An old-school tech company in a new-school world. That’s what I’d call Backupify. The Cambridge, MA-based startup sits squarely at the intersection of cloud computing, data management, online backup, and now, security. Its big market opportunity is in the cloud—backing up data from business apps and social media— but its culture is firmly rooted in having both feet on the ground.
First, the news today. Backupify has raised a $9 million Series C round from previous investors Avalon Ventures and General Catalyst Partners, but the round also includes a significant investment from Symantec, the Silicon Valley security software firm (NASDAQ: [[ticker:SYMC]]). Backupify has now raised a total of $19.5 million and has 31 employees.
What’s interesting is its trajectory. The company started in 2008 as a service for consumers to back up e-mail and social media (Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, and so forth). In 2010, Rob May, Backupify’s co-founder and CEO, moved the company from Louisville, KY, to Boston after raising money from Boston-area investors. Around the same time, the startup moved into targeting small and medium-size businesses to help them back up Google Apps data. Now, in the past year or so, Backupify has become more enterprise-y, offering software to back up Salesforce.com data, for example. The startup has more than 30 business customers that have over 1,000 employees, says May (pictured above).
Backupify also has been fending off some acquisition offers. May won’t say from whom, of course, but I’m guessing his price is too high. With its latest financing round, Backupify is probably looking for a triple-digit-millions exit
