When data needs a place to stay, Storj Labs Inc. has the welcome mat waiting.

Just as Airbnb Inc. has transformed the hospitality industry by drawing on a global network of citizens with spare rooms for rent, or Uber Technologies Inc. has revolutionized transportation through a network of cars and drivers with extra time on their hands, Storj is seeking to accomplish the same result in the storage world.

“We’ve brought together a very large network of individuals and companies that have spare storage capacity and matched them up with people that need storage,” said Ben Golub (pictured), executive chairman and interim chief executive officer at Storj Labs. “It’s basically the Airbnb of disk drives.”

Golub spoke recently with John Furrier (@furrier) and Stu Miniman (@stu), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, at theCUBE’s studio in Palo Alto, California, to discuss the Storj business model, data security, the company’s decision to issue its own tokens and the competitive cloud storage market.

150,000 nodes in 180 countries

Established five years ago, Storj has grown to include more than 150,000 nodes run by 70,000 “farmers” in 180 countries across the globe, according to Golub. Customers encrypt their own files, and the distributed nature of the network makes the security risk low.

“It’s supercheap, but also supersecure,” Golub said. “For a huge range of use cases that involve files, basically everything that object storage is used for today, the design of our system is actually much better. You really can’t attack it.”

There is a cryptocurrency element with Storj as well. The company raised more than $30 million in a token sale on the Ethereum blockchain, and payments are accepted through the cryptocurrency or in dollars. The company also has a system in place to evaluate participants in its network and ensure compliance with standards for providing access to unused storage.

“Just as Airbnb measures reputation, we measure reputation too,” Golub explained. “You’ve got to have dedicated hardware and a dedicated connection. We’re seeing a lot of universities, a lot of small businesses, and some data center operators who have spare capacity.”

Disruptive model

Named as Storj’s interim CEO last month, Golub is no stranger to the storage industry. He previously led the open-source software giant Docker Inc. and was the CEO at Gluster, a platform for scale-out public and private cloud storage.

“I’ve always been searching for a company that I could describe at Thanksgiving,” Golub said. “I’ve never succeeded, so I always end up saying I’m in computers and fixing somebody’s printer.”

Storj is seeking to disrupt a cloud storage market that is expected to reach more than $27 billion by 2022. Will the company’s decentralized model allow it to compete on price with major cloud providers?

“In comparing us to the traditional cloud providers, we’re probably a third [of the cost], and we could go lower,” Golub said. “What I learned from my time in Storj is that price is important, but you have to be really safe and available and reliable, because peoples’ data is important.”

Aside from its competitive price, Storj will have to reassure potential customers, especially large enterprises, that it’s safe for files to be distributed so widely on individual computers.

It also will have to convince prospects that it’s not a company vulnerable to the hype surrounding the current cryptocurrency world. A number of analysts have been vocal in recent months about the risks posed to holders of company tokens.

“One of the reasons that gave me both excitement and comfort about going to Storj is that the economic model works fundamentally even if the crypto is not there,” Golub said. “We’re backed by something real.”

Here’s the entire video interview with Golub:

Photo: SiliconANGLE