Michelle Zatlyn - Co-founder, President & COO | Cloudflare | Afternoon "T" Episode 51

And you ask 10 smart people, you get 10 different answers. There's lots of ways to build a company. There's lots of ways to live your life. There's lots of ways to be successful in life. And just because someone you admire has a point of view, it may or may not be right for you. Always seek advice, but at the end of the day, you're in charge of your company or your career or your life. You can't outsource those decisions to somebody else.

Hello, hello, hello. I am so excited, very, very excited today because I have the Michelle Zaplin of Cloudflare joining us today. Canadian legend. I'm going to start off with that. But before I start with anything, Michelle, let me just start with the introduct, if you please. Michelle Zatlin is co founder, president and chief operating Officer of Cloudflare, the Internet security, performance and reliability company on a mission to help build a better Internet. Prior to co founding Cloudflare, Michelle held positions at Google and Toshiba and launched two successful startups. Michelle currently serves on the board of directors for Atlassian and the World Economic Forum Young Global Leaders Foundation. Michelle has been named to Fortune's 40 under 40 list and was part of Mary Claire's Sarah 7th Annual New Guard.

Sounds so cool.

She holds a BS degree with distinction from McGill University, an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she was awarded the Dublier Prize for entrepreneurship. Michelle, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you so much for having me, Chris. I'm honored to be here and that was a very gracious and kind intro. So thank you for all those kind words as well.

Thank you for giving us such a great history to make those kind words happen. So we'll tell you what, we're just going to go straight into the meat right off the bat. I mean, I'm a vegetarian, but we're going straight to the meat. Either way. Can you please share the creation story of Cloudflare with me?

Definitely. It's a good one. It's kind of a made for Disney TV movie. I would say it's a Disney entrepreneurship story. So I am proudly Canadian. I grew up in Saskatchewan. I went to McGill. I was studying science because I thought I was going to go to med school. And somewhere along the way I decided, hey, I'm not sure I want to go to med school. So I'm going to work for a bit. And ended up working in Toronto at all these different great companies. And fast forward, at some point I decided I wasn't going to go to med school. And I found myself doing my MBA at Harvard Business School in Boston. And again as a, as a girl that grew up in Saskatchewan, that was not the most common path to end up at Harvard Business School doing your mba. But somehow I found myself there. And it was at HBS where I met a classmate and we started to work on this idea. And this idea turned into Cloudflare. And it was really, we were students doing our mba and, and I was not an expert in cybersecurity or performance reliability. My classmate Matthew Prince knew a lot more about that than I did. But I was really drawn to this idea of could we create a service that helps make the Internet safer, faster and more reliable, whether you're a small business, a developer, an entrepreneur, or one of the biggest companies in Canada or the world. And that was the idea and that we started as a school project and every time we pulled the string, I was like, wow, there's a real problem here. Wow, there's a real solution here. Wow, I think there's a real business. And next thing I knew, we were graduating from Harvard Business School. I was supposed to move to Vancouver and instead I was packing my stuff up in a U Haul. And Matthew and his mother drove the U Haul from Boston to San Francisco. And we showed up in the Silicon Valley in the summer of 2009 to see if we can make what this idea had become Cloudflare a reality. And fast forward 12 years later. Cloudflare is now a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange. We have over 2,500 employees at Cloudflare. And every day we make the Internet faster, safer and more reliable for over 27 million Internet properties. So it's a huge idea. We've kind of, this idea that happened on campus is a real thing and I feel super lucky to get to do what I do every day.

That is an amazing story. And you know what, I'd say your company is all, well, it's one of the most important companies. Like it might not be the name for non techies or business people like Google or stuff like that, but you secure the Internet and you expedite it. Like you are that layer that provides confidence that your business is going to stay up.

And.

That'S just incredible that, you know, for coming from Saskatchewan going that route that you created a layer of confidence at the end of the day. And I just, I think that's awesome, you know, that's just awesome. We'll tell you what, you hold two titles and they're very different in my mind. You're president and, and Chief Operating Officer. How do those roles diverge?

Yes. Yeah, I love that. I'm the President and Chief Operating Officer of Cloudflare. So, you know, it's interesting because I think there's a lot of founders listening to the story or people working at growth companies. I mean, there's so much going on with growth companies in Canada and it's kind of. I used to, I still listen to people a few years ahead of me and I'm always kind of like, how did you do it? How did you do it? So here's a little insight is I did not start with a president or Chief Operating officer title. And I think that's a really important piece for founders listening or even if you're joining an early stage company where sometimes title it's something you can earn over time. And for me, we had started Cloudflare, but we did not have in depth track records. It's not like we had done this three other times and we really had earned these titles. We are very much earlier in our career. And what was interesting is at first I needed a job title. You do when you start a company. But for a longest time I really liked what Marissa Meyer used at Google. This was again, you know, 12 years ago, she was a big, I just looked at her and she was head of User experience and had this really big job at Google. So I like that for a long time I used user experience at Cloudflare. And what happened was over time, as we executed and did really, really well, it was clear that Matthew and I were running this business together and I had earned the title of Chief Operating Officer. So it was the first, it was the first that came and it was many years ago now. But I just tell that story for founders because it wasn't on day one. It was actually almost easier to earn it through execution and doing a good job. And so that when eventually was announced, everyone's like, of course that's what you've been doing all the time. It wasn't like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, should we interview other people? Or are you sure she's the right person? It wasn't like that at all. It was, I was operating in that role and it was almost like the title came after the fact that. Which worked really well for me because it was early in my career. So for people listening, I think that can be a good path. And then what happened many years later, a couple years later was with Matthew and the board, they came to me saying, hey, we want to add the president title. And I think it was a recognition of the larger scope, the larger responsibility. And it felt really good that the board of directors at Matthew came to me. It wasn't me asking for it. And it was again a little bit of a feel good career story. You don't. You often hear the inverse happening where you got to like lobby for yourself and negotiate for yourself. And I think those are all true. But in my case it was, I was doing a good job, I wasn't too worried, I wasn't obsessed about it and it came to me. And so today I run all of our go to market functions, all of our people, organizations of sales and marketing, customer support and customer success. So if you are a Cloudflare customer, thank you. Hope you have a great experience. If you don't, let me know. We want all of our customers to have a great experience and growing that part of our business, which is growing very quickly as well as the people. Because at the end of the day, companies are groups of people. And how do you get people to join your company? How do they feel once they're there? Are they empowered to do great work? So those are my, that's my span of responsibilities today.

