Cloudflare Blocks Billions of Cyber Threats for You Daily

I'm Yasmin Gagne.

I'm Josh Christensen and this is Most.

Innovative Companies Video edition. So Josh, have you ever been hacked?

I have not been hacked, luckily. Although I do secretly kind of love when people's social medias get hacked and it just starts like spewing links to crypto sites all over, all over the place. I have never been hacked though on that front, have you?

No.

I mean, I've received the Nigerian prince emails, but I have never fallen for them. I do love them though.

Strong will. Very strong will. I think the tasty UK Instagram account got hacked recently. Did you see this? They started advertising the Trump meme coin.

So funny.

Marks department store, Marks and Spencer's in the uk. I couldn't order maternity clothes because of the hack.

And so truly you were the real victim here.

Exactly. Thank you for acknowledging that.

Okay, well clearly Yaz and I don't care about Internet security as much as we should, but there is one company that we're featuring today that does 15.

Year old Internet security company Cloudflare. Stock is at a whopping $196.67 at the time of recording. To stay innovative, the company has continued to incorporate new technologies, most recently AI into its products. Now to learn more about the business, David Salazar interviewed co founder, president and co chair of the Board of Directors Michelle Zatlin about how the company has evolved in the future of cybersecurity. He also dug into controversial topics like the company's work during the outbreak of the Russia Ukraine war, as well as its decision to stop provid services to sites like 8chan and the Daily Stormer.

As a reminder, this is an extended cut of this interview that you can see exclusively on Fast Company's YouTube page. But the Most Innovative Companies Podcast has an audio version with other segments and other content that you can hear on any of your podcast apps. Apple Podcasts, Pocket Cast, Spotify, Amazon Music, for some reason, anywhere that puts podcasts out into the world. You can subscribe to Mic and also while you're here, subscribe to Fast Company YouTube page if you haven't done so already.

And now David's interview with Michelle Zatlin.

You're CEO and co founder of Cloudflare and you started this business in about 09 with some co founders. Can you tell us a bit about what Cloudflare does and how the idea came to be and what you saw missing in Internet security that led you to start it?

Yeah, definitely. Well, so Cloudflare is turning 15 years old this year, so we're about to turn 15. I always think birthday celebrations, operations are a good time for reflection. And so Cloudflare's mission is to help build a better Internet. And what does that mean is we really build infrastructure that helps provide cyber security protection, performance and reliability to businesses online. And as the Internet becomes the lifeblood of all of the economy, turns out these things are really important. And so we help our customers who are businesses make sure that they are protected from online cyber attacks, that everything is fast and speed speedy and that they can scale as in this modern world as we navigate all the different trends. And so it's been, it's been an amazing journey. I started with two business partners. The three co founders started, Matthew Lee and myself. Lee is sick, he left many years ago, but Matthew and I are still here running the business. And so to start something and see it grow into this 15 year old, soon to be 15 year old teenager is quite the experience, David. And today we have about 4400 people around the world who show up every day, I would say, obsessed over helping make the Internet better.

That's amazing. Yeah. And I think people until fairly recently weren't super aware of what Cloudflare does and just sort of the extent to which it really underpins a lot of the Internet's infrastructure. I'm wondering, over the 15 years as it's grown, you know, as, as this teenager of a business has developed, how have you evolved your approach and how have you evolved what Cloudflare offers people?

Yes, as an entrepreneur, everything takes longer and costs more than you'd like. It's kind of like a 15 year old overnight sensation is sometimes what I like to joke, where all of a sudden it's like, oh, I've heard of you. I'm like, oh, finally, great, excellent. But it's a journey and we still know we have a lot of work left to do. And so having the privilege to have scaled a business, it's interesting, I think you think of company building as kind of linear as it changes a little bit incrementally year to year, but really it's much more like a function, I think of like stairs where you kind of hit different sizes along the way and early on, and this is for anybody who's out there trying to start a company. Early on there was really a group of 10 of us, I mean started with five of us, but like the soon 10 where we just, we had an idea and we, we were saying, can we prove it out? And so step one was just like building it to Say, like, is there actually a product market fit? That's now a terminology, didn't really exist back then, but are you actually solving a real problem for a customer? And that was the really first part of Cloudflare's history. And it was interesting that early on we got feedback from our customers and they were small business owners that ran like a, maybe like some sort of business online. And they're like, oh, my God, for the first time in five years, I finally didn't get woken up by my pager. Thank you. I was able to sleep through the night. And so early on, from some of our early customers, we had real validation that we were solving a problem for them. And so that gives you the confidence to keep going, gives you the energy to keep going. And then what happened in the next phase was, okay, wow, we really were solving a problem. And it turns out this is a problem that is ubiquitous. And what I mean by that is, I have never met a business who says, oh, yeah, like, everybody I've met ever who is that works at a company is like, yes, I care about being safer. Yes, I need things to be faster online. Yes, I need to figure out how to scale and launch this next product faster. And Cloudflare is relevant in all of those conversations. So it's something that we have a reason to talk to small businesses, up to the largest companies in the world, to the governments to be able to help them with these really common ubiquitous needs. And so the next phase of the business, David, was all about like building a company around it and saying, okay, is there a business model? How do you make sure the revenue and the cost sides add up? Because at the end of the day, that's an important part of scaling your business and making sure the business model works. And so we had to bring in the right managers and the right talent to help us do that without losing the technology. And that sounds so easy, but it's not always easy. So for those listening, if you're in that stage, it's like, it's cool if you have a great product idea and you have real product market fit. But even cooler is if you could put a great business model on top of it. Like, those two things are extra cool together.

