Interview with David Zhao from Zumo Drive

“David is a technologist who spent the past 6 years building applications for the Web. Prior to Zecter, David developed applications and services at Amazon, where he got a taste of writing internet-scale applications and cloud computing.”

Today’s article is a bit technical and abstract but nonetheless interesting. Read our interview with David Zhao from Zumo Drive.

S.N.: What prompted you to start ZumoDrive?

D.Z.: We started ZumoDrive because online storage wasn’t usable. Most of the storage services consist of a web page with a upload button. We saw the vision where online storage would be seamless integrated with the operating system so that all of the applications can connect to the cloud.

S.N.: What are the primary goals for your product in terms of user interaction?

Our primary goal is to provide transparent access to the cloud to the users. We want to free people from thinking about backup, syncing files across different machines, and running out of space on their devices. They should be able to install ZumoDrive and be able to take full benefit of the cloud right away.

S.N.: Could you give us some info on the back end tech/logistics/team of running ZumoDrive?

D.Z.: We’ve built our technology from the ground up. One of the key piece of it is a virtual file system that integrates directly with the OS. It handles caching, random access, and direct streaming from the cloud. The server side is built on top of Ruby and other open source technologies. We use Amazon as the backend cloud.

S.N.: The proportion of free/paid accounts?

D.Z.: We have a very healthy paying to free ratio.

S.N.: What effect did Techcrunch have on the service in terms of new accounts and user retention afterwards?

D.Z.: TechCrunch was great, it introduced ZumoDrive to a huge number of people. While I can’t disclose numbers, I can say that retention ratio for the service is very good.

S.N.: Plans you could share for future developments of the service?

D.Z.: Better web interface, better performance on the client, Linux, and more mobile devices soon.

S.N.: Who do you think are your primary competitors in this space? What’s Zumo’s advantage in your opinion?

D.Z.: There are a few players in the space, namely Dropbox and SugarSync. One of our main advantages is the ability to provide access to files without having to first download them onto the device. This creates a unique value proposition for devices that don’t have a lot of local storage. We also have a stronger focus around media and have unique capabilities for dealing with these type of files.

S.N.: Is the PaaS concept going to affect ZumoDrive or is it already implemented?

D.Z.: Yes, it definitely will be. It’s of great interest to us. More information about ZumoDrive is available here.