Podcast appearances and mentions of michelle zatlyn

Michelle Zatlyn, Co-founder, President, and Chief Operating Officer at Cloudflare, chats with Peak XV CMO Gayatri Yadav about building Cloudflare, the global powerhouse that stops 209 billion cyber threats a day. In this conversation, Michelle reflects on the initial struggle to garner support for Cloudflare's offerings and emphasizes the importance of perseverance, especially in the face of skepticism from potential investors, customers, and employees. She delves into why founders should listen to their own voice and not be deterred by doubters. Michelle also talks about Cloudflare's approach to customer acquisition as well as the evolution of the company's go-to-market strategy. While talking about the complexities of building and scaling a company, she also delves into the importance of hiring the right people, as well as the leadership principles that guide her.Founders, it's ok if others don't see what you see  [04:19]Finding PMF isn't always a slam dunk [07:20]Understand why potential customers don't buy your product [12:53]The importance of tracking progress against a goal [16:29]Reimagining archetypes: “The world needs a new definition of leaders” [20:53]

Michelle Zatlyn (@zatlyn), co-founder, president, and COO of Cloudflare, joined Village Global co-founder and partner Ben Casnocha for a masterclass with our founders in late 2020. They discussed: - The origin story of Cloudflare, including how the co-founders met, and how Michelle realized that she too could start a company. - Her advice on fundraising after raising more than $300M for Cloudflare, including why you should keep the rest of the VC partnership in mind, and how to show rather than tell in your pitch. - How they found the best talent, including why their blog brought them plenty of inbound interest, and why searching far and wide around the globe for engineers helped them build their team quickly. - Why they don't use recruiters at Cloudflare. - How to turn a weakness into a strength. - How to process feedback and when it makes sense to ignore it. - Stories of extreme frugality in the early days of the company, including building their own Ikea desks. - How an emotional response by customers helped them know they had product-market fit. Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.  Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal. Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Michelle Zatlyn is the Co-Founder, President, and COO of Cloudflare. We cover some lesser known early stories of Cloudflare (including picking up unused servers) and the uncommon practices & principles that built a billion-dollar cybersecurity legacy. Michelle also challenges conventional narratives around work-life choice in tech, offering a candid take on building a generational company while fostering a big life outside the office.

Michelle Zatlyn and her co-founders were outsiders when they moved to Silicon Valley to launch their web security startup. It was 2009, in the middle of a recession, but the team knew their visceral early-user feedback validated the need to be bold. In 2010, Cloudflare launched its first freemium product and hasn't looked back. Today, Cloudflare has four million customers worldwide, surpassed a $1 billion revenue run rate, and employs 3,200 team members. Zatlyn currently serves as the publicly traded company's president and CEO. She is one of the few women founders leading a public tech business.  Listen to Nathan and Michelle discuss:  A “made for TV” meeting with her co-founders Validating an idea with visceral feedback Being a Silicon Valley outsider Starting a tech business during a recession Launching a product MVP Six business reasons to have a freemium product  Being a female founder in the tech industry And much more tech founder advice…  Who do you want to see next on the podcast? Comment and let us know! And don't forget to leave us a 5-star review if you loved this episode. Wait, there's more… If you enjoy the Foundr podcast, check out our free trainings. Get exclusive, actionable advice from some of the world's best entrepreneurs.  Speak with our friendly course experts to get clarity on the next steps for your idea, business or career. You will get tailored insights from results achieved by our proven practitioners as well as thousands of students. Book a call now...  For more Foundr content, follow us on your favorite platform:  Foundr.com Instagram YouTube Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Magazine

In this episode, WorkOS CEO Michael Grinich and Cloudflare Co-Founder, President and COO Michelle Zatlyn discuss how the early constraint in building easy-to-integrate and financially viable product for small businesses became an asset when selling to enterprise, and how important the sharing of future roadmap with customers is to staying relevant and warding off the competition.

A compilation of excerpts from 22 of our most popular podcasts of 2022. Greylock's head of editorial Heather Mack walks listeners through through interviews with industry leaders including OpenAI's Sam Altman, Cloudflare's Michelle Zatlyn, Nike's John Donahoe, and more. We're also featuring the top sought-after advice from Greylock's own team of investors such as Reid Hoffman, and tactical guidance from Greylock's talent and marketing specialists. You can read a transcript of this episode (which includes links to all full episodes from which the compilation is made) here: https://greylock.com/greymatter/2022-year-in-review/

“Think about the pandemic without the internet,” says Cloudflare co-founder and COO Michelle Zatlyn. The world's sudden shift to doing almost everything online only worked because network engineers, IT administrators, and internet infrastructure companies like Cloudflare had done the work. Michelle says that, both personally and professionally, she's fine being under the radar because she doesn't need to be publicly reminded of the importance of her job: “It's like all the roads, the tunnels, the bridges ... when it works, it's magic. Really, you don't even know we exist.”In this episode, Michelle and Joubin discuss the pressure of success, advice for founders, low-drama startups, the power of the Cloudflare blog, internet security, the cross-country U-Haul trip, sweating the details, San Francisco as a “power center,” helping the next generation of founders, “the airplane effect,” injecting tension, why learning is a superpower, and choosing to feel the bumps in the road.In this episode, we cover: Carrying the torch for women in infrastructure and “just getting started” (01:15) Being under the radar and the over-glamorization of founders (07:19) Why it's so hard to hire & empower a great team (15:35) How Cloudflare is building a better internet (22:08) How Michelle, Matthew Prince, and Lee Holloway met and why they started Cloudflare (28:23) “Losing” at TechCrunch Disrupt's Startup Battlefield — and turning it into a win (34:10) Building remote vs. choosing to be in the SF Bay Area (40:54) “I don't understand why anyone starts companies” (46:28) How to run the best board meeting ever (55:31) Why Michelle brought her kids to the New York Stock Exchange for “Mom's Special Day” (01:00:51) The skill that sets good founders apart from great ones (01:02:34) How a back injury took away a year of Michelle's life (01:10:16) Links: Connect with Michelle Twitter LinkedIn Connect with Joubin Twitter LinkedIn Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com  Learn more about Kleiner Perkins

This week's Unlimited Partner is Ben Dahl , an early-stage investor based in Salt Lake City. He is a Managing Director at Signal Peak Ventures, a $500M fund which specializes in relatively underserved geographies around the United States. He was also the Co-Founder at Unspam, which was the predecessor company that led to Cloudflare. He held a board seat there for over 8 years, and now at SPV is participating in a $1.25B fund launched by Cloudflare to support companies who are building on their workers platform. Topics Include: Growing up in Utah and being told to pursue medical school by his parents Meeting Matthew Prince (CEO Cloudflare) at a young age Co-Founding Unspam Technologies w/ Matthew Prince Tech culture in SLC Unspam's Project Honeypot as a predecessor to Cloudflare, creating an http blacklist from an IP reputation score Getting 2nd at Techcrunch and being motivated How Cloudflare got partners to try them out in the beginning "I am a better advisor than an entrepreneur...and learning that earlier than later is a blessing" Working with Co-Founders, Lee Holloway and Michelle Zatlyn at Cloudflare Joining Signal Peak, and the importance of relationships with Founders Datadog, Snowflake Ben's song is The Streets of Laredo by Marty Robbins Sponsors: Tegus Research My Marketplace Builder Links: Thomas McGannon LinkedIn Follow us on social media: Like and subscribe and all that stuff...stay in touch as we will have exciting updates and content soon... @uppodpod Twitter @uppodpod Instagram UP YouTube Channel up-pod.com (Now with ListenNotes for transcripts of each episode) Email us: show@up-pod.com, DISCLAIMER: The host and others associated with this podcast may have investments with the guests and/or the companies associated with them. This is for entertainment purposes only. It is not financial advice. Please do your own research.

