Space Monkey

Space Monkey, Inc. operated in the cloud storage market, presenting a distinct alternative to centralized data center models. The company was established in 2011 in Utah by Clint Gordon-Carroll and Alen Peacock. The founders' prior experience at the cloud backup company Mozy, where they met in 2007, provided them with direct insight into the architecture and challenges of the data storage industry, which informed Space Monkey's strategic direction.

The company's core offering was a hybrid cloud storage solution that combined a local hardware device with a peer-to-peer distributed network. Customers would purchase a 1TB hard drive to keep on their premises, ensuring fast, local access to their files. This device then connected to a broader network of other Space Monkey devices across the globe. Data was encrypted, broken into small pieces, and distributed across this network, creating a decentralized cloud backup. This architecture aimed to deliver enhanced security and redundancy, mitigating risks associated with single data center failures, while also being significantly faster for local file transfers compared to traditional cloud services.

The business model targeted consumers seeking large-capacity, secure, and affordable data storage. Revenue was generated through the initial sale of the hardware device and a subsequent annual subscription fee. For example, a pricing model included a $199 upfront cost for the device and the first year of service, followed by a $49 annual fee for 1TB of storage.

Space Monkey achieved several notable milestones, beginning with winning "Best New Startup" at TechCrunch's Launch Festival in March 2012. It secured $2.7 million in a Series A funding round led by Google Ventures in the same year. A highly successful Kickstarter campaign in 2013 further validated its market appeal, raising nearly $350,000, well over its $100,000 goal, to fund initial manufacturing. In September 2014, the home automation company Vivint acquired Space Monkey for an undisclosed sum, intending to integrate its distributed storage technology into the Vivint Sky smart home platform. The technology eventually became a core part of the Vivint Smart Drive product. Later, the intellectual property was spun out into a new entity, CrowdStorage, which was subsequently acquired by Storj, where the technology now resides.

Keywords: decentralized storage, peer-to-peer cloud, P2P storage network, data security, cloud backup, personal cloud device, distributed cloud, hybrid cloud, storage appliance, Vivint acquisition, Google Ventures, Clint Gordon-Carroll, Alen Peacock, Mozy alumni, TechCrunch Launch Festival, Kickstarter tech, home automation storage, smart home data, secure file sharing, encrypted storage, data redundancy, consumer data storage, Storj, CrowdStorage