I love the way you say that. You deserved it. Like you had to feel that you, that, that people came to you instead of that. Because so many, I mean, we've all done the startup thing especially, you know, right out of, right out of school. We're like, I'm the CEO, I'm the president. Well, you know what? No, you're a whole bunch of people that are doing hopefully divergent things to make things successful. And you should be deserving that title. I mean, you should be falling into that title. And the fact that the rest of your team is like, no, you deserve it. Says it all about the work that you do in order to create those seeds moving forward. Well, you know, Cloudflare, I mean, as you said, New York Stock Exchange ipo, how did things change? Like what? Sort of a shock. Like everyone thinks that's the, you know, you get to the ipo, that's the most exciting thing. But things changed drastically. What were the first sort of things that changed when you went to, through that?

You know, it's, it's interesting if you, I hope again, a lot of your listeners are thinking about maybe you're starting a company, you're already progressing, or maybe you, maybe you have yet to start your company, but that's what's next for you in your career, which is super exciting. And again, you hear these stories I mean, I used to, you know, as I started to build, you hear these stories about starting to taking your company public. And we got to do that, which was an amazing experience. And it's interesting that taking your company public has a reaction. And you ask 10 smart people, you get 10 different answers for. Some people are like, oh, never do that. Wait as long as humanly possible. That is definitely one of the story arcs that you hear. You hear others say, do it as soon as possible. And so the really what's interesting is when you are an entrepreneur or founder is you got to be careful who you take advice from. People like lots of people, there's lots of ways to build a company. There's lots of ways to live your life. There's lots of ways to be successful in life. And just because someone you admire has a point of view, it may or may not be right for you. And I think that's been an interesting lesson for me as I've gone through my career. I always seek advice. But the other day, you're in charge of your company or your career or your life. You can't outsource those decisions to somebody else. It's easy to give advice. It's another thing to make it all happen. So I'll just say with that. So for us, we had no pressure to go public. We really didn't. We had money in the bank. We did not have investors. One of the other story arcs, like, oh, my investors made me. We are investors were wonderful. We had great venture capitalists. They were not pressuring us to go public at all. We had, we had no pressures like that. But I think that one of the I guess narrative we used to use, or Matthew and I used to use internally with the team is just, hey, look, we are clearly a successful business. At the time we were doing about 200, we went public, we were doing 287 million in revenue. And that's a lot of revenue. It's a lot of customers depending on us. It was like, that's real revenue. And we had about 1100 people at Cloudflare when we actually went public. And it's a big responsibility. And we kind of thought of it as almost at some point you got to move out of your parents basement. You know, we didn't have to. Your parents, you know, some parents kick you out of your basement, but lots are happy for you to stay there and whatnot. And we just felt like at some point we have to kind of grow up and mature and move out of our parents basement. And so that was kind of the narrative we used in for language that we use and how we got our head around it. And there's a lot of things you have to do to go public. It's actually like a ton of work from the finance team and your legal team. And there are a lot of things you need to put in place before you can actually be a publicly traded company. You need systems and controls and processes. But whether you're public or not, those are good things. When you have real scale Again, almost 300 million in revenue when we went public, like, it's like we kind of should have those controls and checks and balances in place because it's both companies are trusting us, but we were also spending a lot of money with vendors and around the world. And you're just like, you know, you want to make sure. And so for us it was an idea of getting growing. It was time for us to move out of our parents basement, grow up as a company. I think it did. We did grow up as a company. Our processes matured, our systems matured. And it's interesting, I tell this story where when you go through that process, you hire investment bankers. And they came to meet us and we worked with Goldman Sachs and they came, they said, okay, what do you want out of this IPO process? And I kind of thought to myself, okay, first of all, are there more than one choice? Like, isn't the answer obviously for it to go well? I mean, what else would you want? What else would be on my option list? I was kind of like, what are my other options besides go well? And so we talked about it going well and it being collaborative and all these sorts of things. But one of the things that I ended up through that conversation saying is I also want it to be fun because it is a lot of work. A lot of things in life are a lot of work. You can kind of do it with a mindset of it being a lot of work and lamenting it every single day or kind of embracing it. And so you know that what ended up being a very, I'd say, positive and fun experience for people at Cloud 4 that were there during that time and our families. And so we did the body of work, but then actually the act like going public on that actual day where you're listing, we made it a celebration. And I think it's one of those things where people look back on their career because you don't take your company public very often and you don't work at companies that go public very often. And you think you got to read. You read your, you listen to all your podcasts, Chris, and maybe you make it seem easy or you read online on Twitter. It feels like everyone's doing it, but it's really on the New York Stock Exchange. When we did it, we were the 210th company to go public in 10 years. On the tech side, I mean, there have been biotech and other companies, but pure tech companies, the 210th company on the New York Stock Exchange in 10 years. So it wasn't something that happened all the time. And so I think people look back to it. Of course it was a lot of work, but it was also a very fun experience. And so for me, it was a pretty positive experience. I think Matthew would agree. And then since then, we've been public for two and a half years. I would say that it's continued to be a positive experience for us at the company. We've taken it seriously. I think the company is better run and better governed. And some surprises I would say is you kind of hear, oh, you can no longer share information. We still are transparent and share information. The timing around that might be shifted, but you can still share a lot more. So that kind of ended up being more of a, it was not a big of a difference than I thought it was going to be. And the second thing I will just say that's been almost like a surprise on the other side is when you're public, like the awareness, people can look you up. It's like the staying power customers, larger customers are more comfortable doing business with us because they can, they're like, okay, you're not going out of business tomorrow. We can see that you're other, you have staying power. And I think that that was not something that was in my calculus or what I had heard when you think about going public. And so I think it's been a real positive for the business and we've taken it seriously. And so I'm proud to say we've kind of moved out of our parents basement.