Yeah, definitely. And it seems to. You seem to have made those two balance, and maybe not even just balance, but one exceeds the other. I think 2023 was your first billion doll year. What has that been like? What was that sort of moment in that step function like, getting there?

Yeah, well, so two things on that. So I Remember, you know, you again, there's a lot of folks out there who are, you know, sub 100 million in revenue trying to get grow their business or start a company. And I remember when we finally hit 100 million and this is kind of we finally put the business bottle. I remember telling somebody, it was a venture capitalist and I said, oh my God, we just hit 100 million in revenue run rate. And he said to me, Michelle, going from 100 million to a billion is much more fun than going from one to a hundred. And I remember saying to the person at the time, it's like, okay, well I don't know, I've never done it, so I'll let you know. So I'm here to say as of 2023, when we did hit a billion, he was right. 100 million to a billion was so much more fun than one to a hundred. And so if I think about what's changed during that time in life at Cloudflare was we kind of went from selling one set of services to expanding our product portfolio. So all of a sudden we had more types of products that we could sell, our custom problems that we could solve for them. And that's fun because now you become instead of a vendor, you start to be seen as a strategic partner to your customers and that's always a great place to be. So that was one thing that I noticed was kind of from selling one thing, it was more a, we expanded our product portfolio. The second thing that really happened was we went from really selling mostly in the United States to being a much more global company. And so now today at when we hit a billion revenue, half of our revenue came from outside of the United States. And that comes back to what I said just a moment ago, where if you're a business in Germany, you also care about cybersecurity being fast. Like these are things that you also care about. And if you're a business in Australia and it could be a small business or a big business. And so it turns out that going global was an important part to get to a billion in revenue. And so we really, that was the other part of it. And so and then the third was just continue to do business with all sizes of businesses. We started with small businesses and then we went to kind of medium sized businesses and then to get to a billion revenue. Now we've really started to work with larger and larger, the largest organizations around the world and governments. And that was always the plan, but it took that phase to, to get there. And so it's Been. It's great when you see a year, it's amazing when you see your vision start to come to life. Yeah.

And it sounds like, you know, to, to your point of it being, your colleague's point of it being a little bit more fun than 1 to 100 million. It seems like it was really a practice in becoming indispensable to as many various global businesses of various sizes as possible.

Right, well, right. And it was more about this, this, this thing of it, it makes sense. It's if you build this global network the way that we help, you know, it's pretty cool. So Yesterday we stopped 247 billion with a B cyber attacks on behalf of our customers, which is like a big number. Like, that's amazing. It's like, just like, wow. And the way we did that is we've had to build a global network and we've had to build a lot of infrastructure and it's, it's super flexible. So we can do a lot of things to help, kind of help businesses in this modern, modern, modern day world that we operate in. But to do that, it costs a lot of money. And so like that, that costs a lot of money on our side. So to, to. We have capex costs like capital expenditures. We have to write really awesome software. And so it makes sense that you want it to be used by as many people as possible because it was, it's expensive for us to build. And so for us, that was always part of the strategy was like, hey, we want to. Our mission is to help build a better intranet. And that means both like hobbyists, small business owners, entrepreneur trying to put something on the cloud, students who have a hobby project, nonprofits, but then of course also helping organizations. And I think what's kind of interesting is with the rise of cloud computing and now the Internet becoming so, so important to everybody and especially in these large organizations, they're all trying to think, okay, how do we modernize how we deliver solutions for our customers? And again, we have 15 years under our belt refining our products. So when the large organizations come and use it, they're like, wow, this is really good. And so it's always been part of the strategy. And again, it's pretty cool to see it all come together.

Yeah. And to your point, I guess people forget that the Internet and Internet infrastructure is not immune to the benefits of, not immune to the benefits of economies of scale. Right. Getting everyone in there makes it cheaper to make the quality product for everyone, it sounds like. And you've been very as you talk about sort of the growth and the step function. You've been pretty integral to that, obviously as COO and president and now co chair of the board, but you're still very hands on. I think you've had a pretty unique frontline view of, of the growth of this business. Even I lead all hands meeting every week. And you, you still meet with customers. You know, why is that really important to you as a leader?

