes your career path and where you want to grow and expand that franchise. And so there’s a pride of ownership there. And people know that if you in fact if you look at my marketing organization, I’m super proud of the fact that we’ve got at least a dozen interns that started out in their sophomore year of college that are now, you know, literally four or five years into the company as veterans and uh and are very successful. So it’s a great opportunity to come in and like I say, build your own franchise and succeed.
Well, if you are interested in exploring opportunities at Wasabi, you need to go to their company page on VentureFizz, which has all their job listings. Go to venturefizz.com/Wasabi and you’ll see their listings there. Mike, thanks so much for taking the time to bring us up to speed on all the great things happening at Wasabi.
It’s always a pleasure. I can’t wait to do it again.