Chris, that is so much fun. I love the fact that you said you have to have fun because you know what? You don't move out of your parents house and not have fun. That's, that's, that's the first rule that I think is incredibly important here. But also the fact that you are such an important, you're such an important company to all of, you know, to the globe. I mean, I'll just, I'll just say it is dead serious work what you do, yet you better have fun with it. You know, I am so glad to hear that because I think that's a bit of a Canadian flair, too. I'm going to. I'm going to give you that. You know, if not San Francisco, if not, if not Harvard style, at least it's a little bit of a Canadian flair. And I'm really glad that you decided that's going to be part of the culture and continue to be part of the culture. Well, you know, in terms of Cloudflare, I mean, there's so much that you can say here, but what would you say you're most proud of?

There are so many things to say, but, you know, I. I'm the best part of my job are the people I get to work with. And so I guess that's maybe also what I'm most proud of is I like the people I work with. Matthew and I. Matthew Lee and I started Cloudflare together. Lee, unfortunately, is very sick. He left many years ago and he's very, very sick. It's tragic, but Matthew and I are still there. We started this community together. We're founders and we work really well together. And that doesn't just happen. Any relationship takes work on both sides. And I think I'm really proud that the respect that we have for each other and Matthew's an amazing co founder and CEO and I just feel so lucky to be able to work with him. But then it's. But then I think about our executive team, how long standing and how again, that respect and admiration for folks who are really good on product or engineering. And it's like I feel lucky. I get to work with these people and then the broader organization. And so I just, you know, sometimes the last two years especially, it's been a heavy time in the world between the pandemic and some of the riots that have gone on against racial uprisings against, like the George Floyd, especially in the US and the election, there's been a lot of. And now what's going on in Ukraine. It's been a really heavy time. And sometimes I've escaped the reality of the world by going to work because I like the people I work with and I feel like our work really matters as you've done a really nice job kind of saying, like, the world needs the Internet more than ever right now. Businesses are relying on it more than ever. And I feel like whether we can ship that product or make our product better, it makes a huge difference to it being safe and faster and more reliable. And so I'm very proud of the relationships, the people aspect of what we've maintained both within Cloudflare, but then our board or venture capitalists and kind of just even relationships with people who used to work at Cloudflare who maybe have moved on, but still rooting for our success. And I think that at the end of the day, life is about people and business is about people. And that was not obvious to me on day one. But I've just learned that how you treat people and both when they're on your team or once they left your team, that's really important. So I think that's what I'm most proud of, is just these relationships that I've been able to gather. That doesn't mean I'm perfect at all. But I feel like I just really am proud of a lot of those relationships.

You know what, you're human in this one. This makes so much sense and I'm really glad. I think those are amazing answers. Well, you know what? So you sit on the board of Atlassian, which is a company I really respect and think the world of, but they're an Australian company now. You're growing up in Saskatchewan, onto Montreal, then onto the States. Does your experience of being that Canadian living in the States help form the board, decisions or activity?