Look, I feel, I really like my job. So let me just start with that. I like, I love, I love that I get to do what I get to do. I, I, I feel like one of the luckiest persons in the world and you know, there's a lot in there. So if you ask me, like what are my favorite parts of my job, my two favorite parts of my job are spending time with are the people I work with. So I, so many great folks at Cloudflare and then spending time with our customers. And the reason why I love spending time with customers is they tell you exactly what, what you need to do. They, they, they reassure, they, they give you the confidence that you're building the right sorts of things. And again, you want to be solving real problems for, for your customers. I think that's a rule number one as an entrepreneur. And so going to spend time with them, hearing about how's it going and when they are, you know, effusive about, oh my God, your team's so great to work with, the product works so well, that feels really good and it motivates you to keep going. And then likewise when they give you tough feedback, you're like, wow, we got to go fix that, we got to go address it. And so it's an amazing compass for exactly what we need to be doing. So I think customers are the lifeblood of businesses. And so I really, not only do I spend a lot of time with customers, but our whole executive team and we really encourage the broader team at Cloudflare to spend time with customers because at the end of the day that's what we're here to do, to help solve their problems. So I do spend a lot of time with it and I do enjoy it. And then for running the all hands and our team, it's fun. And I think that being a founder led business, I've come to realize that it's a huge asset. Matthew and I are very long term focused. We want to build something generational. And so while we're 15 years in, we're talking about the next 15 years and I think that's really motivating for folks to be like, wow, this is a place where I can bet my career on it and come do amazing work solving real problems for customers and the Internet. And again, I just think that that's. I'm having a lot of fun doing all of those things. So I think when you say you can find. Do the parts of your job that you find the joy in, I've really taken that to heart. And, and those are parts. It's like, I like, I like being and seeing the team. I like understanding what's going on and, and I love spending time with customers to validate some of the hypothesis that we have.

Absolutely. Yeah. And it sort of sounds like that approach is just sort of. It helps keep the. A general issue. I think as companies grow and as founders turn into leaders and sort of come you a wider view on a larger organization, they tend to become insulated both from the customers and from the employees. And so, you know, it sounds like that facetime with both is really critical to you. Can you talk a bit about that and other sort of qualities that you think are useful when scaling a tech company?

Well, you just mentioned reminding me of a story maybe to help highlight what you just mentioned. I remember this. I mean, we were several hundred people. We were about. We weren't 100 million in revenue. I call it, you know, 50, 60, 70 million in revenue. And we were scaling and it was exciting. And I remember hiring someone and they had come from another great tech company. And I remember they came in and they said something to me saying, wow, it's so refreshing that you and Matthew still come to work. And I was like, what do you mean? They're like, well, my last company, the founder stopped showing up for work, which, back to your point. And I was like, really? They're like, yeah, it's so refreshing that you hear it. And so I didn't realize that there was another way. But again, yes, we keep showing up for work. So I always tell founders, keep showing up for work. I think part of it is when you're scaling your business. And I think, and even if you're not the owner of the business, if you're at a job that's a company that's growing a lot, sometimes you find yourself not knowing exactly what you're supposed to be doing, because if you're, if it's growing, the company is changing, call it every 18 months or two years. And sometimes you're like, wait, we're doing it a new way. I'm not sure. And it's really easy to start to tell your narrative to yourself of, oh, I'm not qualified for this job. Well, the fastest way to validate that that narrative is if to stop showing up. Because if you stop going to the meetings and stop understanding the context, then you really aren't qualified for your job. But if you keep showing up and asking questions and being like, why are we doing it this way? Okay, now I understand. And learning, I think that's all of a sudden you start to connect the dots and you start to add value, and then you have the confidence of, actually, no, I'm perfect. I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. And so I do think one of the lessons I learned as somebody who's been at this growth company is where every two years it's changing is the rate at which you learn is like such a superpower. And so I'm always like, if someone's a curious, lifelong learner, they're going to do great at a growth company because there's always something new. You find yourself surrounded by people smarter than you. You find yourself in situations where you're not sure, you listen, you read up about it, then you have an opinion next time, and then by three times later, you're the expert. Like, that's how fast you can learn in these situations. And so I felt like I was putting myself in those situations, which is how I scaled myself. And that's what I tell folks both at Cloudflare and others that I meet, is the rate at which you're learning is your best friend. Like, really embrace it. And that means if you don't know something, like, go learn about it, put yourself in the situation, ask people, because you can learn. So that's one of the lessons learned. The other lesson learned is like, it's all about momentum, David. Like, it's all about momentum. Because when you're. If you're at a company that's growing, it means that you have to do fast things, faster than what the incumbent is doing or what, what. What your customers are already using. So you have to build out the product faster and better, or you have to do everything faster and better. And so momentum becomes really important. Like, like, start, middle end. How fast can we shift ship this thing? How do we make momentum forward? Because there's all sorts of problems. There's so many fires on a daily basis, and there's for sure not enough people or time to do everything you need. And, and so this idea of, like, okay, fine, yes, there's. There's all These things we haven't gone to yet. But this one, it's out there and it's well received. Awesome. And it gives you, it gives you this again, the energy you need to keep going. And so I do think momentum is your, is incredibly important. So what are you getting done? Getting stuff done, Momentum. And you know, as a founder of the business, like we, we have to start everything from scratch. So we definitely had this DNA to be able to get stuff done. Matthew Lee and I, we, for all the first hundred people at Cloudflare, you just can't work in an stage startup without that. But what was interesting as we started to scale, we brought in folks who had worked at more kind of established companies. Some people don't have that skill. They really like to talk about things or, or when they encounter a hiccup, they aren't sure what to do or they aren't sure, they don't have the grit or the, or they aren't sure how to navigate, like go ask for help or whatnot. And so they get stuck. And so I, I have learned that getting stuff done is a skill. And so that's been a big lesson learned. And so now we incorporate in our interview and it's kind of like your first couple weeks at Cloudflare, what have you shipped and ship might be update the wiki page, the internal wiki page, to make it better for internal use. But that counts. You left Cloudflare in a better place. And so what are some quick projects that you can ship in your first couple weeks to get you in the flow of habit of getting stuff done. So definitely would say like the rate of which you learn getting stuff done. And then the third one I'll just say is there's such a big difference between impossible and hard. And I think that with this podcast, the most innovative companies. It's interesting because sometimes when you're doing something innovative, you might be dangling on the line of is it just really hard or is it impossible? And I think sometimes people mistakenly say, oh, that's impossible, when what they really should be saying is, wow, that'd be amazing if you could figure that out. But that's going to be hard to figure out. And those are different things. But if it's something's impossible, you shouldn't spend time on it because that's just wasted energy. So I think that that's been the other lesson I've learned because I remember early on with Cloudflare, we met with some really smart people. Like, that's they said, hey, that's never going to work. Well, turns out they were wrong and they had some bad assumptions on their side. And so I think that that is just a reminder that big difference between impossible and really hard.

