MaxDamage
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TechCrunchP2P Storage Startup Space Monkey Raises $2.25M Led By Google Ventures And Venture51
Space Monkey, the startup offering a peer-to-peer alternative to cloud storage services like Dropbox, just raised $2.25 million in a seed round of funding.
The company says that it’s combining the benefits of both local storage and the cloud. Every Space Monkey customer gets their own storage device, so they can access their files without having to worry about download times or pay the higher cost of cloud storage (which can become an issue when you’re talking about large media files like videos). Copies of those files are also distributed in chunks to other Space Monkey devices, allowing for remote access and backup.
I first wrote about the company when it won the best new startup prize at the Launch conference in March. At the time, some readers pointed out that there are some open source solutions trying to do something similar. However, there’s a big difference between an interesting open source project and a consumer-grade service and company. Product Guy Clint Gordon-Carroll (yes, that’s his real title) says that the real challenge is creating something that’s actually compelling to a large audience. For example, he notes that by introducing the Space Monkey device, users no longer need to keep their computers online at all times.
In the first week alone, Gordon-Carroll says Space Monkey saw 10,000 sign ups. The company is now planning to ship the first devices this fall. At the conference, Space Monkey had already raised $750,000. That amount was rolled into the new seed round, which was led by by Google Ventures and Venture51.
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However, Space Monkey’s Clint Gordon-Carroll and Alen Peacock (their business cards say “Product Guy” and “Captain Science”, respectively) argue that the cloud approach has its flaws. With people storing more and more videos and images and other multimedia, it becomes increasingly expensive to keep that data in someone else’s cloud, and increasingly slow to push those files through your Internet connection.
Space Monkey, on the other hand, wants to combine the benefits of local storage and the cloud. Customers get a 1 terabyte hard drive, which means you can always access your files without dealing with your Internet connection. At the same time, the drive is connected to a peer-to-peer network, and copies of your files are also distributed in chunks to other devices. (They’re encrypted for security purposes.) The network allows you to access your files remotely, and also provides a backup in case your local storage fails — the company says more than half the network would have to go down before files are lost.
The company plans to start shipping devices this summer. It will charge a subscription fee of $10 a month (no extra charge to rent the hard drive). It’s also accepting pre-orders from 1,000 customers who want to pay for two years upfront — those early adopters get to keep the hard drive outright.
Site oficial: http://www.spacemonkey.com/
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