I don't think it's quite that pointed. I mean, you are who you are and so we are all accumulation of our past. And I think you did a good job. My career path has been a bit windy and I was always a little bit envious of those who knew exactly what they wanted in high school and they went out to get it. And I think that that's great if that's. But if you're not that, and not everyone has that in life, this windy career path can be an asset too. It's not a liability. And going to collect a lot of experiences actually like expands you in ways that you never think are possible. You never quite go back to who you were before and that's how you grow as a person. And, and so, you know, joining the board of Lessons been incredible. It's an amazing company actually. Here's a good insight for again for the folks listening. Whether you're looking to go join a high growth company or you are running one of these high growth companies or you're about to start one of them. It was one of our board members that said this to me and it's just, it's forever imprinted on my head, in my brain. Excuse me, is it was Ray Rothrock. He was at Venrock he was a big cybersecurity investor. He had done 15 cybersecurity investments. Cloudflare was his 16th. And I remember it was a couple of years into our company. And he said, you know what's so exciting about Cloudflare is that your opportunity is expanding. And he's like, most investments I make, the opportunity narrows over time. But always the best companies, the opportunities expand over time. And so now stop and think about that for a second because again, if you're making a career choice, you're about to start a company, I think there's something really wise in there where you start something but over time, like the buying behavior is different or the competition reacts in a different way and you're. I think the opportunities do narrow and so they still can be good, but they narrow. What I've always loved about Cloudflare, which Ray pointed out, and what I found with Atlassian, is the opportunities are expanded, are expanding. It's very opportunity rich. It's expanding over time, which means you should be able to grow for a long time. And when you're growing, don't get me wrong, there's a long list of things to do, there's a lot of work and there's a lot of problems to solve, but you get to work on really hard problems with really smart people and solve it and be part of that growth. And so it's been an amazing experience. But this opportunity rich is something that I really saw with Atlassian as well as Cloudflare. And I just wanted to share that with the listeners because I again, I think when you're thinking about what to do, sometimes I meet entrepreneurs and they feel like they have to know every single thing about their business, and that's okay. But often you might be in the category where the opportunity narrows over time versus expanding. And so sometimes being like this big ambitious thing here we're going to start, I'm not actually quite sure how it's all going to fit together, but, man, I am going to get this team together to be able to solve the problem. That's a good place to be too, because it means like, can you be that company that expands the opportunity over time and grow for a long time? And so that was something that I really was drawn to at Atlassian. And then the people, back to the people aspect, where, you know, I got that at Cloudflare, I love it. The people side, when I met the Atlassian board members, the executive team, Mike and Scott, I mean, it's just their executive team, the people are Just unparalleled. And you heard that from conversations. I love what I do here because of the people. And again, I've worked at a lot of companies where that's not the case. And so I try never to take that for granted. And so I really. It was a super great opportunity and I'm just. It was one of the best things I did in 2021 was to join that board.

And like I said, just like Cloudflare, it's kind of a defining its own category and doing such big things with the tools to create, let people be creative and safe and trusted. And, you know, we obviously use their tools. And when I saw that you're on that board, I'm like, oh, that's awesome. That is awesome. Well, you know, you're also on the board, or at least you have a role with the World Expert Economic Forum Young Global Leaders Foundation. That's a lot of words to say, tell me about that role. What do you do with that?

Sure. So the. It's interesting when you start a company, you. And as you gain traction, you get invited to do different things, which is back to. Someone said this really well to me earlier this week of put yourself in situations where you're given a lot of authority to make decisions because that's how you really grow as a person. And this is back to collecting these experiences, expanding. You never quite go back to the same shape. And I think then you grow a lot as an individual. And I think that I look back to my career, that's really been the case. And so what's been interesting is Cloudflare, the World Economic Forum, is this very global institution that brings together leaders around the world, both political leaders as well as business leaders. And what's interesting is you actually have to have a job to go to the World Economic Forum. You have to be like you're an acting head of state or you're some senior leader at a big company. And what the World Economic Forum realized years ago was the population of all these attendees were quite older and they wanted to try and get some younger, younger, younger earlier in their career, up and comers invited. And so they created something called the Technology Pioneers program, where if you're a technology company early, to become part. Because again, if you're the CEO of RBC Bank, Dave Mackay, he wants to know about the up and coming things. And it's not just him, it's Jamie Dimon, it's all these CEOs and he doesn't have access to that. He's got a big job. Right. And so can you be. Can you bring in kind of the next set of entrepreneurs? They have something called the, you know, if you're a global shaper up under 30 doing interesting things in your community, you can get involved in a way. And then the young global leaders are for leaders who are under 40 making big impacts as leaders in, you know, both social ventures as well as for profit. And it's really great that they've kind of created these other tracks to get involved with this community. So cloudflare was a technology pioneer, which is how we got introduced to the forum. Very young. We were a very young company. It was 2012 when we were first accepted, and it was actually great because we were very small company. But as you said, Chris, we were ambitious. We played an important role. And so being introduced to those networks and being there and being part of that kind of gave us legitimacy. People took us more seriously. And sure, in some cases it led to more business, maybe you sold more, but it was more like the connections and relationships and those have led to lots of good things. And. And again, you don't grow a Global 2000 company overnight. So it's. How do you get connected to these populations? And so is one way. And so for folks earlier, if you have a tech company, I think the Technology Pioneers program is something you should definitely look at. It's technical companies, technology companies trying to make an impact for the greater good of the world. And we were building something for the Internet infrastructure, getting access and making it safer. It totally fit. And so look at that program. It was great for us. But as part of that is I. We were two, we were three co founders that ran this business. Leah ended up being very sick and left. It was Matthew and I. But they're pretty strict. The form is pretty strict about only the CEO going. And I was important part of the company, but I wasn't the CEO. And so of course Matthew should go. He should go represent. It was great. But I also wanted to find a way to be there. And so I applied as an individual through this Young Global Leaders program, where leaders making a big difference who are under 40. And it's a very global group. It's both people who are entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, people who work at senior levels in large operating companies, or people doing things in their community, artists. It's a very broad group of people who apply and it's very global. And so I was part of that. And you just meet people all over the world and even though maybe you don't have a reason to, to collaborate. Day one, they become friends or you help each other. It just kind of gives you a different sense. And how do you be a good, responsible leader? And so I was part of that program and now I'm part of the board and giving back to that community. And so that's a lot of details, but I just, I share that because I think a lot of people listening don't know. And you know, you can literally be sitting in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and apply for these things. And you should. Or Vancouver or Toronto, but. Or Halifax, Nova Scotia. And as someone once said to me, if you don't put your name in the ring, you'll never get. If you don't put your name in the hat, you'll never get pulled. And so I think, look at these programs. If you fit, like, you should apply, put your best foot forward because they can just change the trajectory of some of the things that you're doing.

