Also of note, unlike Dropbox, Backblaze was able to release a new slightly more enterprisey product - B2 - without losing focus on the main product.
On the other hand, it does take a certain amount of 'privilege" (yes I hate that word, couldn't think of a better one) to have five founders who could afford to not take a salary for a year....
But one criticism, any time you post a link to the Backblaze blog it should come with a warning. It quickly led me down a TVTropes type rabbit hole of reading more interesting articles.....
Hah! That's a good thing! As for VC vs. Bootstrap - our five founders all worked together previously at a company that raised VC funds and while they weren't made millionaires from that company, it did give them enough cushion to go without salary for a bit. Originally it wasn't supposed to be 2 years though, so when it started to drag out there were definitely some...uncomfortable times, but they pulled through them. That's not say that we HATE the VC model - it definitely works for a lot of companies out here, but there is something nice about being able to choose your own adventure.
Re: Dropbox as a competitor -> You hit it, they kind of are, but I think that's mostly because people don't really know enough about how things work to tell the difference. Part of what I do with the Backblaze consumer service is a lot of education on why you should use both :)