Long time listeners know I've taken a few weeks off the podcast circuit to go climb some mountains on my bike. In the meantime, I'm doing reruns of some of my favorite Panic with Friends episodes. This one with Michelle Zatlyn aired back in November of ‘21. If you missed it when it came out, now is a good time to catch up. And don't worry, I'll be back in the podcast booth soon. I'm excited to have my friend and fellow Canadian, Michelle Zatlyn, on the show. We're going to talk about the internet today. Podcasts wouldn't exist without it, and you'd be unable to appreciate the banter between Knut and I. But this just feels like the right time in the right moment to talk about the internet. Michelle is just the right person to talk about it with. She's the co-founder, President, and COO of Cloudflare – the company that helps the internet work. We discuss security, how things really work on the internet, where Cloudflare is headed, and how the hell you grow even faster during COVID.  Guest - Michelle Zatlyn, Co-Founder, President and COO at Cloudflare  howardlindzon.com, cloudflare.com  Twitter: @howardlindzon, @zatlyn, @Cloudflare, @PanicwFriends, @knutjensen  linkedin.com/in/michellezatlyn  #fintech #invest #investment #venturecapital #stockmarket #finance  Show Notes: Introduction (00:57) Welcome Michelle (05:36) Moving to US & Harvard Business School (06:51) Building Cloudflare (08:47) Cloudflare's mission (10:18) Building a better Internet (10:49) Layering Cyber Security (11:24) A quick internet history lesson (13:06) Safe, reliable Internet (15:53) Harvard Professor Clay Christensen (15:59) Democratizing the Internet (16:47) A directional bet on the Internet (18:44) Crypto v. Cryptography (19:27) A public company with real revenue (21:11) Number of daily cyber attacks (21:55) Table stakes for merchants (25:25) The rise of the ‘Cloud' (26:42) The perfect time to start Cloudflare (28:04) Protecting the Internet-of-Things (29:32) A network of networks (31:46) The rise of social and mobile (32:17) Following Web3 (32:42) Cyber attacks and cryptocurrency (34:03) Making your data your data (35:05) Cloudflare leadership team (36:40) Evolving business structure (38:56) Improving digital literacy (40:10) Building better products and delivering value (40:42) Michelle's personal investing philosophy (43:15) Business continuity through the pandemic (46:08) Going big on digital literacy (53:11) Wrapping up (57:45) Closing thoughts (58:32) 

The vastness of the internet, as an entity, can be difficult to put into perspective. Cloudflare, however, has a clear sense of its scope, as it handles roughly 20-percent of internet traffic. To frame it with another stat: More than 70 billion cyber attacks are stopped by Cloudflare each day. In this episode of Iconversations, Greylock's Holly Rose Faith talks with Cloudflare Co-Founder, President, and COO Michelle Zatlyn about what it's like to run a company that a massive constituent of users touch – often without knowing it. You can watch this interview on our YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/WW3grzormsg You can read a transcript from this interview here: https://greylock.com/greymatter/cyber-stewards/

Michelle Zatlyn is co-founder, President, and COO 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 Marie Claire's 7th Annual New Guard. She holds a B.S. degree, with distinction, from McGill University, and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she was awarded the Dubilier Prize for Entrepreneurship.

On this episode of the Traction podcast, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast.AI welcomes Michelle Zatlyn, Co-Founder & COO at Cloudflare, Shawn Abbott, Partner at Inovia Capital, and Mahendra Ramsinghani, Founder at Secure Octane & Author at Startup Boards. Together, they give us a masterclass on building high-performing boards and productive relationships.    Topics covered include:   12:22 - What do investors expect from founders when it comes to their board? 23:52 - Why momentum is the source of all authority you have as a founder 32:49 - Working through imposter syndrome 42:44 - Resolving conflict between board members 50:16 - At what point do you decide to start a board, and how do you pick the right people? 1:00:02 - The most entertaining board member experiences   Connect with Michelle Zatlyn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michellezatlyn/ Learn more about Cloudflare at https://www.cloudflare.com/   Connect with Shawn Abbott: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnabbott/?originalSubdomain=ca Learn more about Inovia Capital at https://www.inovia.vc/   Connect with Mahendra Ramsinghani: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mahendraram/ Learn more about Secure Octane Investments at https://www.secureoctane.com/   This episode is brought to you by: Each year the U.S. and Canadian governments provide more than $20 billion in R&D tax credits and innovation incentives to fund businesses, but the application process is cumbersome, prone to costly audits, and receiving the money can take as long as 16 months. Boast automates this process enabling companies to get more money faster without the paperwork and audit risk. We don't get paid until you do! Find out if you qualify today at https://Boast.AI. Launch Academy is one of the top global tech hubs for international entrepreneurs and a designated organization for Canada's Startup Visa. Since 2012, Launch has worked with more than 6000 entrepreneurs from over 100 countries, of which 300 have grown their startups to Seed and Series A stage and raised over $2 Billion in funding. To learn more about Launch's programs or the Canadian Startup Visa visit https://LaunchAcademy.ca  Content Allies helps B2B companies build revenue-generating podcasts. We recommend them to any B2B company that is looking to launch or streamline their podcast production. Learn more at ContentAllies.com  

Michelle Zatlyn is the Co-founder, President, and COO of Cloudflare, an internet infrastructure company that is making the internet a faster and safer place. On today's episode, Jon Sakoda speaks with Michelle Zatlyn on her path to Co-founder and why you have to love what you do in order to succeed. Don't Be Afraid To Deviate From The Plan [2:30-14:15] - Michelle grew up thinking she wanted to be a doctor but an unexpected award for a research project made her rethink her future. Years later, she turned down a coveted job at LinkedIn to keep growing Cloudflare. Listen to hear why going down the path unknown could turn into the best decision of your life.  How To Build A Team You Can Win With [31:18-33:04]  - Facing roadblocks is inevitable during the startup journey but Michelle believes in cultivating a team that can survive the ebb and flow of a growing company. Her goal was always to work in a team that loves what they do and who they work with. Listen to learn why you need a team that can play together and win together. Know When To Marry Your Tech With Business [33:34-34:41] - As self-proclaimed geeks, Michelle and her co-founders spent years developing the technology behind Cloudflare. Looking back, Michelle talks about why all good tech startups need equally good business counterparts to succeed.