That's awesome. And you know, as a company that's a networking company, you just. Again, you're talking about the importance of networking outside of, you know, the digital networking, but, you know, making those relationships, making those, you know, connections which are so important, not just, you know, for yourself, but for the growth of the company, for the growth of everything you're trying to do. And it's community based. Well, your mom must have been so proud. You know, MBA from Harvard Business School. I would have loved to have been the fly on the wall when you got that letter or however you got it in. But I want to know what's the most beneficial? Is it the relationships you make, the body of knowledge you soak in, or is it just the doors that open up when you show them that you have that Crimson H. What's the best part of that?

Yes. Yes. Yeah. My parents are great. My mom and my dad are great. They've always been super supportive of me. So they still live in Saskatchewan. Anyway, so I feel really lucky to come from a family where, you know, my sisters and my parents, my aunts are cheering me on, which, which is great. I know that that's not the case for every family. So I do just want to take a moment to acknowledge my awesome family and husband, by the way, who's also been rooting for my success for a long time. You know, I think that to go get an MBA or to not get an mba, you could have a whole episode just on this, Chris. I mean, it's. Again, you ask 10 people, you get 10 different answers. There's lots of. It's a Little bit like going public. A lot of people say, don't do it. It's a waste of time, waste of money. And I understand the background. I guess I'm in a slightly different camp. I mean, for me, it changed my life. So I am very in the right situation. I think it's a great, a great thing to do. It can really change. And so think a little bit of context. I again grew up in Canada. I had been living in Canada, working in Canada, I had been pursuing. And everything I did From Saskatchewan to McGill to Toronto, I kind of. My eyes kept getting bigger and bigger, being like, oh my God, there's so much opportunity. There's all these things. Like I, I didn't even really know about tech, tech, technology, entrepreneurship when I lived in Saskatchewan. Not because it was bad, it just I saw a lot of doctors and dentists and lawyers and teachers. Like, that's kind of what I knew. And that's kind of, I think, why I wanted to be a doctor. I didn't even know that, hey, you could start your own company and build something that would impact millions of people around the world. Like, I just didn't know. And if you don't know it exists, it's hard to be it. And so I kept, you know, as you saw more of the world, my, my, like my, my aperture widened and I was like, whoa, this is, this is the world is a lot bigger of a place than I realized, I guess. And so why did I go do my MBA for me, you know, I had a science degree because I thought I was going to be a doctor. And I was a science degree working in business. And so I definitely missed some of the foundations of. I loved it. I was doing really well. I was getting great feedback at work. But there are some things where I just, like, I didn't have formal training and yes, you could absolutely do it yourself online. There's so much great. But like I work, I like also structured learning environments and being in a team group, all doing it together. And so, and so for me, there was a little bit of cab is missing some of the basic business foundations. And then of course you hear about like the friendships and the network and all these sorts of things. So anyhow, I will just say that I had worked for five or six years and this idea of like, can I go spend two years to learn is a huge privilege. Like it is. And you. And you know, now you don't really do it again. Like there's kind of a moment of window where it makes sense and then it's kind of gone. And so I think you got to make that decision really serious, take that decision really seriously. And these ideas of, you can't afford it or I don't have the time, I don't know. When you zoom out in your course of your life, it's kind of like you regret more of the things you don't do than the things that you do do, in my experience, anyhow. And so I went in my late 20s to do my MBA. I applied to a lot of schools. When I got into Harvard, I ended up going there, which was a great school. I would say that if you do apply to your mba, go to the best school possible. Makes a huge difference. And it was a two year program. And what's interesting is it's really expensive. I was not making a lot of money before business school. There was a lot of people who made a lot more money than I did. I did not. But the school, because of many Canadians actually who give back to the school, basically like covered my tuition, really, because of other Canadians. And you don't know that when you're applying, you find out after they call them fellowships. And I was, because I was a Canadian, there's about 25 to 30 Canadians go to Harvard every year. Other Canadians give, I mean, fellowships, scholarships, donations to cover the cost of tuition. Because often a lot of Canadians aren't making high income compared to the Americans or other people from around the world. There is a asymmetry. And so they try and lessen the financial burden to make that a reason that if you want to do it, it's no longer a reason not to do it, for example. And so I, I feel really lucky. It changed my life. It opened my eyes. I mean, I thought I was doing really well. It was like the, the, the bar for. Well, got readjusted up many notches, Chris. It was hard, way more competitive, like much more hard charging. And you think like, oh, wow, I was always doing really well. And I was like, okay, now I'm no longer the top of the totem pole anymore. I gotta like drain my back and learn from all these. I'm 12 years out of business school. So I met my business partner there. We started Cloudflare. I look at some of my closest friends, some of my closest friends I met at business school. I. The. How I was just in Boston a few days ago and I met up with people that I went to business school with. And it's just. You kind of have forever that it's like wherever you went to undergrad I went to McGill, you know, people I went to school with, really close for your close new friends and how we interact in a business, whether they are part of funding in the future or now, they might be customers or they might be for the I bankers that took us public. And so it is the network. And now that doesn't just happen, by the way. I think lots of people go to business school and don't come with a network because they don't make the effort to build the relationships. But I made an effort and I got to know lots of people. And to this day, they're a big part of my life. And I love that. And it's not the only part of my life, but it is a big part of my life. And so I feel like I got the foundation, I got open to all these opportunities that I didn't even know existed and I got to meet all these great people that have kind of changed the trajectory of my life. And so for me, I feel like I put a lot in and I got a lot out. And so I'm a big pro. If that's something that any of this resonates for you, I think you should go home and research the deadline dates, study for the GMAT and put your best foot forward. But if you're just doing it to get an MBA because you think you have to, then that's a terrible reason to do it.

