Backupify Takes a Big Leap Forward; Pulls in $5M in Funding

Posted by erik devaney

Want to prevent an error, virus, hacker or legal issue from eradicating all of the precious data you have stored on your favorite online services, like Twitter, Facebook and Google Apps? Enter Backupify. The aptly named Cambridge-based company backs up your online data by storing it on the Amazon Simple Storage Service. Once you have your online services Backupified, you never have to worry about losing your Tweets, Facebook photos or emails again.

With a user base of over 175,000, Backupify is clearly proving its services valuable to businesses and individuals. And investors are not letting that value go unnoticed. Recently, Avalon Ventures, along with General Catalyst and Lowercase Capital, invested a total of $5 million in Backupify during a Series B round of financing.

I recently got in touch with Kristin Dziadul, a Marketing Analyst at Backupify, who told me that the company will be putting its new funding towards two key areas: hiring and product development.

“We expect the head count will grow another 40% or 50% next year,” Dziadul told me, which means the company’s 21 employee-total could soon be hitting the 30-mark. “New hires will be primarily split among sales and marketing staff.”

In terms of product development, Backupify’s goal is to advance their software so that users can not only easily back up their online data, but also easily search through and restore that data. In addition, the company is looking to expand their software to encompass other types of data backup. “Many of our clients have requested that our technology be applied to other office productivity tools such as financial data systems or customer related software technologies,” Dziadul said.

In anticipation of the company’s growth, Backupify recently occupied a new office space in Central Square, which is “double the size that our former Kendall Square spot was,” Dziadul told me. “We moved into Kendall a year ago with eight employees and left with 21, so it is clear this new space fits us perfectly.”

Backupify’s new Central Square space is the former home of social media marketing company, Performable, which Hubspot acquired earlier this summer. “Performable was a great company and team so we only know great things will come with being in their old spot,” Dziadul said. “They left it very much a clean slate for us to create a space of our own which we are excited about.”

As demand for Backupify services continues to grow, the company shows no signs of slowing down. In ten years, Dziadul expects that Backupify will be “stretching across multiple verticals to backup and manage data on many more popular cloud-based systems.” Nationwide expansion for Backupify is an idea that already has roots in the present. As Dziadul told me, “We have had discussions about opening offices elsewhere in the country.”

Short URL: http://www.newenglandpost.com/?p=3450

Posted by erik devaney on Sep 10 2011. Filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry