Michelle Zatlyn: Scaling Cloudflare to a $70B giant and building a better Internet

Welcome to Inside the Network. I'm Sid Trivedi.

I am Ross Haleduk.

And I am Mahendra Ramasinghani. We have spent decades building, investing, and researching cybersecurity companies.

On this podcast, we invite you to join us inside the network where we bring the best founders, operators, and investors building the future of cyber.

We will about the hard parts of the founder journey, launching companies, getting to product-market fit, raising capital, and scaling to an exit.

And yes, we will also be talking about epic failures.

But Mahendra, we're here to make the founder journey easier.

That is correct, Sid, but we cannot make it too much easier because startups are hard. And of course, you already knew that.

All right, you two, enough. Let's get started with this week's episode.

Our guest today is Michelle Zatlin, president and co-founder of Cloudflare, a global internet security powerhouse boasting a market cap of $60 billion. While getting an MBA from Harvard, Michelle teamed up with Matthew Prince and Lee Holloway to launch Cloudflare. The three of them had an audacious vision How can we build a better internet, one that would keep the bad guys out? Today, as the company enters its 16th year of operations, it serves over 5 million customers globally and generates $1.7 billion in annual revenues. Building Cloudflare and leading its go-to-market is not the only thing that keeps Michel busy. He's a board member at Atlassian, a fierce advocate for women in tech. She's been named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, and Forbes recognized her as one of the 50 self-made women. In our conversation today, Michelle talks about the importance of grit and how it has helped her to build such an iconic company. More importantly, she talks about the art of accruing trust with our co-founders. Despite many differences across 16 years, they're still together, working hard, having fun, and their vision is still the same. How can we build a better internet? Now, as we tackle AI's opportunities and challenges, Michelle shares some novel ways about how Cloudflare is on the forefront of innovations. After all, Michelle has not just read Clayton Christensen's all-time great book, she actually took a class with the professor himself during her days at Harvard. This is a company that will never suffer from the innovator's dilemma, and Michelle will tell you why. Let's get started.

Michelle, welcome to Inside the Network.

Thanks so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.

Well, we want to talk about a whole bunch of things and Cloudflare will absolutely be in that conversation, but before we get into, to Cloudflare, Cloudflare and the amazing journey you've had, we want to start by talking about your early influences and how you even got into becoming a founder. You grew up in a very small town, Saskatchewan in Canada, and hopefully I pronounced that correctly. How did that early environment and upbringing in a rural town really shape who you are as a leader today? And did any of those early years influence, you know, your drive to eventually start a tech company?

Yes. Yeah, no, thank you. Yes, I, I grew up in Saskatchewan, Canada. It's a province and it's a pretty small province, about a million people across the entire province. And the city I grew up in was about 30,000 people. And so you don't find that many tech entrepreneurs coming out of, out of where I grew up. Um, but that's okay. That's okay. And I think where you grow up definitely shapes who you are as a person. And so as I reflect back as my journey as a founder and, and kind of the connections to my upbringing, I definitely see strong connections to the power of community and the power of hard work. Saskatchewan's a farming community, an agricultural community. It's very cold in the winters. And so this idea of really had to work hard there, both in the physical sense of having farmland and just doing a lot of things for yourself, but also the power of community. And I think that's actually been amazing lessons as a founder where today Founders have to be able to work hard. Sometimes that's maybe the only thing that differentiates you. And so this idea of hard work never scared me, of that grit, which I love that word. But then how important people are and relationships are. And so I actually think, uh, it wasn't obvious in the moment, but looking back, I actually think, uh, Saskatchewan was a great, great, uh, testbed for, for being an entrepreneur.

And was tech in any part, part of that upbringing? Was there ever any kind of computers and tech, or when did that influence get started?

Yeah, you know, I loved video games, so I had a lot of video game consoles. And then at some point I wanted to design video games, so I was doing that with the computers. And so, so yes, my, you know, my parents were, were super open about having, you know, I played a lot of games growing up. How about that? Um, and you know, there, this is, I guess, the power of these programs. But even, you know, my mom put me in Junior Achievement after school when I was in like kind of junior high. And these programs are, it wasn't a tech company that we built out of Junior Achievement. But it was this idea of taking an idea, working with others, making it come to life, having a business plan tied to it. And I think just getting access to that was helpful. Having said all of that, Sid, at that point in my life, I thought I was going to be a doctor. So I like, liked doing all that work and all the projects and building things and shipping things. I love the satisfaction, but in the back of my mind, I was going to be a doctor. So that was like all just extra credit sort of stuff for me. I really ended up kind of discovering technology. I mean, I was in— I went to university in Canada, so at McGill, And I was in college when like the whole tech boom was happening in Silicon Valley. It was, and I remember we got lapped. That's when we were getting kind of computers at school. And my sister was doing her MBA out in Silicon Valley. She was at Stanford at the time. And so I kind of got a taste of it more through her being here and of course reading in the media. But I was, I was going to university at the time and then the field started to burgeon more. And so, so I definitely not tied to my background, but it wasn't like I had no idea, but it just was kind of, it was a, it was just kind of exposed, but didn't really think that that was. The one.

Michelle, you, you earned a chemistry degree at McGill, so I'm going to assume that was still the time when you were thinking about becoming a doctor, but then eventually you went into marketing, you went into product management, then you did an MBA at Harvard and ended up starting Cloudflare. I'm curious, did you always plan to start a company out of business school, or did you have other plans at the moment when you realized that you're probably not going to be a doctor?

So I like telling the story because I think there's— I've met so many founders over my life and there's a bunch of folks who like know they want to start a company and I like love of those people, and I'm, I'm almost envious of those people who like have this plan, and it's like they will stop at no end unless it works. That was not me, Ross, as you just described, where I was more about open to the opportunity. And I think that there's a bunch of folks in that bucket too, where it's, I don't know exactly what I want to do, and I'm open to different sorts of opportunities that present themselves. So I was definitely in the open to opportunities that present itself. So I did collect a lot of experiences, and actually I think career should I think actually some of the richest careers are where you collect a lot of experiences. And so in this kind of open to different opportunities, I tried a lot of different things. I tried different types of companies, I tried different types of jobs. Some of the companies I joined were growing like growth companies, and that was fun. There's others that were losing market share. You learn a lot in those situations too. I tried different roles and so I actually was really open to a lot of different opportunities. And so in each one I was just saying, what can I learn from this? I knew it was, it was not where I was going to end my career, but I was like, I'm here for a couple of years. What could I learn from it? And so, two things. I wanted to be a doctor 'cause I really wanted to help people, and I really wanted to be a doctor 'cause I think the science— you're using a lot of brainpower to solve problems. Like, I love that. Why I ended up falling in love in technology is for the exact same reasons, actually. You work with really smart people, you work on really hard problems together. So, I loved that. And then, the second thing is, is I love helping people at scale, and it turns out technology can help people at scale. And so, fast forward to— I didn't think I was gonna start a company out of business school, but I was open to that opportunity. And when this opportunity presented invented itself to work with Matthew Prince and Lee Holloway of saying, hey, could we create a service that actually stops malicious actors online, make it better for everyone? The— literally the litmus test to ask myself is, would I be proud to be part of this company? And I said, wow, if I can make the internet a safer place, a better place for everybody, I absolutely would be proud to be part of that. And that's kind of how the— I traded in my, my lab coat for maybe some more digital laptops But gosh, couldn't be happier.

And Michelle, speaking of what can I learn from these opportunities, you once admitted that you knew nothing about cybersecurity as you got started. Now, that requires a lot of courage. And especially speaking of courage and gender, women also struggle with challenges where they don't express themselves that boldly. Take us back to that time.

Tell us how you got up to speed and what kind of things you did to adapt to this new world of cloud Yeah, no, I think I did say that once and I kind of regret saying it because it keeps coming up all the time and it's just not a good look. It's not the perfect message. And so, I was definitely not an expert in this field. And so, maybe the lesson learned for folks listening is, I think sometimes opportunities present themselves and people decide not to take them because they're like, oh, I don't know enough about it. And maybe the lesson learned is, well, you should really challenge that assumption. And I think what was interesting in my situation is, When we started to work on Cloudflare, I was not an expert on the topic of the subject matter. I just wasn't. But Matthew and Lee, my two business partners, knew a lot about it. And it turns out that I brought different skills to the table. And so, and I brought different skills to the table, and then I was able to learn a lot about the subject matter expertise. And so, you know, over time I ended up learning a lot more about it. And now I would say I am a world-leading expert, even though I didn't start as one. And I think that this is one of those things where sometimes I meet founders or people who really want to start something, and they only look for ideas or problems to solve in spaces they already know a lot about. And I think that totally makes sense. But I also think it's okay if you surround yourself with people who know a lot about it and you bring something else to the table. That's an okay path too. And I think that's maybe the, um, something that doesn't get spoken enough about. And that's really, that's the real insight that I hope listeners take away. That's why I told that story, to encourage others, like, if you don't know everything about it, it's okay, still go for it. And actually You know, even if you're not a founder, I think about that even going to work at a company. Sometimes it's like, go work for the place where you're— you could be proud to be part of that team, where you're going to learn a lot, even if you're not an expert, if you really want. And, and I think that, that takes courage, back to your word, but I'm not the only person in the world who's done that. And so what I often end up saying is that curiosity or your rate of learning actually ends up being the superpower. How fast can you learn? And, you know, I'm, I'm sick at 15 years— we're Cloudflare's turning 15 years old this year. So I kind of have this hindsight of I was the founder and, and these questions are bringing me back to those very early days. And now today we have 4,500 people. You know, we, we did $1.6 billion in revenue last year. We're publicly traded. I have this huge job and I kind of think about me today. And I think that the rate of what you learn actually is the biggest superpower. And if I could choose, hey, are you a really curious person with grit, but you don't know everything about the subject matter versus someone who knows a lot about the subject matter, but doesn't have the grit and isn't curious, I would pick the first person every day of the week. And so I think that's one of those insights that sometimes people forget about.

I wanna dig in a little bit more on the Cloudflare origin story. You already talked a little bit about this, but take us back to 2009. The, the world's dealing with a major financial crisis. There's a big question on whether people will have jobs. And you co-founded Cloudflare with Matthew and Lee Holloway, and Matthew's your classmate at HBS. How did the three of you come up with the idea for Cloudflare? Was there an initial problem? Was it Matthew's project on, you know, I think he had a project called Project Honeypot that he was working on with Lee Holloway. Was it a class project you were working on at HBS? What was the inspiration for this idea?

Yeah, no, it's so interesting. There's a lot of things that back, from 2009 when we did start to work on Cloudflare that are really similar to today. There was like a lot of uncertainty. There was a— it had just been after the financial crisis of 2008, so it was kind of a heavy time in the market. It was just a heavy time. It was just heavy. And there was also a big shift happening, maybe not quite as shift as the AI shift we're seeing right now, but there was a big shift of the rise of cloud computing and mobile. So like that was definitely happening at the same time. So What's interesting is what we saw in the moment was that, back to my business partners, Matthew and Lee, they had co-created something called Project Honeypot that tracked spammers online, and they were really proud of it. Matthew and I were going to school together, and he was just so proud of this project. He was always talking about it. And so back to being curious, at some point I was like, hey, just tell me, what is this? And we had this exchange of, there was a, a part of the market that had a lot of web spammers coming to steal resources from them, and there weren't good solutions. And like the big aha was, could we create a service that uses the threat intel data, the threat intelligence data that we had at a Project Honeypot, to create a service that actually stops the malicious actor? That was the aha. And we went to work on it as a school project. And so it became very clear that there was a problem up front. We went and talked to these small business owners and we'd get answers like, "Web spammers make me believe in the death penalty." Now, that's a pretty visceral reaction. If you don't know anything about the problem set, you give somebody a survey, you get that answer back, you're like, "Wow, there's a real problem." problem here. So, so it was very clear that there was a problem. And then the next set of kind of the conversation was like, what are you doing to solve it? And if you were a small business, there were no good solutions. Everyone was doing it kind of a Band-Aid solution. So this was kind of the insight of, hey, could we come up with a technical solution to solve it? And if you're a big company, you had big teams and you bought a lot of hardware box, but hardware boxes cost at least, call it, you know, $25,000 and above. And if you're a big company, that makes sense, but for a small business, they weren't going to pay that. That's a lot of money. And so it was interesting in retrospect, it was such a great timing. And I think sometimes when there's these huge shifts in the market, it's such great timing for new innovation to happen. And because of the rise of cloud computing, we basically said, hey, let's create a cloud-based service that almost like becomes a digital bouncer and a personal trainer for the internet, where it's, hey, we will make it— we will protect all of our community from the online attackers, and we'll share data like a neighborhood watch, and we'll make it stop in real time, and at the same time, make it spiffy for all your legitimate users. And there was no competition for the, the segment of customers of small businesses. There's just, there was no competition because there was nothing that existed. But then over time, the idea was like, but over time, we could use the exact same solution to help solve enterprises' problems in a cloud-based way versus hardware. And so, It was a shift of this rise of cloud computing of saying, hey, we could become this integrated platform that allows organizations to manage, be like the connectivity cloud and manage anything they need to stop malicious attackers online, but make it better for all the legitimate visitors. Let's start with this one segment of customers and over time move up to service everybody on the internet. And that was a huge audacious vision that honestly we've had since day one. And it was interesting as Matthew and I thought it was awesome. Well, we and Levi thought it was awesome too. We were like, let's go do it. And some people who would meet would be like, this is awesome, let's go. And other people would meet and be like, you guys are crazy. And what's interesting is when you're a founder, you're like, which one is it? Am I crazy or is it awesome? And it's hard to know early on cuz early on, you know, there's highs and lows 15 times in a day. Lots of things are going wrong all the time. I think today, 15 years later, I feel really good that I'm so glad we took the plunge and decided to do it even though it was an audacious goal from day one. But we weren't sure it was gonna work and neither was anyone around us. And almost those are almost always the best businesses, the ones where it's like, I'm not sure this is gonna work, but if it does work, you're gonna create something very valuable. I actually think that's a really good litmus test for if you wanna set out to do something big of, God, I don't know if it's gonna work, but if it does, this will be huge. That's a good place to be. It's scary, but a good place to be.

And I love your point around during the difficult times, that's when great companies are created. And for our listeners, just for context, like in 2009, you had Cloudflare was founded, Uber was founded, WhatsApp was founded, you Anix was founded. I mean, it was a very, very interesting time to, to, to be in the startup space, even though it was so difficult.

Yeah. And you have to have conviction. Like there, it was, you know, it's one of these things where you, when, when, when everyone else is not doing it, you really have to have conviction. And for us, we were like really curious about solving this problem. We really thought we, we were onto something and we just, we had this, we were like, we have to see where this goes. And so even though everyone around is like, you guys are crazy, raising money is hard. You're never like, it's so hard. You kind of are like, well, we had each other. Like, we already had 3 people, let's just keep going. Like, that's progress, right? And, and then, and so we just kind of said, we, we kept going. And so you really do need to have the conviction, 'cause there's so many reasons, there were so many outs presented to us. But I think that's why some of the best companies get started there, because it's like you, the people who stick with it can really create something valuable. Now, there's also, uh, I think bias to that, to that Stacks. There's a bunch of things that started that didn't go anywhere, but just And, you know, just to give the listeners a sense of how hard it was, that year we raised some money from Venrock and we were like one of the only tech investments that they made the whole year. So it was just like money was not widely available and it just was, it was, it was a hard time, but we had real conviction and we were like, we're going to go see if we can make this happen. And, and gosh, I sometimes I think back like, what were we thinking? But so glad that we, we, we, we just we didn't know any better, that we're like, we have to see. There was just something inside of us. And I think it's back to this word grid of like, okay, I have to see where this goes.

On that topic of the three of you, you, Matthew, and Lee, Matthew's said this very publicly multiple times, but he said, we wouldn't have built a company without Michelle. She actually kept the trains running and made sure that we were doing something. And you described a little bit of that in the, in an earlier part of the session, but just give us a sense for kind of how did you divide up roles between the three of you? What was, what were you responsible for? What was Matthew responsible for? What was Lee responsible for?

Yes. Yeah. And so, it's interesting. Like, if the people who knew Matthew, Lee, and I were like, "Oh, like, it's very obvious what each of you would be doing," but to the outside, it's not obvious. So, it's a really good question, actually. And so, I like the idea of a Venn diagram. I think that like that is back to kind of my geeky science, my bit math back. I used to love math and science. It's like the Venn diagram, I think, is a great description for our founding team of we all covered a lot of surface area, but we had overlap. I think overlap is important for shared vision, and we trusted each other. And so Matthew is incredibly— still to this day, incredibly talented on the strategy side. I mean, he's technical, he's a great storyteller, he understands strategy, and he has— and he has this insane business background. And so he's really good at the vision, the strategy, almost like the 100-foot, 1,000-foot view. It's like, we're going there. And again, we, we are ambitious company. We want to build something iconic. And again, back to when you started, this is this audacious idea. He like just lived in that all the time and could paint the best picture around it. So he was extremely good at saying, here's where we're going. Lee was the technical architect. He was the one figuring out how, like technically how you're gonna architect this and testing web servers. And at the time, for the anyone in the audience who's kind of technical at the time, like Apache was the web server that everyone used, but Nginx was just emerging. And at the time his then wife spoke Russian and she heard about it on the Russian forum boards. And so he's like, hey, I'm gonna try Nginx and He's like, wow, this thing is performing 10,000 to 1 compared to Apache. We're like, no way. Anyway, these little things that like little series of smart decisions that helped us, architectural decisions that helped us in the early days make a lot of progress. So Lee was the technical genius behind Cloudflare making like building this vision that Matthew would set out. And then I was really good at making all the other stuff happen internally. And so it's this idea of like vision, innovation, and execution coming together. And again, on day one, I didn't have, back to this point of I wasn't a subject matter expertise. Matthew and Lee knew a lot about it, and then other, the next 5 people we hired knew a lot about it. But I was really good at like almost like the glue that made it all come together and saying, okay, if we're going there, first of all, it was fun to debate the big vision and be a thought partner on that. Okay, if we're going to do that, here's all the things we need to do to make it happen and the order we should do it in. Turns out that actually is an important skill set early on, you know, and how we're going to do it, what's it going to feel like. And so, So, this is one of those things where you really— diverse teams are a better place to work and drive better business results. And I think it's one of these things where we just covered a lot of surface area. And then every day I was learning a ton about the subject and how we're doing it and then spending time with customers. And then pretty soon you're like, oh wow, I know a lot. And actually I'm adding a lot of value on that side too. But that's how it started. And so, that's how it started. So, we really covered a lot of different areas. Today, in case you're curious, fast forward early, like fast forward today, I run all of the go-to-market team. So I spend a ton of time with our customers, our customer-facing teams, and then our people team. And actually those are the things that I love. I love the people I get to work with and what's it like working at Cloudflare every day, and then our customers' experience. And then Matthew runs all of the product engineering, finance, legal report up into him. So it's actually today makes it's a little bit easier to understand, but early on that's how it worked. And again, if you knew all of us, the three of us, those of people in the world who know all three of us, they're like, yep, that totally makes sense. But externally it wasn't that obvious. So it was, it was, we made a really good founding team. You know, one thing I'll just say, one thing, 'cause this actually doesn't come up very often. And again, for the audience, if you, if you're starting a company, especially because we had such different skill sets, and that is a strength, a source of strength, but it's actually harder for the first year because you just see the world very differently. Like we— and, and it was one of these things where, again, you don't know you're on to something. Again, 10 times a day you're like, are we crazy or are we on to something? And you're not sure. And I think that's common for most early-stage startups of like, oh my God, this is amazing and we're going out of business, you know, flip-flopping many times a day. Again, the highs and lows. So if you're in that moment, I remember that being normal. It wasn't fun, but normal. That's just what it is. And there's been a lot of writing about it in the startup world. And so So, what was interesting is that first year where we were all committed to the idea, and there were certain things Lee cared about, like getting the technical architecture right and obsessing over that, and Matthew caring about the strategy and doing the right things, and me being like, "Well, you gotta do all these things to make it all happen." There were like that, when it all aligned, it was awesome. But there was times where it didn't align. And so, you really had to figure out, "I don't understand why you care about that so much." And by the way, there's 1,000 things to do and time to do 100 of them. So, it's not like you can sit down and have these conversations. And so I, so while I think diversity is this huge strength of a founding team, it is also harder up front. And so you have to kind of go through those cycles of those moments of uncomfortable where things are uncomfortable or tough. But if you get through that at the end, you're like, oh my God, I wouldn't go, I, I would have it no other way. There's no one else that I would go to that I, that I'd start a company with because wow, we got through all of that together. And so sometimes those uncomfortable moments is what bring people closer together. Both as founders, but even at companies. And I, again, I think if you either are starting a company or you're working at a company in one of those uncomfortable moments, like get through to the other side and then decide, because it's almost in those moments that you learn the most about people, even though you don't want to be in the situation, it's almost like it's impossible to avoid them. So it's like, what can you learn? Do you get closer? Actually, huh, I stuck it out and now I have a different perspective than I did when I was in the tunnel. And so I think that's something that also doesn't get talked spoken about a lot from about founding teams.