So we have seven MBAs in our company, okay, all from UBC and something we're really proud of. In fact, our CEO was our first MBA intern and we realized, hey, you're pretty good at this. You want the big job because you kind of deserve it. But the thing that I find that's really similar amongst all of them is the need to be part of a group, the need to push each other. And I think it's in the NDA. Pardon me, the DNA of those who attend there is something specific, there's something special about people. I mean, I am just a lonely undergrad graduate from ubc, but I should probably try to do something more. But either way. And you know what, when you talk about Harvard, for example, first off, that campus is amazing. And secondly, about the paying it forward and the amount of Canadians there. I remember I was there with my daughter and son, kind of get them infected with the idea of checking it out. And there was a lady with a really cool dog, really beautiful dog. The kids are playing with it. And she was one of the admittent people for administering people into the, into the school and she told me there are so many Canadians here. Like, she talks to so many Canadians that people should be aware that they are really accepted and really loved there. A lot of them played hockey too, which is another good way to, you know, to get in. Well, tell you what I mean, the Dublier Prize. And again, I'm hoping I'm saying that right, my French roots are coming out here. But the Dublier Prize, which, you know, I suppose helped lead towards Cloudflare. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Well, so one of the things that's great about doing your MBA is you get like, again, this privilege to learn for two years, right? And I use that to learn a lot of different things. And by the second year, second semester, you're kind of done taking classes. I mean, you still are taking classes, but you're kind of like, okay, like, let's do something else. And so we, you know, I did an independent study for LinkedIn, which was really great. Went to a job offer, but we also did an independent study, which was a business plan. And the deliverable was instead of going to a class, we had to write a business plan and we had to enter the business plan competition, which meant we had to write a business plan. That was the criteria to enter the business plan competition. And anyhow, so we ended up creating Cloudflare during that business plan, like this independent study. And that was. It started with Project Web Wall turned into Cloudflare. And I had already shared a little bit about how I, like, fell more and more in love. And so we entered the business plan competition. We ended up winning the business plan competition. It was a big deal. These are a lot of alumni. A lot of VCs come and are the judges of that. And, you know, Matthew and I were there building this infrastructure company, very big vision. And that's not most of the businesses, what they look like. So we kind of stood apart. We were a little bit like, one didn't quite fit the other, and we did a really good job kind of demonstrating traction in what we were doing. So we ended up winning. And so as part of that, the school, the HBS school, you know, Stanford gets most of the credit for having most entrepreneurship, but actually Harvard has a ton of entrepreneurship. And so they have this entrepreneurship prize that they award to some of the students who are taking entrepreneurial path. Because I will say, for those of you that may go do an mba, there's a huge pull to some of the more traditional career paths. They feel safer, bigger money up front, all these sorts of, like, all these reasons, it just. It's hard to break away from the vortex. And so the school has this entrepreneurial prize for some, for some students who are taking a different path. And so we won that our second year for Cloudflare when it was a business plan. And again, it was just like a nice acknowledgment. Back to. It's a nice acknowledgment. You're working really hard on something, you don't know whether it's real or not. When you're early stage founder, you're not sure whether it's real or not. You hear all the stories about things failing all the time. And just having that acknowledgement and recognition was nice and our classmates were really excited. Harvard has. There's 900 students per class. It's a huge class. And so you get divided up into these sections of 90 students. I think they've changed it, but back then it was 90 students. And so my 90 kind of classmates, section mates in this class of 900, when they found out Matthew and I won that, were really happy for us and really proud that their section mates had gotten that. That award. So it was a small thing. But just these programs, if there's probably some people listening that create these programs. I mean, I did a lot of programs coming from Saskatchewan. I did. Born from young Canadians like Ottawa. I'm sure a lot of you did that. I did a junior achievement. I did a lot of these programs. And to me, I'm a byproduct of being successful in all these programs. They just opened my world to these different opportunities and helped me set up for different sorts of things. So thank you to all the people who make those programs happen.

Amazing. Amazing. Well, one thing that I've been really blessed over the years, first off, I'm very blessed to consider myself a member of the CPA 100. You know, I. When people ask me what that is, I say it's a group of super hoity tweeties. Plus me. You know, that's. That's how I describe it. But I've gone to some meetings, I've heard you speak, and this is where I'm like, honestly, I'm like, I have to have you on the show because the stories you shared and the knowledge and everything has been, you know, nothing but fantastic. But what do you. What does the C100 mean to you personally?