How do you decide what's impossible versus what's really hard? I guess.

Yeah.

And I guess, you know, sometimes you don't know. And so in that case it was like we weren't sure, but we said, well, we're going to go figure, we're going to go it out. And we, we, we, we, we had to build the technology like a prototype to get it working and we got a, a live beta working. And so it was going back to first principles and trying to get it to pieces. And I think that that's how you can create some really innovations and breakthroughs. And so that's how we approached it. It worked really well. And anytime we encountered a problem that was very hard, I find that like, really smart people love to talk about hard problems. They want to engage, you want to. And so, and sometimes that was within the walls of Cloudflare, but in other times we had to reach out beyond the walls of Cloudflare and go find others of saying and it was interesting. Whereas literally this is what it's like as an early stage founder doing something innovative. You know, we were in this one meeting where we had gotten to know somebody who had been in the industry who was helping us like lay out how to run a global network or how to build a global network and kind of demystified how we would do that. And the next meeting and that conversation happened was like, this is never going to work. And I was like, well, I just talked to somebody who just has spent the last 10 years of his career. He kind of said, hey, here's if I were you, how would I approach it? He thought it was worth trying. And so sometimes you got to make sure you're asking the right person or and just be. And again, it's hard to predict the future. And humans, even really smart humans are also wrong. And so you have to take the good parts of it, but then move forward. And again, for us, it was trying to break it down and prove it out. And as we proved out back to the first principles, it was amazing how other people wanted to come along and help solve it. And then at some point we started to run into some software problems and we started to blog about it on our blog. We have a corporate blog, huffler.com blog and it was interesting. That was the moment where our blog kind of went from more marketing Type to this very well read technical resource. Where we started, we said, okay, well, we're not sure how to solve this problem. So we literally put the problem on the blog post and a bunch of people from around the world helped us solve it. They had helped us solve some of these first principles, and it was a bug that we were encountering and it was interesting. And so I think that there's something about there's different levers you can use and, and, and, but, but, and, and I just, like I always tell our team, but there are some things that, where it's like, no matter what you do, you're not going to change the answer. And so that. Those are ones where we always encourage our team, like, well, let's not spend any more time on it. Like, let's go spend our time on other things, because there's so many other things to spend time on. And so you also have to know when to accept, okay, this probably isn't possible right now, or maybe it'll be possible in the future, or there's nothing we can change to make that work, or let's go do it, let's go find another way. And so you kind of also have to be able to walk away once in a while. So that's got some tools in the toolkit that might be helpful.

Totally. Yeah. And when you were talking about sort of your growth as a leader, you were talking about the magic of podcasting, we were talking a little about your evolution as a leader and talking about as a leader, wanting to understand that you're learning fast in these environments. And I think that one of the prime examples of everyone learning fast right now is AI. I'd love to chat a little bit about how Cloudflare is using AI. You know, every. And you know, however, it's branded machine learning AI, generative AI, whatever, analytical AI, agentic AI. Everyone's being touched by it. How are you viewing AI? Where are you using it in your service offerings?

Yes. Yeah. No. Oh, my gosh. Well, you know, we can't go more than a few minutes by without bringing up the word AI.

It's, It's.