On this episode, my good friend and fellow Canadian, Michelle Zatlyn, stops by to talk about building a better internet. This feels like the right time in the right moment to talk about the internet, and Michelle is just the right person to talk with. She's the Co-Founder, President and COO of Cloudflare, the company that helps the internet work. We discuss security, how things really work on the internet, where Cloudflare is headed, and how you grow even faster during COVID.  Guest - Michelle Zatlyn, Co-Founder, President and COO at Cloudflare  howardlindzon.com, cloudflare.com  Twitter: @howardlindzon, @zatlyn, @Cloudflare, @knutjensen  linkedin.com/in/michellezatlyn  #fintech #invest #investment #venturecapital #stockmarket #finance 

Michelle Zatlyn is Co-Founder, President and COO of Cloudflare, the Internet security,... The post Making Your World Bigger with Michelle Zatlyn first appeared on Startup Canada. The post Making Your World Bigger with Michelle Zatlyn appeared first on Startup Canada.

On this week's episode of Confluence, we continue our conversation with leading Canadians who are at the forefront of global tech. Michelle Zatlyn, co-founder of Cloudflare, is back to talk about whether or not there is a special Canadian sauce that puts Canadian entrepreneurs in a unique position to foster innovation. We also spoke to Atlee Clark, Director of Operations at Ottawa-based Shopify and former Executive Director of the C100 in the Bay Area. These women have set standards in their fields for innovation and business leadership and we set out to find out how. Is Silicon Valley confined to its geographical location or has its ‘borders' expanded? Could Canada be home to the next Big Tech Hub? As talent continues to circulate around the world, how should we be paying attention to ‘brain flow', and what strategies can be deployed at scale to attract and retain talent? And finally, what values should leaders be focusing on to support diverse communities and more equitable innovation?LINKS:- Michelle Zatlyn LinkedInMichelle Zatlyn TwitterAtlee Clark LinkedInAtlee Clark TwitterC100C100 TwitterShopifyCloudFlareHemispheric Partners: Trade, Technology, and Innovation Ties Between the Bay Area and CanadaGlobe and Mail - Opinion: Is Canada in line to be the next Silicon Valley?The Logic - Origin Story: Canadians in Silicon ValleyCNBC - Why Canada is becoming a start-up mecca rivaling Silicon ValleyBusiness Insider - Why tech companies in Silicon Valley should expand to CanadaSan Francisco Chronicle - Canada to Silicon Valley's International Talent: We Want YouForbes - CloudFlare Cofounder Michelle Zatlyn Is New Billionaire As Stock Reaches New HighBusinessWire - Cloudflare Announces First Office in Canada to Further Support Canadian Customers, Innovation, and GrowthFortune - Cloudflare Co-Founder Michelle Zatlyn: ‘Somebody Should' Decide What to Delete OnlineC100's Founding Executive Director, Atlee Clark, Launches Backbone Angels

On this week's episode of Confluence, we're coming back home and talking about Canada's role in defining the future of tech. There seems to be a special Canadian sauce that gives us an edge. To help us figure out where Canada belongs in this conversation, we're talking to three powerhouses in the tech landscape (who also all happen to be Canadian!). First, you'll hear from C100s Laura Buhler and Chris Albinson, two Canadian expats working in the Bay Area to galvanize the global Canadian tech diaspora . We also sat down with Michelle Zatlyn, founder of Cloudflare, who reveals the differences between Canadian and American cultures within tech and how much community matters within Canada's growing landscape. Is Silicon Valley confined to its geographical location or has it become so much more than that? How is Gen Z reshaping the way we think and work within tech? Will global pandemic provide an opportunity for Canada to define best business and investment practices for the future? And finally, is there something holding Canada back from being a top player on a global scale?LINKS:Laura Buhler LinkedInLaura Buhler TwitterChris Albinson LinkedInChris Albinson TwitterMichelle Zatlyn LinkedInMichelle Zatlyn TwitterC100C100 TwitterCloudFlareHemispheric Partners: Trade, Technology, and Innovation Ties Between the Bay Area and CanadaGlobe and Mail - Opinion: Is Canada in line to be the next Silicon Valley?The Logic - Origin Story: Canadians in Silicon ValleyCNBC - Why Canada is becoming a start-up mecca rivaling Silicon ValleyBusiness Insider - Why tech companies in Silicon Valley should expand to CanadaSan Francisco Chronicle - Canada to Silicon Valley's International Talent: We Want YouForbes - CloudFlare Cofounder Michelle Zatlyn Is New Billionaire As Stock Reaches New HighBusinessWire - Cloudflare Announces First Office in Canada to Further Support Canadian Customers, Innovation, and GrowthFortune - Cloudflare Co-Founder Michelle Zatlyn: ‘Somebody Should' Decide What to Delete OnlineSilicon Valley Digital: Canadian Technology Accelerator

Starting Greatness with Mike Maples Podcast Notes Key Takeaways The creation and maintenance of your start-up's foundational team is critical for successIf there is a conflict around responsibilities, you have the wrong founding teamThe greatest start-ups have a valuable mission and have a team that enjoys working togetherInbound recruiting processes are much more valuable to hiring talented and long-term employeesCloudflare utilizes a blog to consistently communicate the company's current problems, processes, technology, and goals to the public. Then, potential candidates come to them.Understand if your employees value title hierarchy or product success, these different environments can benefit or hinder start-up growthThis article outlines Andreessen's & Zuckerberg's differing opinions on the topicGrowth solves a lot of problems – opens exponential opportunity to scale, hire talented people, etc.Read the full notes @ podcastnotes.orgIt takes a lot of effort to build a breakthrough product. It's perhaps even rarer to design a company that endures. In this interview, Mike Maples Jr of Floodgate interviews Matthew Prince and Michelle Zatlyn of Cloudflare to highlight what we can learn about how to get a startup's foundation right, along with recruiting, hiring, and company design.

Starting Greatness with Mike Maples Podcast Notes Key Takeaways The creation and maintenance of your start-up's foundational team is critical for successIf there is a conflict around responsibilities, you have the wrong founding teamThe greatest start-ups have a valuable mission and have a team that enjoys working togetherInbound recruiting processes are much more valuable to hiring talented and long-term employeesCloudflare utilizes a blog to consistently communicate the company's current problems, processes, technology, and goals to the public. Then, potential candidates come to them.Understand if your employees value title hierarchy or product success, these different environments can benefit or hinder start-up growthThis article outlines Andreessen's & Zuckerberg's differing opinions on the topicGrowth solves a lot of problems – opens exponential opportunity to scale, hire talented people, etc.Read the full notes @ podcastnotes.orgIt takes a lot of effort to build a breakthrough product. It's perhaps even rarer to design a company that endures. In this interview, Mike Maples Jr of Floodgate interviews Matthew Prince and Michelle Zatlyn of Cloudflare to highlight what we can learn about how to get a startup's foundation right, along with recruiting, hiring, and company design.