Yeah, it's a great organization, you know, so what's, what is interesting? And this is, you know, a personal note where I, you know, I was from, I'M proudly Canadian, but I found myself in the US in pursuit of opportunity and moved around a lot and I moved all around a lot. And now I live in San Francisco and when I got here I really didn't know anyone. And it's hard moving to a new city, you don't know anyone and then add new country. It was tough. And I had my other HBS friends who moved here, so that was great. And so very early on I got connected to the C100 which were Canadians living at the time in Silicon Valley, to help Canadians back in Canada. And it was like a whole other part of me kind of lit up because it was just other Canadians that were here. And it became this whole other network and community, both from a social perspective, but also, you know, helping each other with your business or your company. And I that really makes a difference a little bit back to some of these other programs that I've talked about. And so I love that and I'm active member, I've been for a long time. And there's just such great people all happen to be share in common Canada. And I think a lot of us are really proudly Canadian. And I meet with a group here, I try to do a lot back in Canada and now they're trying to connect all the Canadians globally. I love John Stackhouse's book Planet Canada. I could not agree more. I think that there's a lot of Canadians proudly Canadian Canada, which is amazing. There's a lot who are living other places and we should connect all the Canadians across the planet and think about Canada like hey, how do we connect each other? We're all Canadian, we share that here heritage. We're all proudly that piece of us. Let's connect and help each other and rise all tides. I think that there's something really that really speaks to me. So it's back to people. It's been a great organization, a great community. I think there's a lot of if you're an entrepreneur, there's lots of in Canada, there's lots of ways for you to get involved, to get access to some of the other Canadians who scaled organizations globally. And there's great programs again to hopefully help you set up for more success. The risk reward in your favorite or if you're working at companies, there's ways to get involved and it's just this community. And when you put good things, good people together, what I find is good things come out of it completely.

And you know the thing that I really love, I mean I'm not the guest here, but I do love the C100 because when you talk to the people who are part of it, you can tell they really do want to make a difference. Like there really is genuine desire to make Canada a better place to do business or to help out. And you look at some of these people and you're like, wow, you're really investing your time in this with, with an open heart. And that is. It's just incredible. And I'd say it's a little bit of a Canadian blessing. So I'm glad that you were able to make connections in the early days of the C100, and you definitely give back in terms of advice and help and the 48 hours and all that. That's always exciting. So I'll tell you one question I get a lot of. Of people with different stages of the startup career is, you know, oh, I'll be successful if I raise that friends and family round. Oh, I'll be successful if I get my first client. Oh, I'll be successful if I ipo. When do you consider yourself to be successful? Hard question. I know.

Hard question. There's other people who are way better suited to answer that question. So, one, I think all those things are maybe not the ipo, but like, I think all those other things are. Are important. It's hard starting companies. I mean, I'm sitting here smiling and we're making it sound so easy. But there's lots of hard things and lots of lonely moments, especially early on. Like, it's. And you just, you're just not sure whether you have something. And one day, one moment you're like, I'm going to conquer the world. The next day you're like, oh, my God, I'm going out of business. And it can happen 10 times in the course of the day. It's exhausting. And one conversation can go on either end of that. And so that's why things like getting that grade higher, getting that customer, or raising the rent, it helps overcome. It carries you through the lows because there are lots of lulls. It just is. Highs and lows are very close together in an early stage of the company. And I would say that I used to really wear those highs and lows on my shoulders pretty distinctly. I felt when things were great, I was super excited. But when things weren't great, I took it pretty personally. And those were not. It's just stressful. So you gotta have really good coping mechanisms and, and all these sorts of things. So there was some point and I, you know, I, you know, there's different reasons. You read all the same quotes that, that those inspirational or journal, you know, mindfulness, there's a lot of meditation. There's lots of ways that you can get this. Or if you see a therapist, there's a lot. Or executive coach, there's so many different ways you can get this. But I just had this. It was really a mindfulness book about how, you know, being in the moment and just enjoying the moment. And. And I went to actually go have coffee with a fellow Canadian, Chris o'. Neill. I didn't know him very well, but we were having coffee. I'd met him through something and he was at the CEO he was at ever known at the time. And we went for coffee and I did not know him well. And I said to Chris, Chris. And he said, how's it going? I'm like, well, you know what, starting a company like we were years in, I was like, it's good. But I decided last night that I'm going to start to enjoy the journey more. He's like, what do you mean? I'm like, well, I kind of been like, I feel like when things are hard, I get. Let it really get me down. And it's hard when things like to feel great when you feel like you have the weight on your shoulders. But I decided I'm just going to start to enjoy the journey more, less about what's the destination, let's enjoy the journey. And so I didn't know him very well, but I think it saying it out loud made me commit to it more. And so he's like, well, I'm going to check in. I'm going to hold you to this. So he checks in. He's checked in on me a couple times, six months later, a year later. And I like, it's almost since that day I have enjoyed the journey a lot more. And so even recently I had to have a tough conversation. Something I before would have lamented been like not wanting to do. But then I was like, you know what? This is a great learning opportunity. I can't wait to have that conversation. And it sounds so silly, but it's made me enjoy the journey a lot more, which I think is maybe part of the whole point versus getting to the destination and kind of feeling unsatisfied or climbing to the top of the mountain only to realize there was a whole other mountain to climb. Trying to enjoy what this is for what it is, and the highs and the lows and learning and growing and the relationships and I think like to Me that is maybe the most definition of success.

That's awesome. That's awesome. And I'm glad you had a little bit of a journey with Chris because Chris o' Neill is awesome. I know. He just launched a new startup that was well funded right off the bat, which says a lot to what he's doing. Well, first off, I'm having way too much fun. Way, way, way too much fun. But the theme of Afternoon Tea is to speak to Canadian, successful Canadian founders in order to prepare that next generation startups. So I have these two questions I always ask. This is kind of my tie them all together sort of thing. But the first one that I want to ask you is can you just share one piece of advice? And you've already shared a bunch, but one piece of advice to help younger Canadian founders.