You know, Michelle, as you talk about both what Matthew's role has been and continues to be, as well as Lee's, what I find very fascinating is the way all of you have this mutual trust and respect for each other. I mean, here Sid described how Matthew speaks about your role being sort of the glue. You speak about Matthew. I think this is also very rare of how the founding team has this immense amount of trust and loyalty and these deep bonds built with each other. Can you share a nugget or two on how can this muscle be built?

Yes. Trying to think about what's a good— how do you make that? Because again, our situation will never happen again, but everyone has their own situation. What's some just good kind of lessons learned that might be practical? So, I do think that there's these things in the moment where the Silicon Valley where we came to start Cloudflare, and we're a very global company today. Is littered with stories of founders no longer speaking to each other, VCs and founders going to battle with each other, and boards and founders getting sideways with each other. And 15 years in, I understand how every single one of those happened now because it's like in a stressful situation, someone looks the wrong direction in the board meeting and all of a sudden it spires off a thread that like sets into a set of, I don't know, situations that you were like, wait, well, how did that happen? And so, If you know, you know what I'm describing. And for those who haven't been there yet, once you in it, you're like, okay, now I understand what Michelle's saying. So anyhow, so it's, so it's, you just, there you find yourself in situations you never thought you were gonna be in and what you're gonna do in that situation. It's so easy to say ahead of time, but it's really actually hard when you're in the situation. There's like emotions involved and like, when do you say something? When don't you say something? When do you, when do you make it a big deal? When do you say, okay, fine, I disagree and commit. Like there's just like, I'll, like there's tons around it. And so look, we were, we're not perfect, so it's, the bar is not perfection. I think one of the things that really worked really well for Matthew Lee and I is we really did have a shared vision of what we wanted Cloudflare to be, and we really felt like we were all in it together. That doesn't mean we didn't disagree. That didn't mean we didn't sometimes annoy each other, but we were like, we were all in it together and there was no, 'God, if you do that again, I'm out of here.' Like, there was never any of that. And, you know, I'm now married, and so I think it's kind of like marriages too. Although I don't know if marriage advice should get— we need a whole nother, uh, section about that. It's just kind of like, it's relationship. You treat people how you want to be treated. And that sometimes you're annoyed, sometimes you have to let things roll off your back, sometimes you gotta act like a— like you're deaf. Like, there's lots of different things that you do to cope through it. But it— for us, the North Star was what's best for Cloudflare. And I think that that back to, that's the best thing. And there have been tons of moments where in the moment emotionally I might've been like, oh, I want to say this, I gotta get my words in. But then after the fact, you're like, actually, God, it just doesn't even matter in retrospect. Thank God I didn't say anything. So I think that that is, I think maybe the easy, like in terms of instead of reliving our, our moments, it was just kind of like the lessons learned of what's the north star? Do you trust each other? I've always trusted Matthew and Lee. And there's been many times where back to like in that moment in the boardroom where someone looks at you a different way, like we just, we, the time and time again, we kind of made decisions that accrue trust, didn't erode trust. And so when you are facing that decision, which you will, and you'll feel like it's unfair, sometimes you're put in a situation that you're like, this is so unfair that I have to even have an opinion on this. Make the decision that accrues trust towards your, your business partners and your co-founders. Doesn't degrade trust because those are things that you, like, regaining it if you, you pick the degrade trust path is, is basically, I think, a non-starter. So I think that's maybe some of the lessons learned, Mahendra. I hear some, I know the audience is audio, but I see some heads nodding. I think there's probably some heads nodding on the other side of the audio.

Yeah, there most definitely will be. Let's go back to Cloudflare's early days. So in Cloudflare's early days, there was a debate about whether the product was ready or not, and you basically told the team, just ship it. Then Cloudflare ended up launching at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2010 and it won the competition. You guys won and Synapse took off immediately after that. Talk to us about that time. Talk to us about your decision to embrace the freemium model, which was very unusual for a security product. And also about just how this whole ship it strategy and the freemium approach contributed to your initial early growth.