Starting Greatness with Mike Maples Podcast Notes Key Takeaways The creation and maintenance of your start-up's foundational team is critical for successIf there is a conflict around responsibilities, you have the wrong founding teamThe greatest start-ups have a valuable mission and have a team that enjoys working togetherInbound recruiting processes are much more valuable to hiring talented and long-term employeesCloudflare utilizes a blog to consistently communicate the company's current problems, processes, technology, and goals to the public. Then, potential candidates come to them.Understand if your employees value title hierarchy or product success, these different environments can benefit or hinder start-up growthThis article outlines Andreessen's & Zuckerberg's differing opinions on the topicGrowth solves a lot of problems – opens exponential opportunity to scale, hire talented people, etc.Read the full notes @ podcastnotes.orgIt takes a lot of effort to build a breakthrough product. It's perhaps even rarer to design a company that endures. In this interview, Mike Maples Jr of Floodgate interviews Matthew Prince and Michelle Zatlyn of Cloudflare to highlight what we can learn about how to get a startup's foundation right, along with recruiting, hiring, and company design.

It takes a lot of effort to build a breakthrough product. It's perhaps even rarer to design a company that endures. In this interview, Mike Maples Jr of Floodgate interviews Matthew Prince and Michelle Zatlyn of Cloudflare to highlight what we can learn about how to get a startup's foundation right, along with recruiting, hiring, and company design.

In this week’s episode, Madison and Claudia sit down with Michelle Zatlyn, Co-Founder, President and COO of Cloudflare. Public since 2019, Cloudflare is a web performance and security company keeping millions of businesses and, by association, consumers safe online through their cybersecurity infrastructure, stopping over 70 billion attacks a day. Michelle is one of few female founders to take a company public, and now Cloudflare is valued at over $24 billion as the world increasingly realizes the importance of keeping our internet safe. We discuss with Michelle themes including diversity of thought in co-founding teams, the power of changing your own framing of a problem, and only needing to get a few things right. Let’s open the door. Season 3 is sponsored by our friends at SVB and Cooley.

Michelle Zatlyn is co-founder, President and COO of Cloudflare, the Internet security, performance, and reliability company on a mission to help build a better Internet. Cloudflare is a publicly-traded company on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: NET). Prior to co-founding Cloudflare, Michelle held positions at Google and Toshiba and launched two successful startups. Michelle sits on the World Economic Forum Young Global Leaders Foundation Board. Michelle has been named to Fortune’s 40 Under 40 list and was part of Marie Claire’s 7th Annual New Guard. She holds a B.S. degree, with distinction, from McGill University, and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she was awarded the Dubilier Prize for Entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs are the backbone of Canada’s economy. To support Canada’s businesses, subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter. Want to stay up-to-date on the latest #entrepreneur podcasts and news? Subscribe to our bi-weekly newsletter.  

In this session from our FC BUILD conference, Ashu interviews two billion-dollar founders. When it comes to scaling management, engineering culture, and anticipating future markets, Cloudflare COO Michelle Zatlyn and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are the ones to ask. Each shares a bit about their respective company’s journeys — plus, George explains how a company is like a race car!

Michelle Zatlyn is the co-founder, president, and Chief Operating Officer of Cloudflare, an internet security, performance, and reliability company that is on a mission to help build a better internet. In this conversation with Stanford lecturer Ravi Belani, Zatlyn discusses the intense challenges involved in scaling a high-growth business, and offers insights about how to find optimism and build a great team amid those challenges.

Michelle Zatlyn is the co-founder, president, and Chief Operating Officer of Cloudflare, an internet security, performance, and reliability company that is on a mission to help build a better internet. In this conversation with Stanford lecturer Ravi Belani, Zatlyn discusses the intense challenges involved in scaling a high-growth business, and offers insights about how to find optimism and build a great team amid those challenges.

We're (almost) back in session! The Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders series returns on April 14, with a brand new lineup that includes Ulu Ventures managing director Miriam Rivera; Cloudflare co-founder, president and COO Michelle Zatlyn; and the Miami Heat’s Andre Iguodala.

Michelle Zatlyn (@zatlyn), co-founder, president, and COO of Cloudflare, joined Village Global co-founder and partner Ben Casnocha for a masterclass with our founders in late 2020.They discussed:- The origin story of Cloudflare, including how the co-founders met, and how Michelle realized that she too could start a company.- Her advice on fundraising after raising more than $300M for Cloudflare, including why you should keep the rest of the VC partnership in mind, and how to show rather than tell in your pitch.- How they found the best talent, including why their blog brought them plenty of inbound interest, and why searching far and wide around the globe for engineers helped them build their team quickly.- Why they don’t use recruiters at Cloudflare.- How to turn a weakness into a strength.- How to process feedback and when it makes sense to ignore it.- Stories of extreme frugality in the early days of the company, including building their own Ikea desks.- How an emotional response by customers helped them know they had product-market fit.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

In this episode, show hosts Lolita Taub and Eric Bahn along with show producer Hung Pham break down last week's episode with guest Michelle Zatlyn, COO and co-founder of Cloudflare, and share their reactions, thoughts, and insights.

In a Harvard Business School commencement speech, Sheryl Sandberg famously said, “If you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, don't ask what seat. Just get on.”This was advice given to her by Google's then-CEO Eric Schmidt when Sheryl was contemplating taking a job offer at Google. This advice would hold true 6 years later, when Sheryl left Google to become Facebook's COO.While it sounds like a no brainer now, can you imagine being offered a seat on a rocketship and turning it down?That's exactly what our guest on First Pitches, Michelle Zatlyn, did. Michelle is the co-founder and COO of Cloudflare, a cybersecurity company with a mission to help build a better Internet.  While in business school, Michelle was given an offer to join LinkedIn pre-IPO.  But instead, she turned it down to go build Cloudflare with her co-founders.   Not only did she turn down a seat on a rocket ship, but she did so to start a business during an economic downturn.  While most people would see this as extremely risky, Michelle trusted her instincts, and today she is in a very small club of female executives who have founded public companies and the only one running one worth over $10 billion today. You'll have to listen to find out how the rest of the story unfolds.Want tactical tips on how to master your first pitch?  Sign up for our newsletter at www.firstpitches.com

