Backblaze Bolsters Executive Leadership With Appointment of Chief Financial Officer and General Counsel/Chief Compliance Officer

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Backblaze, Inc., a leading cloud storage company, today announced the appointments of Frank Patchel as Chief Financial Officer, and Tom MacMitchell as General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer, to bolster company initiatives and drive growth in the year ahead and beyond.

Backblaze provides businesses and consumers with solutions to store and use their data in an easy and affordable manner. Backblaze’s solutions also provide a foundation for developers, IT professionals, and individuals to back up & archive data, host content, manage media, build their applications, and more. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Backblaze has customers in over 175 countries.

“We are excited to welcome Frank and Tom to our management team as we focus on the opportunity ahead of us,” said Gleb Budman, CEO of Backblaze. “Frank and Tom bring an impressive combination of industry as well as private and public company experience and skills to help position us successfully for growth as we continue to make storing and using data astonishingly easy for businesses and individuals. Both are aligned with our vision and culture, and we’re confident they will help us achieve our long-term goals.”

Across his career, Patchel has served as the CFO & COO for multiple software as a service (SaaS) technology companies. He has overseen the successful sale of two businesses to public companies while serving as their president. His corporate development work includes creating strategic plans and executing over a dozen mergers and acquisitions. Patchel’s career started with Ernst & Young, where he became a CPA, and includes 15 years with ADP with the last half as a divisional CFO & COO. He received a BS in Commerce from the University of Virginia.

“I’m pleased to join Backblaze at such an exciting time. The demand for cloud storage solutions represents a significant growth opportunity for our business,” said Patchel.

MacMitchell brings extensive experience as General Counsel, including heading the legal department for both public and private companies. Most recently, he led legal matters at Quantenna Communications, a high performance Wi-Fi solutions provider. At Quantenna, he also helped lead the company's initial public offering, and subsequently its successful sale to a Fortune 500 company. Prior to Quantenna, he was General Counsel at Intematix Corporation, led the corporate legal team—including governance, employment, international, and merger and acquisitions matters—at Brocade Communications, and served as outside counsel to various public and private technology companies at a leading Silicon Valley law firm. Prior to law school, he worked for a global, leading management and technology consulting firm. MacMitchell received a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University and a Juris Doctorate in law from the University of California at Davis.

“Backblaze is an exciting, innovative company with high growth potential, and I’m proud to join Gleb and the leadership team as we drive the business forward to leverage new opportunities,” said MacMitchell.

About Backblaze

Backblaze makes managing data astonishingly easy for businesses and consumers. The Backblaze Storage Cloud provides a foundation for businesses, developers, IT professionals, and individuals to store, back up & archive data, host content, manage media, build their applications, and more. With more than an exabyte of data under management, the company currently works with customers in over 175 countries. Founded in 2007, the company is based in San Mateo, CA. For more information, please go to www.backblaze.com.