"We’re investing millions to make your Linodes faster. Crazy faster. "
Skeptical. I'm wondering if this is just advertising hyperbole because Linode doesn't seem to be large enough (and there is no evidence to indicate any "funding") to be able to "invest millions".
They operate out of a suite in an office park outside Atlantic City NJ.
(I think it's a great company by the way I just don't think they are investing millions it doesn't make any sense given what I know about them.)
Linode has over 45,000 customers (as of 2011), paying a bare minimum of $20 usd/month. Realistically they're probably bigger than that now, and the avg $/customer is higher. I'd say they're pretty good sized.
I'd like to point out as someone that has made the INC 500 list and knows the process very well that there is no vetting to the numbers that you give them. Back when I did it you simply needed a letterhead from your accountant and Inc went with whatever you said. (Might have changed but that's the way it was). There is obviously no audit. And there is no question that people fudge to get on the list in various ways because it's a good marketing tool.
Linode is not a public company releasing information. Once again I'm not saying the info isn't correct and that they don't have that many customers. I'm simply pointing out that the fact that they issue a press release saying they have 45,000 customers (along with the math that you are assuming gives them $20/customer) isn't necessarily correct.
Linode has been around since 2003 and only made the list for the first time in 2011, which happens to be right after several years of massive growth in the industry. It seems quite plausible that they would legitimately make the Inc 500 list.
Another way to approximate their number of customers would be by IP address assignments:
I count 176,640 IPv4 addresses, and that's only direct allocations - their older customers are still using IP addresses owned by Linode's datacenter vendors (SoftLayer, HE, etc.).
If what you say is true, I have no doubt that some companies fake it to get on the Inc 500 list, but given the facts about Linode it seems fairly unlikely that they faked it, and quite possible that they could be spending millions on infrastructure upgrades.
Skeptical. I'm wondering if this is just advertising hyperbole because Linode doesn't seem to be large enough (and there is no evidence to indicate any "funding") to be able to "invest millions".
They operate out of a suite in an office park outside Atlantic City NJ.
(I think it's a great company by the way I just don't think they are investing millions it doesn't make any sense given what I know about them.)