Wasabi Technologies, the cloud storage started by Carbonite's founders, has raised a $10.7 million convertible note, according to new Form D filing.
The company, which claims to provide cloud storage that is multitudes faster and cheaper than Amazon's S3 service, had previously raised $8.5 million from angel investors.
David Friend, Wasabi CEO and co-founder, confirmed the round to BostInno and said the note will be converted into Wasabi's Series B financing round next year, at which point he may seek to bring in an additional $10 million.
Friend said Wasabi had enough money to last through the end of the year, but wanted to add $1 million to the marketing budget. So when he went out to his "usual suspects," the investors ended up throwing him a lot more money.
"I basically had to shut down the fundraising because $10.7 million is really more than we needed."
"I basically had to shut down the fundraising because $10.7 million is really more than we needed," Friend said in an email. "But people seem to love this deal."
Friend said Wasabi's customer traction has been "fantastic" since it launched in May. While it only expected a couple dozen companies to start trials in the first couple months, it ended up attracting nearly 600 so far, "with very high conversion rates." The need for customer support has been low, Friend added, since it works very similar to how S3 does.
With a total of $19.2 million raised so far, Friend said he has managed to steer clear of venture capitalists so far. In a previous interview, the CEO said some VCs that invested in his previous companies told him he was "nuts" to go up against companies like Amazon.
Wasabi recently addressed skepticism of its claim to run six times faster than Amazon S3 with a benchmark report that allows companies to run their own test.