Oh yes. Yeah. Well, so it's so interesting, the like just ship it mentality, like 100% Matthew Prince, like he's just like a masterclass at that. And so, so lucky to have him as a business partner, as our CEO. And he really early on, back in the very early days, was let's start getting customers using it and feedback. And I was more on the side of— I was not more, I was on the side of the fence of, oh, it's not ready yet though. This is embarrassing. And, and again, it's back to the thousand places of de-duck it out and debate it. It's like, okay, no disagree and commit. Fine, let's ship it and see. And when we shipped it and see, I disagreed and commit, but I was like embarrassed. I was so embarrassed, so embarrassed by what we were shipping. And it turns out Matthew was right. And the story I like to give is, uh, or tell is we, one of the things that the first version of the product didn't have was analytics. So we were shipping this thing, but it didn't really tell anybody what it was doing. So we were shipping a product that helped stop threats coming to our customers' websites and apps at the time. And we said we were going to speed it up and we were speeding it up, but we weren't— one of the things that wasn't ready for this, you know, artificial deadline we'd put out there was the analytics weren't there. So I'm like, oh, so we're going to give product— our customers a product, but not tell them what it's doing? I just thought that was really— at the time I was convinced that was a terrible idea. So this is again where, again, Matthew was right, I was wrong. We put it up there and it turns out our initial customers were really technical. They had ways to measure it. So they were writing into us quickly overnight saying, Oh my God, thank you so much. I love being part of the beta. This was the first night my pager hasn't gone off in 5 years. I had a full night's sleep. Or someone else sent us their server analytics from their server side saying, oh my God, I can see how much the caching is helping. Look at all this load you've taken off my server in just a few hours. So it was almost like our product didn't have analytics, but our customers did. And I had totally missed that. It seems obvious now. I'm embarrassed that I'm telling this story, but these are things that weren't obvious in the moment. And so it was one of these things where it was actually a great lesson learned of actually getting it out there. And sure, would have it worked for a financial institution? Absolutely not. But they weren't the ones that we were looking for in the early days. And so it was one of these things that we let people self-select in that want to be part of the early product feedback and help shape the product roadmap. And so this idea of innovation, going fast, finding the right early adopters to help shape the product and get feedback. And then you can add in all the features after and kind of work your way up to folks who need it more fully featured, complete. It's a really great strategy. And so it was— I, I was— again, there's lots of parts of the story you forget, but this early on memory. And so there's really two things of like picking a launch date or a date that you can't move actually is super motivating for a team because you're just like, you're going to ship it. Otherwise you just wait and wait and wait and wait. And so today how that gets manifested in Cloudflare is we have these innovation weeks. Where we say, hey, this week we're gonna do innovation week. And so our product and engineering team kind of say, okay, we gotta, we have, what are we shipping for innovation week? And like the innovation week dates aren't moving, they're set. So it's like what, you're either in the innovation date week or you're not, your thing is in or out. And it really becomes, okay, what do we need to do to get done? What do we have to get done to be in for the date? And it becomes this like nothing motivates a team like a deadline you can't move. And so I think like that's 'Cause otherwise, the human tendency I find is to be, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait until it's got enough. So, we've kind of flipped it, say, here's the date, you're either in or out. And then, we have several of these dates. And so, it was a good lesson learned early on, Ross, but a hard one, but a good lesson learned that I'm happy. So, that's on the innovation side. And to this day, we care about innovation, getting stuff done, small incremental improvements, getting it out into the hands. Is today we have over 5 million customers using Cloudflare. Like, we just have a lot. And so, even on day one, if they don't all adopt something, if you get 1% of that, that's still a lot of people using it. And so, it's like, how do you— if our mission is to help build a better internet, even if you're making it better for some small percentage, it's still a lot because internet's a big place. There's a lot of people using it. And so, we're constantly saying, get it out there, get some people using it, and then work our way up. And I think that's been a great secret to our success. I think the free customer is a whole other business strategy and we can talk about that next. But for us, I think Clay Christensen was an amazing professor for us at Harvard Business School and he has a really famous book called The Innovator's Dilemma. If you are thinking about starting a company and you have not read this book, you should read it. It's really, really good. It's how, how do you go compete with somebody who's already in the market? How do you carve out your space in a market? Even if you're a technical founder, I think you should read it even faster than someone who's not a technical founder. It's just like the business side. We found very helpful. And so the whole point of Cloudflare was how do you open up the market? And opening up the market meant how do we go serve a part of the market that had no good alternatives at the moment? And at the moment, nobody was helping small businesses. We started there. And again, over time, the small businesses didn't have big budgets or technical folks. We had to have the right price point. Free sounded like a good one. We needed a bunch of traffic to do things to build out our network and a lot of other things. And it became this business strategy reason of why we do it. Fast forward, we went public 6 years ago, and if you read our S-1, we have a whole section in our S-1 of why do we, why do we serve everyone, which is another way of saying why do we have a free service? And there's actually 6 amazing, like, strong business strategy reasons as to why we have a free plan. And it really helped us build the company in a way that was capital efficient and smart, in my opinion. And I would 100% go back and do that again if I could, if I was starting Cloudflare from scratch. And so, Those are kind of the answers to two of your questions.

That's a fantastic journey that you've been on. And now, as you head up go-to-market, Michelle, obviously you started with the freemium package, and now you've moved up the stack in terms of enterprise. Now, many startups struggle with these transitions or sometimes just fall apart. What were some lessons that you learned? What are some tactics that you use? As you sort of moved up the enterprise, I'm sure today Wall Street has, you know, relationships with Cloudflare, and how do you make sure that those are being served well?

Yes. Well, okay. So, I would ask, if you're asking, if you're a founder in this situation, I like, what I always like to, I always find it really helpful to talk to those founders ahead of me. And I remember a few years ago, I was at getting a nice, I'm a Canadian, and I was getting a nice Canadian entrepreneurship award, and Stewart Butterfield was there, and he, at the time, Slack was further ahead than Cloudflare, and and I remember him telling me, I went to, every time I meet somebody ahead of me in the journey, I'm like, go and ask them the 1,000 questions and learn a ton from that. And I remember Stewart at the time said something that really was exactly what I needed to hear at the moment was like, we do it, his point, what he said was paraphrased, what I remember him saying was something like, oh my gosh, like, and Slack was like the hot company at the time, like very hot at the time. It was before the Salesforce acquisition. Like they just was a very hot company. And they were growing like a weed. The numbers were crazy. And he's just like, we are terrible at so many things. And I just was like, but you're winning and you're like, you're the hot company. He's like, we are terrible at so many things. And so another way to think about that is you only have to get a few things right. And so to your point about what if you're a founder and listening to Mahendra's question around, hey, I've tried to go upmarket and it didn't work, well, try again. Like, and again and again and again and again. And like, that's all part of it. And of course, try and do it smarter and better the next time. And what did you learn? But like, it's, there's lots of things. I was talking to someone early at Salesforce, and again, this person told me at the time about, oh, so his exact, his, what he shared to me at the time was Salesforce tried 3 times to go up into the enterprise before they got it right. I was like, really? Like, today I would definitely think of them as an enterprise company, but you kind of forget, you forget about these things in the moment. And so, and, and there's lots of other folks you meet through the days that you hear these stories. And so, so number one is, are you actually solving a problem in the market for your customers? And that's why I love talking to customers, because if they're like, you are making my life better and here's all the ways, it gives you the confidence to go try again of like, okay, it's worth all the hassle to go try it again and the hard work and oh God, why do we do it that way? Okay, next way, let's do it this way. Oh, it worked a little bit better and whatnot. And then knowing other people didn't get it right all the first time either. It's kind of okay. And so I think that there's listening to customers, being obsessed about like, are you actually solving a problem for them? If you actually are solving problems, you can go, you have more swings at the bat to figure out all these other things that maybe didn't work out the first time. And just know that you're not the only company that didn't work out the first time. And I think sometimes we forget that part. So I think those are some of the things that I have taken away. And so as I think about expanding the types of customers we expand globally, I mean, I'm so proud that we are, we are a very global company and we work with lots of, we work with the largest organizations in the world today, governments. I love that as well as small businesses and developers. I think it's so cool. Like, I think it's really amazing. And anytime something isn't working, what we've really have developed at Clever, and again, this is as a founder, you really have to develop it. This just doesn't happen, is to be a place where people said this didn't work. Okay. Why didn't it work? What's not working? What are we gonna do about it? And actually, if you can be a place where your team can surface, this isn't working, okay, why isn't it working? What's the plan to address it? If you can admit that something's not working, you can always build a new plan to address it. And, and I think that that was not something that was obvious to us when we started Cloudflare, but as we've scaled Cloudflare, that's actually maybe one of the best lessons I've learned. And having board members who are okay with that, who are like, oh yeah, Great to know that didn't work. Glad that you have a new plan to try again. Because if you— we know it's not working and you're trying it a different way, chances are you're going to be more successful that time versus hiding it. And I think like you asking yourself as a leader at a company or working at the company, is your company a place where you can bring things that aren't working and that it's like, okay, what are we going to do about it versus a place where it gets hidden? Again, I would rather be at a place where those things can get surfaced. Sometimes it's like, okay, it's not working, but not important right now. Let's just leave it. Because again, there's always more things to do than time to do it. But some of those things like, gosh, thank God you're saying that. We gotta fix that right now. What are we gonna do about it? Get the right team together and do it. So those are some of my insights that I would share.