I'm excited. I live in San Francisco. There's so many things going on in the Ifron here. It's so exciting. I know there's risks and challenges, too. I understand that, but I feel like we are so much better to navigate those as an industry than even compared to 10 years ago, which maybe if we have time, we can talk about that. But on the AI side, it's a Huge shift. It's like the invention of electricity, the invention of Internet. It's a big shift. And so I'm excited. I think it's been interesting to see the acceleration the last six months. It just feels like, like, I feel like the business acceleration the last six months been exciting. So here's a. So just to put some structure around it. So I think there's three big pillars when it comes to AI, when it comes to cloud flourish. So the first one applies to every business out there. So the first pillar that applies to every business is, okay, how are you using AI internally to be more productive so that you can find some dollars in the business to go reinvest elsewhere? And that's something that every company is doing. And there's, there's some that are really ahead of the pack, there's some of the meeting in the pack, there's some that are, you know, being really caut. But like, that's something every company is going to have to think about, is like, okay, how do we rethink some of these services? How to get efficiency gains, productivity gains, because if you don't and everyone else does, you won't be competitive. So it's kind of back to the business model side, but the cost side of the business model and like the productivity side. So I think that's interesting. So we're doing that and I have no amazing use case that I think is worth bringing up. But we're doing that as every company should be, I think interesting lessons learned around that. The second bucket is what every, if you're a founder or a senior leader or you sit on someone's board, you should be asking yourself, or if you're a public, or if you invest in companies, I guess is the other one is okay, AI, is it a tailwind for this company that you're, that you work at or you want to invest in, or is it a headwind? Because I think that that's like an important way to frame it for businesses. And so for Cloudflare, one of the ways that we've provided global performance and reliability in cybersecurity is always by saying, hey, we're going to take all the threat data we have and use it with machine learning and AI to help provide better cybersecurity defenses. So we've been doing this for years. The whole model of what we do, we can bring in the new models and that's exciting. So that's just kind of validating what we've been doing. But as AIs come on in the street theme we've kind of said okay, what other products can we bring to market to help our customers? And so one that is very exciting is like, like AI gateway where customers want to understand, okay, I, I want my, my employees internally at my company to be able to use AI, but I don't want any of the data to leak. I don't want any sensitive information, I don't want any proprietary information from the company to leave. That actually falls under the cyber security umbrella. It's the same. They don't, they don't want employees stealing information they don't want, they don't want to leaking their employees information externally. It's kind of called data loss prevention is that whole field. So we launched a service that helps companies understand if data sensitive data is leaving through their AI models. Helps them say if, if, if Gemini is the, is the service that's approved internally to use. If someone goes to write an employee goes to write chat GBT in the URL, it redirects it to Gemini for example. So we already expanded our offerings and so our product managers are excited to say okay, it's in the vein of what we're but it's helping our businesses faster. And so I like for us, if you ask me is it is AI a tailwind or a headwind for our business, I'm like absolutely 100% a tailwind because it's just it proves that what we're already doing, we're well positioned to help fight all the things that are coming, help protect our customers. But at the meantime we can expand our product category to be, to be current. So I think that's good. The third category I think is super interesting and, and, and this is one where I can't wait to see what people build and back to this most innovative companies. It's gon interesting to see which companies show up on your list and your podcast going forward. David is now with like the rise of agents and like the new development platforms and how, how all of this stuff. What's interesting is companies are saying whoa, we want to build something and how we've built those things from the past. We're willing to start like do it a new way and there Cloudflare is really well positioned. So on top of doing cybersecurity and reliability and performance, we actually run a whole developer platform at the same around the edge of the intern and we've built all the primitives to have agents out of the box. So now our customers can start to like play and deploy an agent and it integrates with OpenAI's and all these different LL models, like within seconds. And so you can just think about all the amazing entrepreneurs or all the dev teams within these companies who are starting to play with this, with this developer platform that didn't exist like that. Just they didn't even need that. They didn't even need four years ago. Like, it's just so current new and you can deploy it and it's instantly scalable. The security is already baked in by default. You don't have to think, have to add that in at all after the fact. And so that I'm super excited about. So we're watching really closely all the startup founders who are starting building cool stuff, the big companies that are building cool stuff, because I think some really innovative ideas are going to come out of there that will benefit consumers and societies and economies. And I'm excited to see what we create, what our customers create.

Totally, yeah. And I think from our perspective as journalists, sort of following all these trends, you know, there's definitely sort of a dichotomy between the companies that have said, all right, well, guess AI is a thing. Now we're going to sort of redo our whole thing to be around AI versus companies like what you just described, which is, where can we deploy this smartly, quickly, easily, in a way that we're already doing some of these things. We can use AI to boost it, and it's a value add for everyone.

Yeah, well, and I think this comes back to why I like to spend time with customers, is, are you solving a real problem? And it's a really good place when you're solving problems for your customers and either ones they have today or the ones they're about to have tomorrow. And if you're a trusted partner and you're trying to do the right thing, that's just a really good place to be. And I think that that's, I think we have a long track record of that.

So you're talking about building this sort of becoming integral to customers and getting FaceTime with customers and that pipeline. But, you know, part of that is sort of Cloudflare's freemium model. Right? You're still operating under freemium model. Why, why do that? You know, you're, you've got size, you've got scale. Now what is the benefit of having this free tier that brings people in?

