The document summarizes the progress of EnCloud, a company developing a cloud storage solution. It describes their initial focus on enterprise customers and the realization through customer interviews that privacy and availability were not strong pain points. It then details their pivots to target other segments including petabyte-scale enterprises, storage solution providers, and individuals. After developing and testing several MVPs, the document outlines their latest focus on providing a solution for individuals to access and organize private data across multiple cloud accounts and devices through a common interface.

1. EnCloud
Seamless & Secure Cloud Storage
# of interviews this week: 10
# of interviews to date: 121
Rashmi
EECS PhD 5th yr
Best paper awards,
Implemented her
invention for
Facebook
Kangwook
EECS PhD 6th yr
Hacker: awards
from startup
competitions &
hackathons
Mitya
MBA 2nd year
Pivoted his life
twice
Richard
BS, CS/Business
Ran a virtual
server business
for over two years
Mentors:
Ashmeet Sidana
Kanu Gulati
Advisors:
Andy Chou
Jeremy Fiance

2. Original idea (week 0)
Not able to run their
systems on public cloud
due to its
• Low privacy
• Low availability
• Perfect privacy
• Higher availability
• Cost efficient
Highly Available and Private Cloud Storage for Enterprises
Market type: existing / segmented
TAM: $91.2 Bn, SAM: $35.0 Bn
2

3. Enterprises which
do not store critical
data on public
cloud storage due
to availability issues
Original canvas (week 1)
Perfect privacy
Higher availability
Lower cost
Enterprises which
are still using private
storage due to
organizational
security/privacy
standards and
compliance
requirements
Enterprises which do
not store critical data
on public cloud
storage due to
availability issues
Made-to-order
software solution
Technical support
Deep customization
Prove efficiency
SW development
Tech. expertises
SW engineers
Customer
development and
sales experts
Cloud providers
Multi-cloud
management
providers
Backup and recovery
solution providers
SW development and
support
SW integration
Customer acquisition
Security auditing
Pay-per-use
Premium add-on to
public cloud services
SW licensing fee
EDM solution
providers
Direct Sales
Resellers / OEM
System Integration
Consulting fees
3

4. Enterprises which
do not store critical
data on public
cloud storage due
to availability issues
Product-market fit (week 1)
Perfect privacy
Higher availability
Lower cost
Enterprises which
are still using private
storage due to
organizational
security/privacy
standards and
compliance
requirements
Enterprises which do
not store critical data
on public cloud
storage due to
availability issues
Made-to-order
software solution
Technical support
Deep customization
Prove efficiency
SW development
Tech. expertises
SW engineers
Customer
development and
sales experts
Cloud providers
Multi-cloud
management
providers
Backup and recovery
solution providers
SW development and
support
SW integration
Customer acquisition
Security auditing
Pay-per-use
Premium add-on to
public cloud services
SW licensing fee
EDM solution
providers
Direct Sales
Resellers / OEM
System Integration
Consulting fees
Perfect
privacy
Higher
availability
Cost
effective
Enterprises which
are still using private
storage due to
privacy and
availability concerns
Value Proposition Customer Segments
4

5. Week 1-4: 40 interviews with diverse mix of companies
Storage
expertise
Low
High
HRHealth
Object storage
Media storage Finance
E-commerce
Storage appliance
SSD
Social and search
5

6. 1
2
MVP 1 (Week 3)
6

7. And by Week 4 we learned that nobody cares!
Existing clouds
good enough
Data Privacy Data Availability
Not a strong
pain point!
Storage cost
No one is
willing to pay!+ +
7

8. Lower cost
for private clouds
Refined product-market fit (week 4)
Enterprises which are still
using private storage due
to organizational
security/privacy standards
and compliance
requirements
Enterprises which do not
store critical data on public
cloud storage due to
availability issues
Faster data
recovery
for private clouds
Higher
availability
Enterprises with PB-
scale data in private
clouds
Data storage/
backup solution
providers that use
old technology
New focus:
Lower cost of data storage and
better performance for
(1) Petabyte-sized enterprises and
(2) Storage solution providers
8

9. MVP 2 (week 4)
Cost 3x 1.4x 1.4x
Privacy Zero Not much Perfect
Durability High Higher Highest
Repair Fastest Slow Fast
Replication Erasure Coding
9

10. Week 7: Market too small here as well!!!
Enterprises
Cost is not enough of a
pain to attract transition to
our product
Storage solution providers
Storage solution providers
are not ready to pay for
the closed-source solution
Build
their own
storage
solutions
10

11. Learnings by week 7
We got a famous, award-winning
paper!!! How hard can it be?
Initial thoughts Week 7 thoughts
Technological advancement ≠
Business Value for customers
45% efficiency improvement is
huge. Everyone will buy it!!!
To pay money, companies are
looking for 3x-5x improvement
We have a groundbreaking
technology, central to our product
We should forget the technology
and let evidence change our mind
11

12. 12

13. Time to restart (week 8)
A-ha moments from the past interviews:
-”I would love to use that technology not for
my company’s data, but for my own data”
CIO, fintech comp
-”Pain points related to company data?
Nah. I do have some with my personal
data.”
Senior Product engineer, BigTech
13

14. Secure storage
for your privacy
sensitive data
Seamlessly
virtualize and
optimize all your
cloud storages
New product-market fit, week 8
Fear of breach
Fragmentation
14