My guest today is Michelle Zatlyn. Michelle is the co-founder and COO of Cloudflare, a now $25 billion dollar business which she helped take public last year. Cloudflare helps businesses make their websites faster and more secure, and over 25 million websites are running Cloudflare today. In our conversation, we discuss the catalyst for starting CloudFlare, explore the layers of the internet and the future of distributed storage and computing power, and discuss how and why Cloudflare operates its network across 200 cities globally. We close with the importance of finding and working with great co-founders and partners as you build a business. I hope you enjoy our conversation.   DocSend is a document sharing platform that enables companies to share business-critical documents with ease and get real-time actionable analytics. With DocSend’s security and control, startup founders, investors, business development executives, and financial professionals can drive business outcomes that have a lasting impact. Start for free at www.docsend.com.    This episode of Founder’s Field Guide is also brought to you by NetSuite. Netsuite allows founders to centralize their payment systems, ditch old spreadsheets and Quickbook tools, and finally gain visibility and control over their financials, HR, inventory, eCommerce - all in one place, instantly. Whether you are doing a million in revenue or hundreds of millions in revenue - see why over 22,000 companies are using NetSuite today. Schedule your free product tour at https://www.netsuite.com/invest.   For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club and new email newsletter called “Inside the Episode” at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag   Show Notes (2:52) – (First question) – Project Honeypot and how it started (3:39) – What question was Honeypot solving (4:59) – Working through the idea maze of Cloudflare (7:30) – The first iteration of Cloudflare (8:15) – An overview of the cybersecurity market and why more leaders need to pay attention (10:33) – First big break for the company (12:50) – Risks they help mitigate (16:42) – Cyber weapons that Cloudflare protects against (20:14) – Hardest part of the building process (24:06) – Effective marketing lessons (25:41) – The sharks vs mosquitoes concept (27:53) – How do decide where to focus next (31:34) – The Cloudflare workers program (36:33) – Their scale vs other cloud providers (42:21) – The finance side of Cloudflare and their relationship vs Wall Street             (42:40) – John Collison Podcast Episode (44:47) – Relationship with their founding partners (50:46) – What about the future is most excites them (52:32) – Kindest thing anyone has done for her   Learn More For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club and new email newsletter called “Inside the Episode” at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag  

Michelle Zatlyn is the co-founder and COO of CloudFlare, a cybersecurity company working to make our internet faster, safer, and more reliable We got together over zoom to discuss her journey as a founder, and the future of cybersecurity in a post covid world.

Many of us worry about how secure our online lives really are. After all, the news is filled with stories of data breaches and denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. As co-founder of cloud security company Cloudflare, Michelle Zatlyn has some advice: Be cautious, but engage with technology to become a better digital citizen. Hear her discuss how to safeguard the digital world. 

Cloudflare co-founder and COO Michelle Zatlyn outlines the problem of starting an enterprise in an economic downturn and provides some fixes to help would-be entrepreneurs get started. Learn more about Michelle at her Aspen Institute bio and in this Forbes profile, and find her on Twitter @zatlyn Read about the Cloudflare story here, and follow them on Twitter @cloudflare

Hear from Michelle Zatlyn, co-founder and COO of Cloudflare. Michelle started the company during an economic downturn in 2009. Now, Cloudflare runs one of the world's largest networks that helps make the Internet more secure, fast, and reliable, with a market cap of more than $6B. Despite the challenges of uncertainty, money not flowing, and a generally dark mood, she was able to do it and learned a lot along the way. In this talk, Michelle will share how she made her business idea come to life and some lessons learned that can help other entrepreneurs—from solving a real, meaningful problem, to communicating in a crisis, prioritizing when there's a true lack of resources, and more.

Cloudflare is on a mission to help build a better internet. The online service helps 26 Million websites prevent denial of service attacks, and speed up their pages, to give users a better experience. Michelle Zatlyn is the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Cloudflare and in this episode shares her learnings from building a global business that has a market cap of $6.5 Billion.Find us on social: linktr.ee/buildingaunicornVisit our presenting sponsor: lawpath.com.au.

Have you ever worked for a company where something was just… out of sync? The goals of the sales department didn't quite match the goals over in marketing. The hiring and firing process seemed to change a little every time. The values that the managers encouraged in their teams didn't really align with the ones they held themselves. No matter the department, the team, or the process, everything seemed to operate apart from each other instead of in unison. It wasn't a sales problem. It wasn't a product problem. It wasn't a YOU problem… It was a mission problem. “One piece of advice that someone shared with us early on that we really took to heart is if you're going to build a company, have a mission… Humans, especially today, want to be part of something.” That's Michelle Zatlyn, co-founder and COO of Cloudflare. In just nine years, Michelle has helped build the company from user number one to user number 2 million. But it's not something she or her two co-founders could have ever done without a mission to bind them, their customers, and their growing staff together. Everybody wants to be part of something bigger - in life or in business. We all want to understand our role in the greater machine. And as an entrepreneur or business owner, you are in a unique position to provide that understanding for your team - not just so your business thrives, but so that your people can thrive with it. ---  Learn more about The Journey at mission.org/thejourney. The Journey is sponsored by our friends at Salesforce Essentials. We use Salesforce Essentials every day and it's part of our own business journey. Essentials combines sales and service tools in a single app to help small businesses win customers and keep them happy. See how Salesforce Essentials can help you be your best business at salesforce.com/thejourney

“Cloudflare's mission is to help build a better Internet. People ask though, what does that mean? Our customers are Internet property. Anything connected online can use Cloudflare and we help make sure we protect our customers from cybersecurity attacks.” — Michelle Zatlyn Michelle Zatlyn, COO of Cloudflare, founded Cloudflare in 2009 and has since grown the company from start-up to multi-billion-dollar public company in just 10 years. “The Cloudflare story is almost like a fairy tale in many ways. It's what Silicon Valley is made out of. The Cloudflare origin story goes back to being students." Michelle’s story is in many ways a model of success. She graduated from Harvard in 2009, where she met fellow co-founders, Lee Holloway and Matthew Prince. Together, they started Cloudflare using the Project Honey Pot model they created. Fast forward a decade and the company has a valuation of over $4 billion, thousands of users, and recently IPO’d. But like any startup story, the founding and growth of Cloudflare has had its ups and downs. On today’s episode, Michelle shares that very origin story, and dives into the importance — really, the necessity — of building a better Internet. — Mission Daily and all of our podcasts are created with love by our team at Mission.org. We own and operate a network of podcasts, and brand story studio designed to accelerate learning. Our clients include companies like Salesforce, Twilio, and Katerra who work with us because we produce results. To learn more and get our case studies, check out Mission.org/Studios. If you’re tired of media and news that promotes fear, uncertainty, and doubt and want an antidote, you’ll want to subscribe to our daily newsletter at Mission.org. When you do, you’ll receive a mission-driven newsletter every morning that will help you start your day off right! 

Michelle Zatlyn is Co-founder and COO of Cloudflare, a leading Internet security, performance, and reliability company that was named to CNBC’s Disruptor 50 List, selected by the Wall Street Journal as the Most Innovative Internet Technology Company for two successive years, and named a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum. Before co-founding Cloudflare, Michelle held positions at Google and Toshiba and launched two successful startups. She holds a BS degree, with distinction, from McGill University, and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she was awarded the Dubliner Prize for Entrepreneurship.    In this episode, we learn why Michelle turned down a job at LinkedIn in June 2009 to pursue an idea that started as a school project with Matthew Prince and Lee Holloway at Harvard Business School and ultimately turned into Cloudflare. Among Michelle’s recommendations to founders is to think about cofounders as Venn diagrams in an effort to cover as much surface area as possible. She also encourages founders to go after something you’re “proud" of, not necessarily something you are “passionate” about. Cloudflare has maintained its momentum by creating a culture of shipping projects fast, empowering team members to showcase their work and be human.