Well, so our mission is to help build better Internet. And not that I keep. I think I've now said that three times, but it's just so important as a North Star. And so for sure aligns with the mission. It's you want to help protect, affect both small and large organizations. Because if you don't, if Matthew and I believe like if you don't help the small businesses they end up becoming used as like the attackers will go and use them as a launch pad to do bigger things. And so you really have to, it's kind of like you really need cybersecurity to be available to everyone. And so we're in a position where we believe that and so that's why we started free. We don't want it to be, we don't to want want. I don't have the budget to be a reason not to use it. And we also don't want, we don't have the technical resources to be a reason not to use it. And so even if you're not technical, you can sign up for cloudflare in less than five minutes. Like that's pretty awesome. And, and, and, and that was just been really important to us. So, so it's definitely the right thing to do and it aligns with our ethos as founders. And when Lee was here he really believed it too. The, the how but we're a business, so how do we continue to do it? And so there's actually six really good business reasons why we serve everyone on top of it being the right thing. To give you a sense, one of the reasons, one of the ways that we were able to stop 247 billion cyber attacks yesterday was because all the threat intel that we have and what's interesting is when you Service the free C3 customers who are on our free plan, you get like students with projects in different parts of the world or you get bloggers from Malaysia. You have these small businesses actually there's some like IR the IRS of some small countries, you know, are, are maybe more on our low tier plans, but anyhow, so it's, it's like these hobbyists, individualists that's interesting because they almost all act as honeypots around the, they almost act as beacons around the world where we get data, really varied data of who's good and who's bad online. And so by the time the attacker comes and tries to do something against a brand name company, our system has been learning about it for months, months or quarters. So it's very effective. And so it's kind of like it's a neighborhood watch. The more people a part of it, the more powerful it is. And that's always been the like the premise. So we have really great data that helps us provide better solutions for our customers, both on the cybersecurity front, but also performance and reliability front. So the data is super helpful and it's like broad data. The other one is, it's interesting. It's. Some of those people come end up working for us, like the technical recruiting. And so if we only started at a price tag of $100,000 or more, a lot of the developers wouldn't be able to afford to use that. They'd only get to know us through their businesses. But the fact that we kind of opened up the market, we have developers using in their high schools, college projects, their. The little hobby things that they do on the side, because technologists are obvious. And then they end up wanting to come work at Cloudflare. And we get amazing technical talent who then want to go build these products for our customers and the Internet, which is amazing. Other things are to build a global network is not easy. And so it was really one of the ways that helps us build the network around the world closer to eyeballs, closer to where people are seeing the Internet. And it's by. By having it really opening up who we service. And so there's. There's so many good reasons why we do it. And what I love is it's not only the right thing to do, but there's all these good business reasons to do it. And again, I think that's. I feel like that's like a. If you can justify why you're doing it with good business reasons and it's the right, right thing to do. Like, that's a really good combination. That's a powerful combination.

Yeah, definitely. And it sounds like, yeah, you've. You found that for. For freemium, for sure, sort of in. In the vein of business decisions and, and things like that. I think there, you know, there have been some moments in Cloudflare's history recently and, you know, over time, Right. Like some of the work and your place in the infrastructure of the Internet and cybersecurity has put you in some controversial positions. Right. There's the fact you're still operating data centers in Russia. There's also sort of your decision not to provide services to places like eight Chain and the Daily Stormer. Where do you see Cloudflare sitting in all this? Right. Like there's a business decision there. Does it make sense decision there? What's your thing around where your role in, I guess, in a sense, moderating the Internet, but also just who you're.

