Cloudflare - Invest Like The Best

Podcasts · Investing, Technology

Created by Rishabh Srivastava, Founder of Loki.ai

This summary was largely done for my own note-taking, sharing it just in case it adds more value to other people.

I have no affiliation whatsoever with anyone in this note. This is a summary largely taken for my own reference, and may contain errors :)

Context

Source URL:

‎Invest Like the Best: Michelle Zatlyn - Protecting the Internet - [Founder's Field Guide, EP.11] on Apple Podcasts

Why is it important: Talks about how Cloudflare grew and what it as in the future

Keywords

Cloudflare, Investing, Cybersecurity, Cloud Computing

Summary

  • Cloudflare started out as Project Honeypot, which was a spam filtering algorithm and data collection service
  • Project Honeypot identified the problem (which servers might be sending spam). But when they surveyed users for how they are solving the problem, they didn't find a good solution. It was all duct tape. They thought they had an opportunity to create a service around it
  • Cloudflare started off as a security company, and has now expanded to a performance/speed /computing based company. Everything is based on a base of cybersecurity
  • They use their economies of scale to provide a much better experience and performance for everyone at a much lower cost
  • Documentation is critical for remote teams and also for users. Write things down early
  • Early customer acquisition was mostly through word-of-mouth on the internet. People talking about them on forums and community boards etc. Open-sourcing things and keeping things free helps with this
  • Cloudflare runs a global network of servers in 200 cities around the world. They have real capex there
  • You can connect to the closest Point of Presence (PoP) and run programs on the server there (Cloudflare Workers)
  • There are 3 layers to the enterprise software stack: 1) database layer where the content actually sits, 2) application layer, and 3) the network stack (connecting with the ISPs)
  • For their Series C, they took a valuation that was less than half of what they were getting with another investor, because the vision of the investor was more congruent with their own vision (free service, centres in areas that currently had little traffic — like Pakistan — etc)
  • The network as the server/computer can open up many possibilities. Specially with 5G as more bandwidth is transferred