Michelle Zatlyn is Co-founder and COO of Cloudflare, a leading Internet security, performance, and reliability company that was named to CNBC’s Disruptor 50 List, selected by the Wall Street Journal as the Most Innovative Internet Technology Company for two successive years, and named a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum. Before co-founding Cloudflare, Michelle held positions at Google and Toshiba and launched two successful startups. She holds a BS degree, with distinction, from McGill University, and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she was awarded the Dubliner Prize for Entrepreneurship.    In this episode, we learn why Michelle turned down a job at LinkedIn in June 2009 to pursue an idea that started as a school project with Matthew Prince and Lee Holloway at Harvard Business School and ultimately turned into Cloudflare. Among Michelle’s recommendations to founders is to think about cofounders as Venn diagrams in an effort to cover as much surface area as possible. She also encourages founders to go after something you’re “proud" of, not necessarily something you are “passionate” about. Cloudflare has maintained its momentum by creating a culture of shipping projects fast, empowering team members to showcase their work and be human.

Cloudflare’s mission is to "help build a better internet". Founded in 2009, the cloud-based Web services company counts more than 13 million internet properties in its network. Co-Founder and COO, Michelle Zatlyn tracks Cloudflare’s growth and her personal journey in Silicon Valley in this conversation with Michelle Martin.

Michelle Zatlyn is a co-founder and the Chief Operating Officer of CloudFlare, a web performance and security company that helps make the Internet fast, safe, and reliable for users around the world. She has been recognized locally and globally for her entrepreneurial efforts and success, including Fortune Magazine’s Most Influential Young People in Business and Elle Magazine’s Women Who Rule Silicon Valley.

It’s amazing how Cloudflare a company that was a mere dream 8 years has become core part of the internet infrastructure today making websites more secure and scalable. Cloudflare sees all kinds of traffic and attacks from Neo Nazis, largest phasing attacks, political campaigns before you know about it. Tighten your seat belts to get on a roller coaster with Cloudflares's co-founder, Michelle Zatlyn, and her journey to becoming a fast unicorn from her early days of starting Cloudflare at Harvard Business School with her cofounder Matthew Prince and Lee Holloway. Follow Michelle Zatlyn on twitter @zatlyn and your host Shruti Gandhi @atShruti

When Matthew Prince and Michelle Zatlyn met in business school, they didn’t envision a class project turning into a billion-dollar company, but that’s exactly what happened. Bryan Roberts, partner at Venrock and Cloudflare board member, talks with the co-founders about the early days of company building and how their initial mission statement has remained the same years later, a rarity among Silicon Valley startups. Prince and Zatlyn discuss their measured and thoughtful approach to hiring, and why slower growth helps them keep Cloudflare’s culture strong. They also share their experience with public policy, and a time when they took drastic measures to protect the privacy of a Cloudflare user.

Michelle Zatlyn, co-Founder of CloudFlare, knew at an early age that her interests were varied from art, to medicine, to athletics.  This curiosity served her well as she ended up developing one of the most successful tech companies in the world!  Find out why she believes that giving young girls an opportunity to visualize what […]