Working with, yeah, no, thank you so much for the question. It's so interesting because, like, five years ago, there's no way you would have asked me this question. Or six years ago and 10 years ago, definitely nobody wanted to talk about this. So it's interesting, which I actually think is impossible. I actually think we as an industry have moved so much, and I think it's tied back to. The Internet is the lifeblood of society and the economy. It's not going away. And so public policy actually ends up being really important. Like, the policy side of it becomes really important. And 10 years ago, there was kind of like the policymakers and the technologists and they didn't talk very much. And now there's so much more commingling and discussion because it's clear, hey, we need to have. We need to have voices at the table to have the shareholders at the table, the stakeholders. Excuse me, at the table, to, to discuss, discuss, hey, how are we gonna. What do we need to change around this? And so, and, and it kind of makes sense. The Internet's only 30 years old, so it kind of makes sense. Like, okay, actually we've learned a lot. Let's come together and figure out. And the first 10 years, it wasn't much, and it was really the rise of cloud that realized, oh, wow, we need, we need better. We need better frameworks and language around all of this. And this is why the last 10 years has become so much more, because it's so much easier to build something online and start something. And then some of that stuff is ugly or not nice or terrible, and it's kind of unsavory, and it's brought up all of these kind of topics. And so that's just like, I think, some context. So now, like, more context. So I think that there's a framework here too, which is kind of new. Again, this didn't really exist eight years ago. There's a framework of, okay, what's the user doing online? The ultimate responsibility is what the user is doing. They go and do it into some sort of platform. And so typically it's like, where are they? Where are they? Where are they writing something that's inappropriate? Like, this is in the bad side, the kind of unsavory side. Like, where's the platform? There's the infrastructure providers, which is where Cloudflare definitely sits on the infrastructure side, and then there's the access providers. And so even understanding there's different tiers to, like the. Like, where do you sit in the ecosystem? But, like, that seems so I just, I just kind of said it in such an easy. Like it may. It took me 60 seconds to say that, but like, that didn't exist eight years ago. So this kind of user, the, the. So like the platforms, which a lot of people point to, the social media communities, online communities, then there's the infrastructure providers and there's access. So Cloudflare is in the infrastructure side. And so we're kind of abstracted from the users. There's definitely things in between us and the users. And so, so every tier has a role and responsibility to play, and ultimately it relies on the user and what they're doing online. And then the platforms have a responsibility to say, what are the norms? What are we accepting? And if something falls outside of the law or what's acceptable, it's on them to deal with it. Okay. And I think this is kind of well under, like now agreed upon. There's tricky parts of things that are like, truly gross and, and just like grotesque, but not against the law. And the platform don't want to deal with it. And so then what should happen? And so we, as the infrastructure provider, like, you don't want the infrastructure and the access providers dealing with this because if we, if we make a decision you don't like, there's like no recourse, but you're not our customer. It's like we have, like, it's just not. It's so abstracted. It's an infrastructure service that we're providing. And so we believe in infrastructure service providers really following the rule of law in the countries they govern things being going through due diligence, being thoughtful and being. Because that's the only way you can trust your infrastructure provider. You don't want them making jerk decisions because of how they feel one day. And I think that makes sense. And it's back to look, even if something's grotesque and you disagree with it and the person that runs the platform won't take it offline, do we really want to get it offline by cyber attack? That kind of feels. That's like, that's equally grotesque. Like, that's what people are asking for. Remove the cyber security so I can go launch an attack against it and get it offline. Like, that's not the right way to deal with it in a civil society. And so it's, it's back to things that follow due process, following a rule of law, and, and every player on. Depending where you are, you have different sets of rules and responsibilities. And I actually think that framework's going to work really well for this next 10 years. I actually think that framework will work really well. We've, we've, we've learned a lot as an industry. And I actually think it's great that we're talking about it on things like podcasts and news, because it's something that people have to understand. And it'. Not, it's, it's. Well, then what people say is, well, if it's so grotesque, like, why do we allow it? Well, if it, well, okay, if you don't, if it's so obvious, go help, go get, figure out a way to pass the law to change it. And it turns out people figure out, realize, well, actually, that's not so easy. It's not. It's easy to pass a law, but it's easy to pass a law that doesn't damage all the good stuff that often comes off on the other side. And that's the tricky part. So these things are complicated. And what I always tell people is like, look, I love that Clouder has a seat at the table. I think we have the best public policy team in the industry. We care. We are so thoughtful. We will engage, we will make unpopular choices, which sometimes people cheer us on for making unpopular choices, tough choices, because they're like, wow, you're standing up for us. And other times they're like, wait, you're making a tough choice. But I don't like your, Like, I'm mad that you're standing up. And that's what I think. Then I always feel like, okay, we're the right balance, because we're very principled in the way we approach this and we actually have a lot of clarity. And I think it comes back to we have a team, we're willing to engage, but we're not going to make harsh, fast decisions around it because it's really important that people are thoughtful. And I think our approach is very thoughtful. So if you're interested in this, either come work at Cloudflare or get involved. Because there's so many organizations that are leaning in because we really need both the industry, the private side, and the governments and the academics to come together to figure out, okay, how do we evolve this framework to work for the next 20 years of the Internet? Because it's not going away, it's only becoming more important.

Yeah, definitely. And I guess to the point of, as you've built a global audience, you know, there are various laws and rules you're then accountable to. Right. I mean, I think it's the sort of the story of Twitter in Germany versus Twitter in the US and the difficult, you know, the differences there that exist and having to, you know, not just think about one market, but think global, globally, as you've grown.

Right. Oak. Well, that, so it's interesting is now, as Internet's become so important, these countries are passing different laws and as they should, it's, you know, tied to their society. But now as a business, you have to abide by those. And we, we operate in 100, we have points of presence in 120 countries around the world. And so we, our job is to say to our customers, again, the businesses, both small businesses and large businesses, hey, look, if you need to, if you're going into Germany or the UK or Australia, clap can help you comply with the local laws. Is we already doing this for all of our other customers? And this is back to one of the reasons why having a lot of customers use our service makes sense, because that's an expensive problem to solve, making sure that you're complying with laws in the UK and Germany. And again, every country is passing them, you need one provider versus one for each market. Like, that's just not going to scale. And so it's back to, it's like Cloudflare does the work, but then all of these businesses around the world can benefit from it because there's lots of businesses that are trying to go into Germany and the UK need to be compliant and, and we can help them meet those requirements. And so it's, it's, it's, it's. So I feel like all these really interesting, tricky, relevant topics. Clafler has like, something to say about it, which is back to why I think I have the best job in.

The world to bring up another hot button issue, hot topic right now, which is sort of representation of in tech, in the executive world and generally the workplace. Right now. You're one of few female founders running a tech company of this size. And that was true 15 years ago. It's still true now. Where do you see business being able to better encourage more women, more underrepresented groups to work in tech and aspire to leadership roles? And what do you make of the sort of, of weird cultural moment we're in where that seems like a bad thing to a lot of people?

Yeah, we're really, we're leaving all the easy ones for the end, David. I see. So thank you. Yeah.

Gotta get you comfortable and then we go for it.

