Untold Stories Behind the $20B Business That Runs the Internet

Matthew Prince is the Co-Founder and CEO of Cloudflare, a public company doing over a billion dollars in revenue. In the episode, Matthew shares fascinating anecdotes from Cloudflare’s early days and how they scaled up customers from obscure markets to major enterprises. He also explores Cloudflare's commitment to maintaining a high talent bar and candidly reflects on his co-founder’s battle with a devastating illness. Overall, an unfiltered conversation about the journey of building Cloudflare into the powerhouse it is today.
(0:00) Intro
(1:12) The internet was a fad
(3:49) What is Cloudflare?
(6:42) Project Honeypot
(12:53) Meeting Michelle
(19:12) Buying into the vision
(23:04) The internet was built to support the porn industry
(28:48) Borrowing Money
(37:18) Transparency
(43:08) On Lee Holloway
(52:23) Philosophy behind hiring and talent
(1:00:45) Prioritize curiosity and empathy
(1:02:54) The fairness of an initial offer
(1:07:11) Titles are cheap
(1:21:59) How has being an English major manifested itself?
(1:25:14) Building explosives in high school
(1:32:38) Engaging with fans and critics
(1:38:32) Going public
(1:46:39) Conventional Silicon Valley wisdom
Wired article on Lee Holloway: www.wired.com/...
Mixed and edited: Justin Hrabovsky
Produced: Rashad Assir
Executive Producer: Josh Machiz
Music: Griff Lawson
🎙 Listen to the show
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple...
Spotify: open.spotify.c...
Google Podcasts: podcasts.googl...
🎥 Subscribe on KZbin: / @theloganbartlettshow
Follow on Socials
📸 Instagram - / theloganbartlettshow
🐦 Twitter - / loganbartshow
🎬 Clips on TikTok - / theloganbartlettshow
About the Show
Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode, Logan goes behind the scenes with world-class entrepreneurs and investors. If you're interested in the real inside baseball of tech, entrepreneurship, and start-up investing, tune in every Friday for new episodes.

[@ModerWafaretwo]

Banger out of nowhere. This the content we need!

[@anothername2730]

Fantastic. You let him speak and kept the conversation flowing. New subscriber here.

[@justinbaker1488]

This was an amazing interview!

[@efficientapp]

Downloaded this one to watch on my flight tomorrow, SO stoked for this one. Love Cloudflare and the teaser makes this sound so good 🔥🔥🔥🔥 Edit: Listened-responded in a comment reply 👌

[@efficientapp]

Okay, update after watching-that was fantastic! And what a story about the early customers in the escort services essentially leading to you building the intelligence to block what would later be a huge attack for other customers. There's something super eye-opening in this... Don't judge the book by its cover. I could see some on principle blocking the usage of the service based on the industry, unintended benefits from being more open to serve the internet as a whole! Wow, what an enjoyable episode! Learned a lot!

[@aryanmaheshwari2613]

Hey, thank you so much for this interview! Can you please get one from Jose Neves, CEO of Farfetch. It would be very interesting to hear from a POV of a global CEO given all the MACRO HEADWINDS for their Business They've been slowly building the technology for the luxury fashion industry for 15 years now

[@VeriousSmithIII]

This should be a movie.

[@FeLiNaLabsLTD]

First like Mr Logan, Someday you will interview me for my success story ❤.

[@loganbartlett4307]

I look forward to it

[@AlaskaJiuJitsu]

Lets go!

[@joejoejoes333]

The force metrics and performance indicators say you suck as a company and a person.

[@FernandoDilland]

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

[@mohit9920]

I was really expecting to learn more about Cloudflares business, how they are positioned for AI, how they are navigating the tough macro env and so on. Logan Bartlett, if you want this podcast to succeed focus on the NOW, there are way too many podcasts talking about the past.

[@loganbartlett4307]

Appreciate the advice

[@mohit9920]

@@loganbartlett4307Some combination would also do.

[@user-pj4cg8oz9d]

I respectfully disagree. Too many podcasts are talking about AI. This was refreshing.

[@javiertc86]

It was very interesting to learn about past experiences. There is a gazillion podcasts talking about AI now.

[@bocajet]

This is a really dumb take. It could have been included as a small section, but I wouldn’t have lasted 15 mins if I had to listen to the CEO pump his AI strategy.