I think it's a classic definition on grit.

I love that word. Back to grit. I think it's a good word. I know it had a moment, it's kind of disappeared, but I think we should bring it back.

We wanna talk a little bit, you know, we, we talked a lot about Cloudflare's origin story. Let's talk about Cloudflare today, you know, as a global company. Today, Cloudflare is the third most valuable cybersecurity company. Just shy of $70 billion in market cap. So you're in a very different stage today, 15 years on. One of the biggest conversations in technology is around AI and how it's going to impact the future. And on July 1st, so beginning of this month, Cloudflare announced a one-click feature which allows its customers to block known AI web crawlers by default. And it basically also allows them this opportunity to pay per crawl to these, you know, AI web crawlers. I'm curious, like, what prompted that? How do you see Cloudflare's role in important issues like this? The issue between balancing innovation with content creator rights.

Yes. Yeah, no, AI. Well, I'm impressed we've gone this long without the word AI coming up. So AI is reshaping everything. I mean, it is as big as the invention of the internet, although I think sometimes we, our generation doesn't exactly know what that means. So they, what I like to say is, is as big as the invention of electricity. You know, most of us weren't alive when that happened, but it's like, oh, I could imagine it kind of started as this kind of spark. And now you think about, well, on a daily basis, what does electricity do for us? And I honestly think it's a great analogy for AI. It is— it's a significant, huge change, and we're early, early, early on. So it's, you know, 10, 20 years from now, it's going to be vastly different, and, and it's definitely not going away. So it's just like a big moment. And so anytime there is a big moment, it just creates huge opportunity as well as is gonna cause hardship too. And so there's gonna be challenges tied to these big shifts, but there's huge opportunity. So I, I am, I'm, uh, I know there's a lot of excitement and hype around it, but I think it's warranted. It won't all work out, but it, it is a big deal. It's here to stay. So, so that's just on the AI front. On the, on the, on what we did on July 1st, it It's tied to that, but slightly different. And so what's interesting is the web has been changing. So the internet's been around for 30 years, the web's been around, and we've really, like, as a society, really used it for the last 20, 25. Like, it's become— and it's become more important to our day-to-day lives. And if you think about kind of how the business model of the web has worked the last 20 years, was, hey, um, Google, company called Google, went and searched, invented crawl, and they would say We would go to Google to find stuff and then they would send traffic to the content providers. And so basically Google helped people find things on the web and this idea of content creators could create things and get traffic. And there was kind of an exchange of a business model. What's happening with AI and the crawlers is that now more of that information is happening right in the moment. It's, they're not actually sending the traffic back to the content creators. Well, that's kind of a problem and maybe you don't feel like that's a problem today, but if you keep playing it out back to a strategy perspective, it's like, well, Well, why would anyone wanna ever create content if they're not getting paid for it or getting traffic for it or eyeballs if it just stays within someone else? It's like, that doesn't make sense. And so it's, if you look at some of the data, it's really crazy where like at first, basically like 10 years ago, for every time Google used to crawl someone's website, they would send a visitor, they would refer a visitor back to that site. So it was kind of two crawls to get a visitor. That's a pretty good trade. You're like, that makes sense. Today it's about 18 times they come crawl your site and then they send somebody back to your site. If you look at the AI crawlers, like, um, and again, whether it's Anthropic or OpenAI, and again, I love these services, I use them all the time too. Something like OpenAI is crawling your site 1,500 times and the, the data's coming back out in ChatGPT and maybe they refer a visitor back once for those 1,500. I get it. OpenAI service is amazing. ChatGPT is amazing. It's awesome., but it's hard to see why the content creators would still create content. And then that puts the web at risk, right? Like that just puts the fundamental. And so, and if Cloudflare's mission is to help build a better internet, I was like, huh, is there something here? And so fast forward, what we said is, hey, look, it should be fine. The crawlers can go crawl as long as the content creators want it. So more of a permission-based approach versus, versus by default. And so that's really what changed overnight, that if you're a Cloudflare customer, you can say, yes, I permit these AI crawlers to come to my site and take the content because I want to be in the model. Or no, I don't. And if I, if you do, I wanna get paid for it. And so almost like a business model tied to it. So it's early days. I believe this is really important for the next 30 years of the web to exist. And, and I think it aligns the interest of the content creators with the AI crawlers, with consumers. And there's gotta be a new business model saying, well, if you're building really valuable content and I'm using it for my models and people are using it in my product to get it, Yes, you should get some share back for creating that. And so we were just in a place to both give the visibility of both the threats that come to your site, but it's also, hey, now here's the invisibility of the AI crawlers coming to your site and then deciding, do you permit them to come? And if you don't permit them— and if you do permit them to come, do you want to get paid for that in some way? And helping create this new business model. So it's early innings. It's amazing to be part of the conversation and to be able to talk to both the AI companies and the content providers, but I do think it's really important that all these sides come together because we've learned a lot the first 30 years of the internet and we're— it's not going away. It's only becoming more important in the world of AI. And so I do think there needs to be a new business model for the next 30 years, or at least 10 years, so that we can keep a lot of the greatness of the web that we believe in while having these new services and products, uh, flourish too. And so that's a little bit more of the strategy, uh, beyond that. That, that needs to be its own podcast with Matthew at some point. This is just, again, back to the strategy, the vision. He's got so much to say on this topic.

Talking about the future and preparing for the future, since Cloudflare's IPO in 2019, the company has scaled massively. It now has data centers in over 300 cities, more than 4,500 employees, and almost 5 million customers, of which, like, I believe over 200,000 paying customers. How have you approached scaling the organization and the leadership team, and how are you thinking about it looking at the next 10 years for Cloudflare?

