Ben Golub Joins Storj Labs as Executive Chairman, Interim CEO

"Storj has developed a powerful platform to support some of the most important trends in computing today, including the explosion in data, the demand for decentralized computing, and the rise of decentralized trust technologies inspired by blockchain and distributed ledger," said Ben Golub, Executive Chairman and interim CEO at Storj Labs. "Having had the privilege of working at companies that were leaders in previous computing revolutions, such as cloud, open source, internet security, and containerization, I know the power of having a talented team addressing big opportunities with a uniquely compelling and disruptive solution. Storj delivers in all of these areas."

Golub was most recently CEO and co-founder of Docker, Inc., the company that is largely credited with making software containers mainstream for developers and operators. Golub grew Docker from a small, open source project to a cloud leader with hundreds of G2000 customers, a broad partner network, over 400 employees, nearly $250 million in funding, 3,000 contributors, and 12 billion downloads.

Golub will now lead Storj Labs as it continues its rapid growth in adoption, revenue, and community engagement. The company's cloud storage network is now storing more than 60 petabytes of data from over 70,000 customers across 150,000 storage nodes operated by tens of thousands of independent "farmers." Farmers are individuals and organizations who rent their excess hard drive capacity in exchange for STORJ tokens - the company's own ERC-20 utility token on the Ethereum blockchain. By bringing together a large and growing community of customers, farmers, and developers, Storj has created the largest decentralized cloud storage network without ever owning a data center.

The company supports customers at the confluence of three major industry challenges: user privacy and data security; the proliferation of data; and the growing demand for open source platforms and decentralized applications. In his role as Executive Chairman and interim CEO, Golub will focus on meeting these customer needs, which will inform the development of Storj Labs' technology and operations.

"Ben brings an ideal skill set to his new role at Storj Labs. His combination of business and technology acumen is exactly what Storj needs during this pivotal moment of growth," said Shawn Wilkinson, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Storj Labs. "Our work today and in the coming months will result in a new platform that will help customer build and deploy decentralized apps with decentralized storage. Now is the perfect time for Ben's important contribution to our work."

Prior to Docker, Golub was president and CEO at open source storage company Gluster, which was acquired by Red Hat in 2011. He was also CEO at Plaxo, Inc., where he helped build a community of 20 million users and led the acquisition of the company by Comcast. He has also held executive-level and product management positions at VeriSign, Avid Technology and Sun Microsystems.

With more than 70,000 API registrations, Storj is one of few startups in the blockchain ecosystem with an operational, distributed platform and is leading the decentralized cloud storage market. The company's platform aims to differentiate itself from legacy cloud storage providers by being more reliable, secure, performant and affordable. With Golub at the helm, Storj intends to drive long-term sustainability through its open source model and its first-mover advantage.

Resources

• View the Storj Labs blog for posts from:
• Ben Golub on why he joined Storj Labs.
• Storj Labs Founder and Chief Strategy Officer Shawn Wilkinson on Ben Golub's appointment as CEO.
• To learn more about Storj Labs, see storj.io or download Storj Share to rent your unused hard drive space.
• For the latest updates on Storj, follow us on Twitter.

About Storj Labs

Storj Labs provides secure distributed cloud storage that gives customers control over their data. The company's open-source cloud storage platform utilizes spare disk drive space shared by its community members, who are called farmers, to create a secure network for developers, operations teams, companies and others in need of secure cloud storage. Using end-to-end encryption, the Storj network helps ensure that data can only be accessed by the data owners. The distributed architecture of the Storj network protects against attacks, improves reliability and enhances performance when compared to many traditional cloud storage approaches.

In 2016, the company completed a $30M token sale for its ERC-20 token STORJ. These tokens can be used on the Storj network to purchase services and are also used to pay farmers, who run more than 150,000 storage nodes across 205 countries and territories.

Contact:
Dan Sorensen
Storj Labs
[email protected]

SOURCE Storj Labs

Related Links

https://storj.io/