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1. It considered its move to Boulder with care.
Four years ago, when the data-storage firm SolidFire found itself growing and decided to leave its original home in Atlanta, it considered Silicon Valley, Boston, and Colorado, Jay Prassl, VP of marketing, told us. It was never quite sold on Boston, and it wanted to avoid the cutthroat tension of Northern California startup culture. So, it set up shop on Pearl Street, where it could grow and exist among peers.
2. It made its home in a data-storage mecca.
“We ultimately settled on Boulder for a variety of reasons,” said Prassl. “One is the great storage history that's here. We are a scaled-out storage system. That architecture matters. We were able to take advantage of the storage marketplace. That's been fantastic for us here. We've added a lot of bodies from EMC, from LeftHand, from HP. There's a good mix of those legacy storage companies.”
Kyle Lefkoff of Boulder Ventures created a Boulder Data Storage Tree that provides some context. (Click for a larger version.)
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Colorado proved an excellent fit. The area's data-storage firms have always been closely interrelated. Even though early pioneers such as HP weren't founded here, they created a magnet for storage talent that has helped make SolidFire what it is.
3. It built something unique and stayed on the cutting edge.
SolidFire has become a focal point of Colorado's growing data-storage industry because of its unusual large-scale power. “The unique element here at SolidFire really is our ability to deliver flash storage at cloud scale,” said Prassl. “If you look at the larger trends in the marketplace, the demands to compute many applications together in a single storage environment, and do so in a very predictable manner, is something that continues to grow. People don't want more things to manage - they want less. And they want to manage them in a very articulate, automated way."
Working in SolidFire's neighborhood provides smaller data firms a challenging and inspirational model for success. "SolidFire has not only solved the management problem, but we've created an environment that allows us to deliver Flash, which is the next generation of media, and do so at a very large scale," said Prassl. "SolidFire is built for where data centers are evolving to.”
4. It concerned itself with profitable growth.
SolidFire is expanding into new markets such as Korea and Japan. But that means little unless it keeps itself on a profitable trajectory.
Recently, the company pulled in an $82 million investment round, remarkable by any standard. It is using that fresh cash to achieve profitability and expand internationally.
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5. SolidFire supports the Colorado craft beer scene, too!
It isn't simply Boulder's reputation as a data-storage mecca that SolidFire has a part in. Much of its team is heavily invested in craft beer culture as well, conveniently located in a metro area with more breweries per capita than anywhere else in America. “We have a lot of guys on staff who brew beer on their own,” Prassl said. “We have a master brewer, one of the first individuals to put draft beer in a can. We brew beer as a company two or three times a year. We're sharing that with customers, and with the press and analysts as well.”
6. SolidFire is fired up about data. (And the beer doesn't hurt.)
When you visit SolidFire, you can expect an exciting atmosphere. “You're going to get a feel for a group of individuals who are doing more than building a storage commodity,” said Prassl. “The origin of this company was around changing the way people compute. It has advanced the way people use cloud computing. When you come to our offices, you're going to see, feel, and be a little bit infected by the fever that the people in this company have for changing the way computing occurs at a large scale.”