Yeah, well, yes, this is one of the lessons learned. People are everything. Everything. I mean, it is— people matter so much when you're building a company. Now, there's somebody on this call list, though, there's definitely a listener thinking, well, I'm gonna build a company without employees, and that is definitely possible too. That is absolutely possible too, but then you matter, and then maybe you have a couple of co-founders, and you're still people. So, it turns out like, the people are everything. Even in an agentic world, people— there's something behind the agents. And so people still matter. And there's such a big difference between great and good. And I, you know, I, I just— it's the same with anything. There's just some things in life where you're like, this is just an amazing hire and a good hire. And, and then there's the bad. But, you know, bad you just can't tolerate on a high-growth company. But the— as we've scaled, is having the right people both at the company and the leadership roles, when that when, when that is in flow or working or vibing, I guess the word right now would be when, when that is in vibe, you can do anything. You really, like, you feel like you can do anything. And, and when it's not in flow or not vibing, it just sucks up all your energy. And I think that it's, it's something that, you know, I read a lot of the— again, I, I've, I've scaled my business and I've, I've read so much, I've listened to so many podcasts. I had to learn from those ahead of you. And this is like one piece of advice that always comes back and you're like, oh my God, I've heard this so many times. Well, it's still in vogue because it's just so true. Like, you have to have the right leadership team and the right folks on the team who can set up to get stuff done, because at the end of the day, that's like what companies are. And so I think that matters a lot. And so just some, some, I don't know, maybe lessons learned that some of my scar tissue that I can save from others is I do think that with the leadership team, they go through different, you know, you, you go through different versions of your leadership team. Natural, normal course of business. That's— it's just the reality. That's a natural, normal course of business. You don't think of that when you start a company, but it is. The people you start the journey with aren't the people you're gonna end it with. And so really it's about how are you gonna manage it? So I think first one, being aware of it, just being like realizing natural, normal course of business, okay to have different levels of leadership teams or versions of leadership teams. And when your current version maybe isn't working anymore, how are you gonna deal with it? And I think being a place where I look at somebody like a Shopify, where they talk about these 3-year tour of duties, where it gives them an opportunity to go back and say, hey, are we signing up for another 3 years? Are you signing up for another 3 years? Actually is a really smart way to have, like, make it a conversation and make it a two-way conversation and maybe a bit more human way to handle different versions of leadership teams and folks within a company. So I actually think what Shopify did is a really interesting model that might work for some folks, knowing that it's a natural, normal course of business and maybe It's these things where you're like, how do you thoughtfully make sure you have the right leaders at, like, at your company? And when it's time to say goodbye, how you're going to do it. And, and, and again, there's lots of different flavors of it. You're going to have to decide what you want for your company. And I think when you find a version that works, it's not— it's never really fun saying goodbye to folks that you've worked with for a long time, but it does make everyone feel better about it. And then they leave and they end up being champions and they're like, I'm forever a champion. I'm so proud that I played a role role in that part of the company. And I think that that's great. And there's so many companies that have that legacy. And, and I think at Cloudflare, we really strive to be in that bucket of just saying, hey, you, you, thank you for all your contributions. We wouldn't be where we are without you. Can't wait to see what you go do next. And you want them to go do amazing things, right? You want a diaspora that's amazing. And so I think that's something that's definitely come out. And then the second thing is just early on when you're a startup, you have to just get stuff done. Like you, otherwise you just don't exist as a business. This. But what's interesting is you scale and get bigger, you actually lose that muscle. And it's often because you bring in folks who have really great resumes and you're just like, these people are amazing and they're amazing at planning and they put these project plans together and models that are like beautiful. You're like, these are incredible. But sometimes, not always, sometimes those people actually can't get things done. They just like build the plan. I'm like, okay, did we do it? Oh, we haven't done it yet. Well, okay, I love that you have a big beautiful plan, but it actually has not made the business better today or made it better for our customers. Like, let's get going. And so, you know, I wasn't in that meeting and I don't know the story, but, you know, there's that infamous story about Elon Musk saying like, get the shovel and start digging this afternoon. I kind of get it. Sometimes I'm in a meeting, I'm like, oh, I don't— like, let's just get going. Let's just get going and we'll learn more along the way. Because when you build a plan, there's all these assumptions and it's just hard to predict the future. It's just almost very hard. You can have a direction, but you just don't know how everything's going to play out. But when you're in the moment, you'll have more information, you're learning, and you can decide how to deal with these things that come up versus on paper. And so the second thing I would just say is a company's ability to get stuff done is in— is, is what sets great companies apart from good companies. And that doesn't just happen. Most things go to status quo where it's like no action, not getting stuff done. And so as an early-stage company, you have to be able to get stuff done, otherwise you don't exist as a business. But as you transition to a business, keeping the sense of urgency, momentum, getting stuff done, shipping things those are the ones that the scale companies do really well versus the ones who I think end up languishing. And, and that, uh, my experience is that takes a lot of energy to get a company to do that. But if you get that going, it just feels so good because then you attract people who want to be doers and get stuff done and like find ways around the obstacles that come up versus the folks who are just talkers and advisors. And so, so I love being a company of builders and doers and, and those are the people who do best at Cloudflare.

We're getting towards the end of our conversation, and the last quarter we want to really talk about reflections and advice for founders. And obviously this is the 15th year of Cloudflare since its founding, and we've talked mostly about all the success, all the things that worked out and everything, you know, went well. And what many founders, particularly founders who are starting off, don't realize is there's all these ups and downs in building companies. And I'm sure that Cloudflare had lots of difficult moments. Could you give us a story, just one story, you know, where something critical wasn't working out and you really sat down and you said, this might be it, we might not make it. And how did the three of you go about overcoming that problem?