15. New product-market fit, week 8
Access private data
from any of user's
devices
Not lose private data
Save time for
securing/backing-up
private data
Young
professionals and
graduate students,
who have sensitive
data and data they
don't want to lose,
use 2+ devices and
1+ cloud accounts
Young
professionals and
graduate students,
who use multiple
cloud services who
value their time
Organize data across
multiple clouds
through common
interface
Use cloud storage
space more efficiently
Share data across
different clouds with
one click
Secure storage
for your privacy
sensitive data
Seamlessly
virtualize and
optimize all your
cloud storages
15

16. Customer archetypes (Week 9, 30+ interviews)
“Prosumer” Amy
• Laptop, iPhone 6s, iPad, desktop,
and DSLR camera
• Private data backed up on external
HDD
• Other data baked up on desktop
• Photos on iPhone are synced to
Google Photo
• > 16MP photos, > 1080p videos are
manually backed up
“Data Governor” Alex
• Millennial, young professional
• Father in a family with 3-4 phones, 1
tablet, 1-2 laptops, and 1 family desktop
• Stores his family’s data in the family
desktop
• > 100GB of pictures
• ~ 10GB of work documents
• ~ 500MB of private data (financial
documents, private photos, …)
16

17. Organize data across
clouds through common
interface
Final MVP, week 10
Use cloud storage space
more efficiently
Share data across
different clouds with one
click
17
Simplicity and intuitiveness of the product
= key value for customers

18. GET:
Advertisements,
Education,
Blogging (and
other soft PR)
KEEP: User
friendly UI/UX
GROW: Referrals,
Added services
SW development
Tech. experts
SW engineers
Customer
development and
sales experts
Cloud providers
Influential
bloggers and
media
Kloudless
SW development
and support
Hosting/office
infrastructure
Customer
acquisition
Legal/accounting
Upfront SW price Subscription
Our website
App stores
Referrals
UI/UX
development
Education
Marketing
UI/UX designers
Access private data
from any of user's
devices
Not lose private data
Save time for
securing/backing-up
private data
Young
professionals and
graduate
students, who
have sensitive
data and data
they don't want to
lose, use 2+
devices and 1+
cloud accounts
Young
professionals and
graduate students,
who use multiple
cloud services
who value their
time
Organize data across
multiple clouds through
common interface
Use cloud storage
space more efficiently
Share data across
different clouds with
one click
Latest canvas (week 10)
18

19. GET:
Advertisements,
Education,
Blogging (and
other soft PR)
KEEP: User
friendly UI/UX
GROW: Referrals,
Added services
SW development
Tech. experts
SW engineers
Customer
development and
sales experts
Cloud providers
Influential
bloggers and
media
Kloudless
SW development
and support
Hosting/office
infrastructure
Customer
acquisition
Legal/accounting
Upfront SW price Subscription
Our website
App stores
Referrals
UI/UX
development
Education
Marketing
UI/UX designers
Access private data
from any of user's
devices
Not lose private data
Save time for
securing/backing-up
private data
Young
professionals and
graduate
students, who
have sensitive
data and data
they don't want to
lose, use 2+
devices and 1+
cloud accounts
Young
professionals and
graduate students,
who use multiple
cloud services
who value their
time
Organize data across
multiple clouds through
common interface
Use cloud storage
space more efficiently
Share data across
different clouds with
one click
Major changes (week 10)
Bloggers and
media
API provider
Key partners Customer Relations
Soft PR
Intuitive
UI/UX
19

20. Next Steps:
Consumer market:
1. Conduct more
interviews to get more data
/ narrow the segments
2. Create an “experience”
MVP to validate UI/UX
hypotheses
From the interviews:
CAC >> willingness
to pay
Explore consumer
space further:
From expert interviews:
“Our study showed that consumers don’t really
care so much about privacy of their data.”
“These are not strong enough pain points where
consumers will stick to a service.”
Are we the right team to tackle the consumer space?
20

21. Encloud
How teaching staffs see us
How my friends see us
How customers see
us
How academia sees us
How we see ourselves
saw

22. Appendix

23. Encloud
SpiderOak,
SOS Online
Backup,
Sookasa,
boxCryptor
Odrive,
Jolidrive,
CloudKafe,
Otixio
Carbonite,
Mozy, Time
machine,
1Drive
Competitors
23

24. GET:
Advertisements
KEEP: Product
updates
GROW: Referrals,
Added services
SW development
Tech. experts
SW engineers
Customer
development and
sales experts
Cloud providers
SW development
and support
Customer acquisition Upfront SW price
Our website
App stores
Referrals
Marketing
Access private data
from any of user's
devices
Not lose private data
Save time for
securing/backing-up
private data
Young
professionals and
graduate students,
who have sensitive
data and data they
don't want to lose,
use 2+ devices
and 1+ cloud
accounts
Young
professionals and
graduate students,
who use multiple
cloud services who
value their time
Organize data across
multiple clouds through
common interface
Use cloud storage space
more efficiently
24

25. Here’s what we learned (UI/UX, Partner)
Lesson. Not technology, but UI/UX
are the most important factor when
people decide to choose a cloud
storage service.
Lesson. People love to sync/back-
up data ‘in-place’.
Lesson. Found a good partner
‘Kloudless’ that can save
development cost/time
25

26. Direct costs
Overhead
costs
Sales and
marketing
Consulting
Founders’
survival
Software
development
UI/UX
development
Office &
Hosting
● Bloggers
● Referrals
● App stores
● Webpage
● Legal
● Patent
● Accounting
● Ramen!
● Developers
salary
● Benefits
● Taxes
● Outsourced
UI/UX
contractor
Here’s what we learned (Cost structure)
Learned from interviews
26