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Michelle Zatlyn  Co-founder and Head of User Experience, CloudFlare Date: March 12, 2012   [music] Lucy:  Hi, this is Lucy Sanders and I'm the CEO of the National Center for Women in Information Technology or NCWIT and our listeners know that we host series of interviews with women who have started technology companies, great entrepreneurs with wonderful wisdom and advice. With me is Larry Nelson, w3w3.com. Hi Larry. Larry:  I'm happy to be here, this sounds like a very interesting interview. Lucy:  We'll I'm excited, OK, because today we're interviewing Michelle Zatlin the co founder and head of user experience at CloudFlare and I took time to really go look at the CloudFlare site because I wasn't aware of it and I went and looked and I was so intrigued with this company and I'm sure our listeners will want to go and take a look. It's really off to a fast start. I say it's quite an accomplishment to be named the most innovative network and Internet technology company of 2011 by the Wall Street Journal. That is a huge accomplishment and congratulations on that, and I think we'll let Michelle explain a little about it about CloudFlare but I do want to say something about it. It's an infrastructure based business that is really making performance and security and access to the kinds of features that websites need much more accessible to all types of websites and not just the high end websites that can afford some of this type of infrastructure. Websites become part of a CloudFlare community and then their web traffic is routed through this I think is a top secret members only intelligent global network and Michelle is going to tell us much more about that. Welcome, Michelle Michelle:  Thank you Lucy, you did a great job I don't know what else I can add after that, that was perfect. I'm glad you got all that from our website. Lucy:  I like that idea it's members only, you know it's my kind of thing. Why don't you give us a bit of an update about what's going on over at CloudFlare? Michelle:  Naturally, CloudFlare is a performance and security service, so we make websites faster and safer for websites all over the world. At first glance sometimes people are don't think that's very interesting but if you think about yourself or when you're on the Internet and you surfing through a website and you go a certain website like Google or Facebook and it loads really quickly, you stay a lot longer . Then you go to another website and maybe it takes a lot longer to load, you find yourself leaving and so for extra hundred milliseconds it takes the site to load, you lose 2% of your visitors. That's a really big problem for website owners, it's like how can I make sure my site is fast for my visitors and you know there have been services that have been in the market place for a long time that really service enterprise members with, let's say, ten thousand websites online, the biggest websites online. But, you know, the Internet is made up of 250 million websites around the world from blogs, to businesses, to national governments, and all. There are all these sorts of presences online and you know, when we started to build CloudFlare it was how can we make a service that can make speed and security accessible to the entire Internet? And so that's what we've done. We launched to the public about a year and a half ago, so we've been live for 15 months, and we basically went from very little traffic through our network around the world to now we make the Internet faster, safer, for more than 430 million web surfers every single month. Lucy:  Wow! Michelle:  That's a really big number Larry:  [laughing] Yeah, I'll say. Michelle:  If we were independent website we would be the fifth largest website on the Internet. We'd be more traffic than Amazon, Wikipedia, Twitter, AOL and Bing combined. And so the scale we've grown in the last year and a half, it's really hard to grasp, and I just think it really speaks to that there are so many people running websites and there's just was not a service before that made security and performance accessible. We thought to change that at CloudFlare and we've done an OK job so far. Lucy:  I say more than, more than OK. It's really really interesting and I would encourage all of our listeners to go check it out. I love your tag line, give us five minutes and we'll super charge your website. Larry:  [laughing] Yeah. Lucy:  [laughing] Just five minutes! So Michelle, this is really a high tech company, you're one of the co founders, why don't you tell us a bit about how you first got into technology. What technologies are particularly interesting to you today? Michelle:  Well, you know, I didn't have a master plan all along to get into technology. It just kind of happened, you know I worked in different industries. I was a scientist by training. I did a chemistry degree and then I worked in finance. I really got exposed to technology with a friend that I met who was an entrepreneur and kind of opened up my eyes to technology. I'm a really curious person and I love learning, and I just really kind of fell in love with it. I kept finding these opportunities that would present themselves and I kept kind of pursuing it, so I went from science to finance to technology where I've been ever since. So you know, for people out there that think I like the idea of technology whether it's I really love using Facebook or really love using Google or I love using different websites to generate other services or however you incorporate technology in your life. If you didn't know a lot about it before, you can still get into the industry as long as you're willing to learn. That's what happened to me. And today I mean I feel like there are so many interesting technologies going on. I just think my own life. Twitter totally changed the way I can fume information that I get news and that I have conversations online. It's amazing how this service can create these really strong connections with people I don't even know and you can have these conversations. And so that's for me personally, even for our business, from CloudFlare's perspective. It's been an incredible enabler to help us grow as quickly as we have over the last year and a half. I mean Twitter has been an amazing source for us to for people find out about us, to help us solve our user's issues that may come up or answer any questions. So I think Twitter is really really interesting. And then I think about something like Hulu which is really like an online entertainment website and it's totally changed the time that I spend on entertainment in terms of when and where I may watch TV shows or movies. Before you had to have a TV and get cable and you'd have to have you know you've got to set your TV player and DVR and you have to watch shows at certain time. Basically with Hulu you can get all the latest shows when you want it, whenever you want based on your Internet access. But now I only like to watch shows that are on Hulu and anything else I just I don't even see because I just the way I can consume it and I can do it on my time and it doesn't have to necessarily start at 8:00 or 8:30. If I want to start at 8:25 or whatever time, I can just do it on my time and it's been pretty amazing. And of course there is something like Drop Box which changes the way you share information whether it's with colleagues or with your family members. All these sorts of things that make these that used to be kind of hard, really easy, I mean those are just three examples but the list is very long. Lucy:  Well, I was intrigued with your example of Twitter and how you use it in the company for customer service because, I've been thinking more about that lately, because I have friends when they lose luggage, they complain on Twitter and they get a call back. You know, it's amazing. They don't get a call back, but they actually get a response. So I think that Twitter is an amazing customer service channel. Michelle:  It really is. I mean again ,business do their best to typically to try and deliver a great customer experience but sometimes you fall short and as a business you want to hear about that, tell me when I fall short so I can help fix it. And part of it is that if you're on Twitter you can just immediately send a message and get a response back. It's very powerful but it's just not when there are issues. It also enables people to talk about your service, it's like wow. In my case, I just added this website to CloudFlare and I can already feel that it's faster. And you kind of expressed that and you have people listening to what you're saying. It will resolve kind of like, I have a website and I want it to be faster, let me go find out more about this CloudFlare service. And so for customer services in terms of these one on one contacts it's been really powerful, but then also just people discovering the service is also really powerful. Lucy:  That's a great point. Larry:  It is, you know you mentioned that you didn't get into technology with a master plan behind it. How did you become an entrepreneur and what is it about entrepreneurship that makes you tick? Michelle:  I always think of this kind of like a lot of roles are either you're actors or you're advisers and for me it's like I get such a thrill. It's so self exhilarating being able to be part of the team that creates the service, makes the product. The actual making of things, I love that. I love bringing things together, sometimes you don't control the resources to make something happen. I mean that's what I strive to do. Entrepreneurship you do a lot of that. So then, a lot of times you start with nothing and you have to create all these sorts of things a long the time. Whether you're creating teams, you're creating material, you're creating products for your customers and you're kind of learning as you go, but being part of that, that energy to bring it all to fruition    I love it, it's very exhilarating. Larry:  Yeah, I love it too, yeah. Lucy:  Along that path of entrepreneurship, what kinds of influences did you have, you know people or event or who or what influenced you along this entrepreneurship path? Michelle:  Yeah, it wasn't this one defining moment, it was many defining moments over the course of my life and you know I'm only 32 so I still have a lot of life ahead of me. I remember thinking in high school and I grew up    I'm Canadian, I grew up in a very small city, in the prairies, where I didn't really know what entrepreneurship meant. But I remember in high school I played on all the competitive sports teams, that really showed me the value of perseverance and hard work and being dedicated to something, and you couldn't give up, that your team depended on you and leadership. You know, all those sorts of qualities that are important in entrepreneurship. And then I remember at university, meeting a really good friend of mine who exposed me to sometimes using emotion in decision making is really an asset and before I met her, I didn't really think about that. And you know, sometimes you do need to use your emotions when you're making decisions. And the emotional intelligence, people have different buzz words for it, it can be really powerful. And then early on in my career when I was working in finance and then I met this entrepreneur who was a tech entrepreneur, again he doesn't describe himself as a tech entrepreneur, but he was, He has been a serial entrepreneur and everything with him was just like of course we can do that, this is how I would do it, yes, everything was yes this is we do it, and it was so liberating, I