It was, uh, so there's so many times that were hard and in the not fun category, or might not like the stressful, the, the stress of of trying to build something. And I'll just tell a story where, you know, I'm very shiny and positive and happy right now. And of course, that's part of my job is to tell these stories that are energetic and make someone feel like, okay, if she could do it, so can I. And I'd rather be that person that just sits here and tells you all the hard things about it. But maybe, maybe I should try that sometime. But I remember it was early on, it was 4 years into Cloudflare, and somebody, a professor from Harvard Business School, was in San Francisco We had organized dinner, and again, we were, we were so early. Like, I think we had 150 people at Cloudflare at the time, and we had raised money, and so things were going well. But I went to this dinner, sat down at the dinner. I was not the happy, shiny Michelle that I am right now, and I was like, I don't understand why anyone starts a company. This is just so hard. Like, I should definitely be working somewhere else. I'd be like less stressed and making way more money, because 4 years into Cloudflare, I tell you, I was not making very much money. And I just was kind of beaten up. I was just tired. I was tired and lonely. And, and I, and now I understand why early-stage founders are often depressed, 'cause it's just hard. And again, it was 4 years in, 3, 4 years in. And so I was at this dinner and I thought I was being vulnerable in the moment. And you know, you can't be vulnerable to, to your team. And, and maybe Matthew Lee and I had that relationship, but you know, on a daily basis you don't wanna bring that to work. You're there trying to solve problems. But I was at this dinner and it was off-the-record dinner. And, and I remember someone at that dinner who worked at had a successful company was like, said to me, Michelle, you can't say that. Like, you are literally a successful startup. You can't go around saying that. And I was like, well, that's how I feel. And so I— and, and so I'm telling that story a little bit right now because I think entrepreneurship has this amazing halo around it where it's so amazing to be— it's almost like shiny, like sexy to be a founder. And it's like you get treated so well and you hear all this amazing stories, and it is amazing. It is the greatest responsibility and privilege I've ever had of doing, and I love my job today. But like in the moment, 3.5 years in, I did not think that. Like, I just didn't feel like that all the time at all. And, you know, it's not okay to say that, mostly 'cause who do you say it to? If you have a spouse or a girlfriend, boyfriend, they don't wanna hear about that. They just wanna hang out with you. You're already working a gazillion hours. They don't wanna hear you complaining about work when you come home. You can't say it to your team. You can't say it to your board. I mean, that's, I mean, and their job is to make sure that there's not a going concern. So being like, "Oh God, what am I doing?" Like, that's like red bells to your board. And so, who are you talking to now about it, right? It's just hard. You can't say it to investors because who's going to invest in you if you're like, "Oh God, this is just awful." And so, you kind of end up bottling it up. And while this is not a psychology thing, it's like, I don't think that's good either. So, you got to come up with some coping mechanisms and kind of keep going and find the good. And anyhow. So anyhow, so I sit here today loving what I do, but there were so many moments that were hard and not even a moment where I'm like, I'm like, I'm gonna go to business. There's just moments where I'm like, it just was hard. 3 and a half years, 4 years long. Like it was just like a lot of sacrifice, a lot of commitment. And while you, and you're in it, it's hard to get out of it. Like you just like at that point you're not walking away, you're in it. So you gotta just keep going. Now on the other side of that, thank God that I didn't walk away. Like I'm having the time of my life and I love it and I feel like it it's been the greatest thing that I've ever been able to do. And I think today someone was telling me— I went out for with some girlfriends the other night, and she was like, oh yeah, type 2 fun. I was like, what's that? So, well, type 1 fun is when you're having fun in the moment, and type 2 fun is like in the moment it's hard, but after the fact you're glad you do it. I'm like, start running a company, successful or not, is a little bit more like type 2 fun. And even the ones that don't work out, I think— and again, most companies don't work out— even ones that don't, I think most people are glad that they did it because they learned a lot and met people, and you almost stretch and expand in ways that you never thought were possible. You never quite go back to the same shape again. And so I think it's a lot of type 2 fun in startups. We had a lot of hard moments of losing your largest customer. You're making a key hire and early on it's all about getting key hires and they accept it and then they don't show up to work. They renege like at the 11th hour, like the day before their start. You've already told your board and your employees and you're just like, what? And you thought like they were going to be this thing you really needed in the moment, like the, your lifeline you really needed. And then like all of a sudden you're like, oh my God, where are we? You gotta restart. Or we, we got served a national security letter when we had 30 people by the US government. And part of it was to hand over customer data that we really pushed back against. And part of the national security letter is you can't tell people about it. So we were 30 people, like we were not equipped to deal with that. Today, sure, we had the network to be like, Like most people thought we weren't going to exist as a company at 30 people. We were nobodies. Like it was just like, what? And we had to go navigate this really scary thing. And thankfully the EFF partnered with us and that ended up being a positive ruling on our side. But gosh, that took that in the moment. It felt like we were going out of business. And, and again, and it's, these are things that you have to wear on your shoulders as a founder. And I think I am so lucky that I had co-founders that we were able to go through those together. Matthew and I have often said I could not imagine doing this by myself, although I know lots of founders do too. So hats off to the solo founders because really it's amazing. At the same time, having co-founders that you don't trust or don't want to be with in those situations, I think really do break up the relationship because they are very stressful. They really push you to the max. And I think, I think maybe the lesson learned is even though we are a huge success story, we had those moments. I don't want to say find the joy in the hard, in those moments, because that's maybe a little bit too cheesy, but it's like you do learn a lot. And if not you, someone else has to make that decision. And some professional operator you hire isn't going to make a better decision than you in that situation because you care. And so just like lean in, do the best you can, go forward and keep going. And if you add up, do enough of the right things, it forgives the things that you get wrong. And so it's a little bit back to Stewart Butterfield. You just got to get a few things right to build a successful company.

Michelle, Cloudflare sees the whole of the internet. Given that kind of visibility that almost probably no other company has, from your vantage point, what are some of the emerging opportunities or problems in cybersecurity, internet infrastructure, or even beyond tech? Like what is changing and how is the future shaping up that you are excited about and you would encourage aspiring entrepreneurs to tackle?

Well, I, I know people and developers are not done inventing the future. So customers' problems still— if you go talk to a company, they have so many problems left to be solved. And if you go talk to the entrepreneurs, there are so many things they want to build. And now with AI, all the new tools and how to do it, like, again, it's a, it's a little bit of a noisy time because it's hard to know what's here and what's not going to stay here, but it's an exciting time. And so I do think that there's a lot of problems left to be solved. On the cybersecurity front, unfortunately, there's still tons of threats. I mean, and AI is only going to help accelerate that. And so you need really great modern-day defenses that, that almost like fight AI with AI defenses. And Cloudflare is doing part of that, but it's— cybersecurity is a massive field. There's so many other parts of that, of that, of that ecosystem that an entrepreneur was looking for a problem to solve today would be able to come up with and be like, oh, I'm gonna go do that. And so, so I think that there's The, the future is not quite here yet. So that creates opportunities for the builders and the dreamers. As I do spend a lot of time talking to our customers and you go talk to them and they're all looking for better ways to do things with less that will, that they can scale with and be flexible for the next decade. And so I can't wait to see what we all create as the future. And, and, you know, I think that that's one of the reasons why I love this industry is you got to stay curious. You got to, you got to keep learning because it keeps changing every single couple of years.

Thank you, Michelle, from the bottom of our hearts. You could have saved lives as a doctor, but instead you're now protecting 5 million customers globally from the bad guys. And even as AI starts to reshape the landscape, you are helping protect the content creators from the modern day crawlers. Your 15-year journey is nothing short of phenomenal, and it's inspiring founders everywhere. We do hope that some founder somewhere in this world is listening to your story and getting ready to start her own company. Thank you, Michelle.

Thank you for joining us Inside the Network.

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