This morning, we announced that Storj CRO Colby Winegar will be taking over for me as CEO as I continue working closely with Colby as Storj’s Executive Chair of the Board. I want to share my thoughts on the journey so far and congratulate Colby.

It’s been an interesting 6 years.

Six and a half years ago, I met with the Storj founders, intrigued by their vision of building “Airbnb for Storage.” I shared with them that I really wasn’t aiming to embark on my fourth stint as a startup CEO, but agreed to join as Executive Chair and interim CEO. The plan was to take a year or so, and then hire a full-time CEO once

1) we got the company to a great, solid trajectory, and

2) we found an amazing person with the intelligence, experience, passion, and values to be the full-time CEO.

To paraphrase Bill Gates, people tend to overestimate what a startup can accomplish in the short term and underestimate what can be achieved in the long term.

While the idea behind Storj was brilliant, putting it into practice was not easy. We had to prove that it is possible to build a secure, high-performance network from tens of thousands of independently operated devices around the world. We had to prove that we could meet or exceed high bars for enterprise grade features, security, and compatibility.  We had to prove that we could be radically better than the competition on dimensions such as speed, durability, global availability, carbon footprints, and economics. We had to convince early customers and partners to work with us, and make them delighted for having made that choice. We had to build a strong company, strong community, strong channels, and strong partnerships.

We now have a distributed services platform.

Along the way, we transformed from a distributed cloud storage provider to a full-scale distributed services platform for distributed data. Storj now delivers a radically better approach for providing storage, compute, networking, and more to dynamic fast-growing industries, from artificial intelligence to media and broadcast entertainment.

I am exceptionally proud of and excited for the Storj team. As we’ve shared in our regular [town halls], usage and revenue are on a strong path–on pace to grow nearly 7.5 X this year. We’ve expanded our capabilities with the acquisition of Valdi and cunoFS. We have stellar enterprise customers with highly regarded brands, including leading media companies, research institutions, security companies, health care providers, and more, using us for business critical applications. Our balance sheet is strong, and 2025 looks to be another breakout year.

In short, we’ve now met those two criteria: We’re on a great, solid trajectory. And, we’ve found an amazing person to take the helm as CEO – someone who played an integral role in bringing Storj to where it is today.

A new CEO for a new era of growth.

I can’t say enough good things about Colby Winegar. He has an incredible background, spanning multiple industries, and has been successful both leading large organizations and startups. Colby came to Storj as part of our acquisition of CrowdStorage – and is thus one of the few people in the world with experience as CEO of a distributed infrastructure company. He most recently served as Storj’s Chief Revenue Officer, where he not only drove a sea change in our ability to attract, retain, and grow customers, but also gained the respect of the entire organization for his intelligence, drive, humor, values, and management skills. He’s also just an incredible human being –a genuine, inspirational leader. Different kinds of leaders are needed for different stages in a company’s life cycle, and Colby is absolutely the perfect leader for now.

Colby and I have spent the past five months working on the transition. While I’ll continue to stay involved as board chair (and help with endeavors such as fundraising, corporate development, and strategic planning) I look forward to seeing what the talented team at Storj will accomplish under Colby’s leadership.

My sincere thanks to Colby, the board, our customers, and the entire team at Storj for enabling us to reach this point, and supporting this exciting leadership transition.