Many startups have successfully raised seed capital and funding over the last year in what is turning out to be the perfect time to be a tech startup. Many angel investors and venture capitalists are looking for innovative products and ideas that would propel technological impact to new heights. In a similar fashion, Atlanta-based Storj labs have raised $3million in funding from companies such as Google Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, and TechStars.
The distributed cloud-service provider has created a decentralized peer-to-peer solution that engages by organizing the users who are willing to rent out their spare hard drive space and bandwidth to customers who are looking for the same. These users are going to be connected through a peer-to-peer network.
This idea, however, took a long time to launch due to the concerns about security. It uses blockchain technology and cryptography to secure files. Since it is an open source project, Storj unites a large and growing community of developers who are committed to building tools, applications, and products that are private by design.
This peer-to-peer network would be 10x faster and 50 percent less expensive than traditional data center-based cloud storage solutions. In the current scenario, Storj has a community of more than 7,500 farmers (users who rent out their spare hard drive and bandwidth space) and more than 15,000 API users worldwide. Under a joint partnership with Heroku, Storj can provide developers with a distributed object storage solution with effortless encryption, optimal seed, and easy implementation.
The $3million funding is part of a grant program hosted by the GOED’s Technology Commercialization and Innovation Program (TCIP). It gives Storj, access to free mentorship at BoomStartup, a startup accelerator founded in 2010.
The CEO of Storj Shawn Wilkinson is proud to iterate a fledgling idea into one that can now leverage experimental technology to secure corporate partnerships.