Got it, got it. Okay, now, now I know that actually makes sense now that you say that, obviously you should do that way. So, yeah, I mean, look, I don't, I don't, I don't. I am, am. I'm very busy with my day job, I would say operating what I do at Cloud Flare. So I'm pretty focused on it from that perspective, which I think is a unique perspective because I am, you know, a leader who happens to be a woman running this large organization in a pretty technical comp, in a, in a technical industry. And so a couple of things that I like to say, so if there, the more diverse teams are a better place to work and drive better business results, like all the research shows that, and I like it makes 100 sense to me. And diverse gender is one type of diversity. There's obviously lots of other types of diversity too, under minorities and whatnot. And Matthew Lee and I have always believed that. And again, we were lucky we had a founder that was a woman. But if you fast forward today, like 34% of people at Cloudflare are women. And I like think that's great. And, and we have equal number of women in leadership roles. So kind of like senior directors and above. And what's interesting is when you, if you are, if you are, if you can see women in leadership roles, it turns out more women want to come. They're like, oh, wow, you actually have women in leadership. My last year had none. And so you have to start somewhere. And I do think having some women in leadership help and then it helps helps the next, like just people see it's possible to have a career here and that, that, and by, by seeing that there's others ahead. So I think that that is true and that's what has been true at Cloudflare. And, and, and it doesn't mean it's always easy, but it, it is helpful. And so that's something just that I think for others that could be an interesting way of like, if you really are serious about it. Well, you got to figure out you have to start with a couple. And I think more senior is better than junior because the junior people want to see senior people. They're eating. So there's that. The second thing that's super interesting. And again, this is not rocket science, but it was kind of. I was embarrassed when, when, when someone said it to me, I was like, actually it's true. So I, I, my job at Cloud, I'm always recruiting, always be recruiting and always be closing. Like as a founder, you're always doing those things. I'm like always about trying to close in our next customer I'm always trying to recruit the next person. And, and, and it's just like a big part of my life. I spend a lot of time doing both. And so it's interesting. Like, I know a lot of people, so I often say, hey, David, you're like, you're in the space. We're looking for a great, I don't know, writer. Who do you know? Is there anyone in your network? You come and I, like, I for many years spent, said would. Every time I met somebody, I'd be like, who are some of the best people in your network that I should consider talking to, to come work at Cloudflare was always recruiting. And if you, you just, if you just leave it like that, you get mostly men referrals. If you want women or underrepresented minorities, whatever the diversity of what you want is if you just add by saying, and by the way, we're really looking for more women enjoying Cloudflare. Like, if you know any great women, I'd love those referrals too. Guess what? You get more women referral names. And it's not. And it's just, it is. And so it's these small things that can add up to big things. And again, these are not, these are not going to solve the whole industry. I have no illusion around that. But I do think those are actionable things that for folks who are frustrated by it, if you, if you are in a position where you can hire or you're in a position where you can hire at a company, if you are a hiring manager at your company, those little things do make a difference. And, and, and I think, like, if we all do those little things, we can start to kind of help change some of the narrative. And the last thing I say is like, look, there's so many amazing women in technology. Like, I like water at Cloudflare. I know so many. There's so many. There's, there's thousands and thousands and thousands of amazing women, but there are more, more men. There are definitely more men than women. And so, and so it's, it's these things where it's like, okay, I think it's one of the reasons why I try and do a little bit of speaking and do these sorts of things, because if we show up, it's like, oh, it is possible and you are doing well. And I think that's, that's, that's important. And so I think that there are so many great women. We need more. It's a great industry to join. It's becoming like More important to our lives, not less important to people's lives. And, and if you are a woman in the industry and you end up at a company where you're not treated well, you should vote with your talents and go somewhere else. Because not all companies are created equally. They have different cultures and it's not the same. And so I, I, and, and again, there are some bad experiences out there which are awful. But it's like vote with your talent and go somewhere else and focus on doing great work. So you can say, I worked on these projects, these were the outcomes. Find a place where, where, where doing great work is celebrated whether you're a woman or a man. And then it feels much more fair and that feels better. And so I think that one is just like, vote with your talent. Like, vote with your feet. Vote with your talent. I like, I think that's an important too. Like there's, you do have choice.

Yeah. And that's what's so fascinating to me when, when people talk about, oh well, we don't do dei, we're not woke or whatever, like, fine, okay, do you, but look at your workforce in two or three years and if it is a strange and toxic place to work, I don't know how much of that is, you know, self inflicted, feels like an unforced error.

And this is back to where I'm like, look, sometimes words matter. So, so I've learned also words matter. So just like, you know, that's why it's back to like look more diverse teams are a better place to work and drive better business results. And so it's just like, like it is a better place like where, where it's not everyone with the same background, not everyone looks the same. You get, you build better products because people see things that you don't see or bring different things to the table. It's harder upfront. Like, it's definitely harder. You got to build trust to do it. But if you can get past it, it definitely drives better business results and better place to work. And so I'm just focused on that. And, and that's our experience. And again, we're lucky we, we have it. So now it's about keeping it and improving it, which is a much easier position to be in than a company that doesn't have it or a team that doesn't have it. And, and, and I, that that is one of those things where it's like, okay, but I just think if you're, if you're honest about it, if you want to change something and you say, hey, look, we haven't, we haven't had a great track record of having women here, but we're really trying to change that. Will you come here and help us change it? I, like, I think that that's honest and there, that that would be a winning strategy. But, but if you're not really, if you really don't want to change it, then you shouldn't say that. And, and it's fine. And then, and it's just going to be different types of companies. And that's back to people voting with their talent matters. It's like, go to the places where it does, where, where you are, where you do feel your best.

Absolutely. Yeah. I really appreciate your time today.

Thank you so much for having.