Investor claims Pure Storage on track to be 'best investment we ever made'

VC insists it is with storage firm for the long haul

An early investor in Pure Storage has said the company is doing so well that it could become the best investment decision he has ever made.

Speaking at Pure Storage's Accelerate event in San Francisco, Mike Speiser, Pure's co-chairman and founding investor, said he thinks the firm is performing extremely well.

Pure Storage was founded in 2009 when it received its first round led by Sutter Hill Ventures, Speiser's firm. The flash firm launched in the UK channel in 2013 and floated on the New York Stock Exchange last autumn.

In its latest financial results, for the fourth quarter ending 31 January, sales at Pure rocketed 128 per cent annually to $150m (£106.4m). Over the same period, it made a net loss of $44.3m, down from $47.3m a year ago. For the full year, sales jumped 152 per cent annually to $440.3m.

Speiser said that although he has been on board with Pure for almost seven years, he takes a long-term approach to investing.

"You can't build an independent company with one product - the economics don't work," he said. "You have to build a product that is $1bn in revenue - not $100m - and that's still not enough to build an independent company. You need to build a distribution business to properly serve customers. Then you need to build more products. These things are hard to do, so you have to take a long-term view.

"You need multiple $1bn products to stay independent. It is very expensive.

We think Pure has a very good shot of being the best investment we ever made"

"We still see a lot of upset so we continue to have a long-term mind set.

"We'd like to see the company continue, whatever external people say. We care about what customers are saying and what our employees are saying. But ultimately we will be rewarded if we build a great business for the long term. The only way to build a great business for the long term is to build the best products, treat your employees well, and delight customers."

Elsewhere at Pure Accelerate, senior executives from Arista Networks, Cisco and VMware took to the stage to address the 1,000-plus audience.

One member of the audience brought a Q&A with VMware's software-defined datacentre boss Raghu Raghuram and Pure's chief executive Scott Dietzen to a standstill after heckling the duo and shouting "bingo!" for all to hear, signalling the completion of his homemade "buzzword bingo" game.

"Bingo? I didn't even know we were playing bingo," said a bemused Dietzen. "We've got those buzzwords all covered."