Okay, so there's so many, there's so many. So I. Okay, so if you're an early stage, early, early Canadian founder, a couple different sorts of things. Like keep going. I think like we want everyone, so many people want you to succeed. So keep going and, and reach out to people. If you need something, especially with ask like, how did you do this? Or like, will you buy this service from me? Like, I just think like that. Like, I think lots of people want to help you. Sometimes you feel alone. I think lots of people want to help you. So like do that. But there's also, if you want to build a really big company like Cloudflare. Cloudflare is a huge publicly traded company. You know, lots of employees, lots of revenue. Then this idea, look for a big opportunity or find a way to expand your opportunity because you can't do that unless the opportunity is really, really big. Having said that, my husband's an entrepreneur and he doesn't want that. And he's taken no venture. He owns him and two co founders. The three of them run this business. They own 100% of the company. Super profitable. He doesn't want what I have. He's done in a different way. And that's great too. That's amazing too. And so I think just match the right opportunity to what you want in life. I think a lot of the drama that we read about online comes when you have a mismatch. It's, you have Jamie's, my husband. You have, you kind of have a business that looks like Jamie's, but you try and act like it's Cloudflares. And I think that never ends up well. You end up raising way too much money. You can't, don't have Any exit opportunities and you become a zombie. That's a bad outcome. And so I think just trying to match up to the right size. There's lots of ways to be successful, but keep going. I think now is a great time to be an entrepreneur. And, and the last thing. And this is again for me where I run this global business where think big, like dream big. You know, I love what Toby and Harley have done with Shopify. I think that's, you know, we had, we had BlackBerry back in the day and we had Nortel. Like we need more and there's no reason why you can't be the next generation of that. And I think in the Silicon Valley, everyone thinks that they can build the next Facebook or Google or Apple, which is awesome. We need more of that in Canada if you want to swing big. And so I just think, like, keep dreaming big. Find ways to expand your opportunity and think about the market bigger than Canada or bigger than the city you're in. How do you get the world to use your service? And I think Shopify is a great example of a company. Right, built in Canada that's done that completely.

Okay, well, for my next question, that means you've already. You have to discount Harley and Toby from this one then. Okay, but can you share the name of a Canadian entrepreneurial star or founder that you personally look up to?

So many of them. I mean, I can't. I mean, Toby and Harley are both like terrific, but there's so many, you know, and really so many people have been helpful to me. So I guess like all of those. So, like, and I'm, you know, the danger of naming some of them is I'm going to forget some. But like Chris Albinson, who, who is a big, big participant in the C100, you know, he started like, he's always been so good to me and like that that's kind of this attitude to pay it forward, like, hugely important. Dorian Porter, he's a Canadian. He's got best aboard. It's early, but what he's building, he's in hardware. The wisdom is don't go into hardware. And he's running to hardware. And he's built this awesome product and loves it. And if you see Dorian, he looks like he's having fun and he's a lawyer doing hardware company. You're just like, that's super amazing. I think it's super impressive what Mike and team are doing it wealth simple. What like there's just so many, all the people who have paid it forward. To me, the Skip the Ditches. Founders out of the Samair, Brothers out of Saskatchewan.

Guys.

Yeah, they're doing it again with the furniture. Like, I just. I love all of that and people kind of paying it forward, being part of the community, cheering each other on, helping each other. Like, I think that that's all really, really great. And another Saskatoon company, like, seven. Seven chefs, like, with Jordan and Justin are building it. Just again, all these people, they're a little bit behind us, but I'm inspired because they're just so fired up and they just raised all this money from Softbank, and I just. It's hard not to be inspired and feel like, oh, my God, the future is bright now. I just realized I named all these men, and so that is not okay. And I know there's lots of amazing women, fast founders in Canada, too. So anyhow, so like Zita out of the Maritimes, which she's built, and now she has Fogo island in what she's done for Fogo island in Newfoundland, I think is super cool. So anyhow, I'm inspired by a lot. And actually, one of the things I'll just say is I named all these people. Like, I know them really well, and I know some of those people really well, but some I don't know at all. I just read. I follow them online and I read them or hear them speak. And I think that, like, that's one of the best parts about being a tech entrepreneur. You don't actually need to know me to hear some of my insights. You can, like, follow me, you can listen to some of the things and then you can go and find a way to build something big. And that's different than other companies. I think that, that, that meritocracy where the best ideas can really happen. And so keep going.

You inspire me. How about that? You know, Michelle, thank you so much. That was. This was so much fun. I learned. I personally, you know, my little journey, too. I learned so much today and want to give you a. Well, I'll give you a little golf clap so we don't mess with that. But for. For not all that you've done with Cloudflare, but also you've done the community and made the world a safer, better, more trusted place. So thank you for taking the time today and your incredibly busy schedule to speak to us. And, you know, maybe that next generation of Canadian star is going to listen to that and get inspired as much as I think they want to. So thank you for your time today.

Well, thank you so much for having me if I can be helpful, reach out to me on LinkedIn or Twitter and, and yeah, really excited to see all your companies successful. And again, if I can be helpful, reach out. I really want to see more and more success stories coming to Canada and just rooting for all of your successes. And Chris, I think it's great that you do these sorts of things, like having raising awareness, giving people a platform to talk about it. These things matter a lot. They've been around in the valley for a long time, and we need more and more of this in Canada. So this sort of ecosystem supporting the entrepreneurship efforts matter so much for visibility and learning and sharing and profiles. And so thank you for everything that you're doing to raise voices in Canada, Chris.

It's my pleasure. Like you said, I'm having so much fun doing it. Why would I ever stop.