loved that and I need to be a part of that. And that was really where it kind of opened eyes up, that you can create opportunity, you can create things, you can go out and create your own path, you don't always have to follow someone else's path, so I feel lucky to have these different role models throughout my life. Lucy:  I think that issue about "Yes", a culture of "Yes," we don't hear that enough, but I think it's really really important, because so many people shut conversations down before they ever get a chance to be explored? Michelle:  I definitely agree. Because opportunities present themselves all the time and people are their own of course enemy sometimes, and they said no I can't do it because it's too risky, or like financially, or what will my friends say. Nothing is as easy, everything has ups and downs, but if you are really passionate and seek your interest then you should go for it, and pursue these opportunities, because great things can really happen. Lucy:  You may be are only 32 years but you are very wise, I think you can always move from a "Yes" to a "No" ,and that's much harder than to move from a "No" to "Yes". Larry:  That's a fact. With all the things you have done and what are you doing right now, what is the toughest thing you have had to do in your career? Michelle:  There have been many, but if I have to pick one, CloudFlare is an infrastructure company. We run 14 data centers around the world, and we have very heavy technology, but I am not a technical co founder. Since I started this very technical company, which I knew about website performance and security, which I was not an expert on when I started as a non technical co founder    that was really hard, because those first three months where we were really early building the product and the most important thing that matters is coding. So we can actually get somebody to try it, see if it actually works. And I couldn't code. You obviously try and do some research, and try and talk to people, the value I added really early on, I constantly was second guessing myself like, "Shit, I'm on the team, am I actually adding value, am I the right co founder for this team?" And so those first three months when we started, it was just the three of us, and the other two co owners were very technical, that was really mentally challenging. I was trying to say wow like, you feel like you hold the responsibility to your other business partners to put as much in as they are, and I just feel like I was missing this core skill set, I just physically couldn't. So instead, I had to spend a lot of my time learning. I was a sponge. Every time I heard a word I didn't understand, I looked it up. I was constantly reading, I had a whole list of definitions that I would keep track of. And now three years later I am certainly a subject matter expert, and I wasn't three years ago. So for people who are non technical but want to build a technical company, you can, you definitely can. You need to pick your partners wisely, and you have to want to learn it, to be thirsty for information, but if you are, you can certainly play an essential part in the company. Lucy:  We hereby grant you a degree in computer science, [laughter] .... Larry:  Yeah, here you go... Lucy:  An honorary degree, that's awesome... Michelle:  Oh, thank you, thank you. Lucy:  That's a great story. In addition to don't be afraid to learn, get out there and create your culture of "Yes", what other advice you give a person considering starting their own company? Michelle:  I would say two others, there are so many but two others are I think important that sometimes are overlooked is, big problems are often easier to solve than small problems, because some of these incremental changes on technology, that's OK, but it turns out it's much harder to recruit people to come join your team, or it's harder to get funding, if your idea is just an incremental change on what already exists. But if you go after a really big audacious goal    like for us, ours was to rebuild the Internet, and at first when we tell people, some people laugh at us, and we said, no, no, just watch. We are on our way to doing that. And there are other people, who are just, "That's amazing. I want to be a part of that." Google's initial mission of "I want to organize the world's information," that's a huge goal and when they started it 13 years ago people thought that was silly, but that's what they've really done. And so don't be scared to dream big, because often the big you will find the people who are attracted to the same idea, and will search to assemble the resources to actually make it happen. Obviously on day one you don't execute it, and you lay the plans to get there. But by dreaming big, you start to attract the resources you need. Another one to keep in mind is, choose your partners wisely, either business partners or life partners, and so, when you start a company where you are a co founder, you really need to trust one another. You will go through lots of highs and lots of downs, and it will be very lonely, and it's challenging and there are moments when it's just like, why I am doing this? But when you have one or two or three other people who are also doing it with you and you know they're not going anywhere you feel responsibility for them and to yourself to keep going and that's how you get through those tough times. And same at home. You're working long hours. You're very consumed with your business or your idea or your passion and if you're coming home to somebody as a life partner you have to make sure that they're your biggest champion and biggest advocate and are rooting for your success. When you're an entrepreneur and you have a company your family and even your friends are kind of honorary cofounders too because they're in it. It affects them whether they're there every day or not. And people who are your big supporters make a huge difference. Larry:  Wow, that's great advice. Now I probably know the answer to this question already but what personal characteristics do you think you have been given that have given you the advantage of being an entrepreneur? Michelle:  If I can do it, anyone can do it. [laughter] Michelle:  Again, if you feel like you want to start a company you should totally do it. And these are some of the things that I think benefited me and it's going to be different for everybody else. I'm a sponge. I love learning. I'm really curious. If I don't know about something I want to learn about it. I don't need to maybe become like the expert on the subject but I want to learn enough to have a conversation about it. And that's really valuable when you're an entrepreneur because you end up doing a lot of different things and you might be working with a lot of different people. So that willingness to learn is really important. And then perseverance. Again, it's changing industries, starting something in a subject matter that I wasn't an expert on. You just kind of have to keep pushing forward. And I always use the visualization just move the ball forward. If you're moving the ball forward then you're moving in the right direction. Larry:  Good. Lucy:  Along those lines when you were mentioning that your life partners are honorary cofounders, what other advice do you have around bringing balance between personal and professional lives? Michelle:  It's really hard. I've been working on CloudFlare for three years and it really is a high priority. Especially when you start to expand your team and hire other people who leave other jobs to come and join you in your vision you feel a huge responsibility to make it successful. But it's important to still have time for yourself. And with your life partner whether it's a husband or a boyfriend or fiancé and then your extended family and friends. Again, you work a lot but there are some times where you just need to disconnect. And that means not checking    again, with Smartphone it's so easy to check what's going on all the time and that's a huge asset. But then there are some times you should just leave it, even if it's for an hour or two hours and you go for a dinner and you don't check it at the dinner table. That sounds so silly. But it can be really hard when there's just so much going on in the early stages of a company to just leave the Smartphone at home and go out either on a date or you're out at a dinner or whatever. You definitely need to. For me I try to exercise a couple of times a week. And whether that's go for a run outside or go to a yoga class or play a game of tennis outside, just something because again if you're not taking care of your body and your mind it's hard to be really productive at work. Eating healthy, sleeping a lot. Really simple things but for me it's I try and sleep because if I can't sleep I can't function then I'm useless at work and with my personal life. And then when I am with my personal life I try and shut off my phone and I try and focus on the person I'm with. So if that means if I can only be with them for an hour so that hour I'll make a commitment and then say, "OK, I have to go now," versus say, "OK let's hang out all afternoon," but then I'll be on my phone every other minute. That's not very fun either. It's hard but it's really important to have those friends and family that you spend time with them and to keep up those relationships. It really is important. But I'm not going to lie, it's really hard. [laughter] Lucy:  That's the truth. Larry:  You've got it. You've already achieved a great deal and I'm really proud for you. What's next for you? Michelle:  We want to rebuild the Internet. The Internet's amazing. Anybody with an idea or a voice or a business idea can put it online. I think that whole notion of the Internet is connecting us around the world is incredible. But the Internet was built 30 years ago and there were some inefficiencies built in. So we see us going forward as patching the Internet. Fixing all the inefficiencies so we can make the Internet a faster, safer, better place for everyone. So people can continue to go there and put their business online, their voices online in the easiest possible manner. So when we look ahead we just want to keep growing and fixing, patching the Internet. Larry:  That's excellent. Lucy:  Putting the thumb in the dike. [laughs] Larry:  There you go. Lucy:  That's awesome. Well thank you so much, Michelle, this has been really interesting. And good luck to you and CloudFlare. You've probably gotten a new customer here with our sites. [laughs] Michelle:  That would be great. We'd love to have you as a customer. Lucy:  Wonderful. Thank you so much. I want to remind listeners that they can find us at NCWIT.org and also at w3w3.com. Larry:  You bet you. We'll have it in our blog and our podcast directory too. Lucy:  All right. Thank you very much Michelle. Michelle:  Thank you. [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Michelle ZatlynInterview Summary: Most people can hardly find the time to eat or sleep in this fast paced world, let alone find the time to wait for a webpage to download. This time crunch that many people are under these days explains the fact that "for every extra hundred milliseconds it takes a site to load, 2% of that site's visitors will be lost," as stated by Michelle in an interview. This is exactly why she co-founded CloudFlare, a service that decreases bandwidth usage, increases site speed, and stops malicious attacks, making for a faster and safer website. Release Date: March 12, 2012Interview Subject: Michelle ZatlynInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 21:37