TechCrunch, Tuesday, March 5th, 2013
Bitcasa, with its infinite and instant cloud storage service, has had to go slow with distribution. After all, any service where you can store an unlimited amount of content and stream it instantly to your device will be in high demand, and Bitcasa has to keep things running smoothly.
And in the company’s defense, “[they] invented something completely new,” said Tony Gauda, founder. “We didn’t have the benefit of using legacy technology or best practices.”
That said, the Disrupt finalist ended its open beta just last month, after launching privately on our stage in September, and has since seen users sign up for the paid product (Infinite Drive) in over 114 countries.
Bitcasa actually has more of an international presence right now than a domestic one, which is why the team is working to stay on pace with its own growth.
“The next step is to continue building the future of storage and accelerate the quickly growing business and team,” said Gauda. “Our first month out the gate we’re an international company with more customers outside the U.S. than we do inside.”
Bitcasa now hosts more than 18 petabytes of user data, which is a jump of 13 percent since the general launch.
Bitcasa also claims that its conversion rate is “above industry average,” as users are upgrading to the paid service in fewer than 10 days.
On top of being instant and infinite, Bitcasa is also secure in that every piece of content in its servers is encrypted. And all that for just $10 per month.
Bitcasa’s service poses big problems for other storage services like Dropbox and SkyDrive both in price and storage capabilities. For now, the test is whether or not they can support their growing traction.
Bitcasa launched on the Disrupt stage in September of 2011, and Gauda called it “a huge platform that provided clear market validation.” In the first 24 hours, the service saw over 50,000 signups.
“It was an amazing experience standing on stage and telling people our vision of what the future of storage is,” said Gauda. “Hearing the crowd cheer when we announced that caring about gigabytes is a thing of the past was a humbling experience.”