Cloudflare
To help build a better Internet. Cloudflare provides a global cloud platform that delivers network services to businesses, including SASE and SSE for Zero Trust security, fast application delivery, network infrastructure, and full-stack development tools.
Founding Story
In 2004, Matthew Prince and Lee Holloway set out to answer the question 'Where does email spam come from?' and created Project Honey Pot, which had a large community tracking online threats. In 2009, while at Harvard Business School, Matthew Prince met Michelle Zatlyn. They realized they could create a service to help Project Honey Pot users stop threats, not just track them. Originally titled 'Project Web Wall,' the company was renamed Cloudflare to describe 'a firewall in the cloud.' They won the Harvard Business School Business Plan competition in April 2009, winning $20,000. That summer, Matthew and Michelle moved to California to join Lee Holloway, who had built the first working prototype. The company closed its Series A financing in November 2009 and officially launched to the public on September 27, 2010, at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, winning the Most Innovative Company award.
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Leadership
Founders
Matthew Prince
Co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare. Before Cloudflare, Prince co-founded Unspam Technologies, Inc. where he served as Chair since December 2001. He was a law professor and helped create Project Honey Pot to track email spam sources. He holds a B.A. in English and Computer Science from Trinity College-Hartford, a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. He met Michelle Zatlyn at Harvard Business School.
Michelle Zatlyn
Co-founder and President of Cloudflare. Born in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Canada (July 1979). She holds a B.Sc. in Chemistry with a minor in Business from McGill University (2001, graduated with distinction on a scholarship) and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. She met Matthew Prince at Harvard Business School in 2009. She served as Head of User Experience from 2009, was appointed Chief Operating Officer in 2016, and became President in 2020. She currently serves on the board of directors and audit committee of Atlassian Corporation, Plc.
Lee Holloway
Co-founder and lead architect of Cloudflare. Born around 1981 in Cupertino, California, where his father worked for Apple. He was a legendary gamer and talented chess player in his youth. He learned computer science in high school and attended UC Santa Cruz. While at UC Santa Cruz, he was hired by Matthew Prince to work on antispam software at Unspam Technologies, working on Project Honey Pot. He was the resident genius who built Cloudflare's early systems and the demo for their 2010 TechCrunch Disrupt launch. He served as lead engineer until his departure in 2016 due to health complications later diagnosed as frontotemporal dementia.
Executive Team
Matthew Prince
Co-Founder, CEO, and Co-Chair of the Board
Co-founded Cloudflare in 2009 and has served as CEO since inception. Previously co-founded Unspam Technologies. Holds B.A. in English and Computer Science from Trinity College, J.D. from University of Chicago Law School, and M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.
Michelle Zatlyn
Co-Founder, President, and Co-Chair of the Board
Co-founded Cloudflare in 2009. Served as Head of User Experience, then COO (2016), and became President in 2020. Board member of Atlassian Corporation. Holds B.Sc. in Chemistry and Business from McGill University and M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.
Business Model
Revenue Model
Cloudflare operates a tiered subscription model with free and paid plans based on features and usage. Revenue comes from: 1) Subscription fees for Pro, Business, and Enterprise plans, 2) Usage-based pricing for services like Workers, R2 storage, Stream video, and Images, 3) Add-on services like Advanced DDoS protection, Bot Management, and Rate Limiting, 4) Enterprise contracts with custom pricing and SLAs. The company focuses on land-and-expand strategy: attracting free users, converting them to paid tiers, and expanding within accounts.
Pricing Tiers
For personal or hobby projects. Includes: Fast DNS, Unmetered DDoS Protection, CDN, Universal SSL, Free Managed Ruleset, WAF, Lossless Image Optimization, Community support, 70 Cloudflare Rules + 10,000 Bulk Redirects, Simple bot mitigation, API schema validation for 5 schemas
For professional websites. Includes all Free features plus: Ticket and Community Forum support, 225 Cloudflare Rules + 25,000 Bulk Redirects, Mitigation for easy-to-detect bots, 100 free minutes video storage + 10,000 minutes delivery, Automatic Platform Optimization for WordPress
For small businesses. Includes all Pro features plus: 100% Uptime SLA, 1x Uptime Service Credits, Single-Sign-On (SSO) Support, Role-based Account Control, Ticket + Chat + Community Forum support, 450 Cloudflare Rules + 50,000 Bulk Redirects, Sophisticated bot mitigation and basic bot analytics, API schema validation for 10 schemas
For mission-critical applications. Includes all Business features plus: 10x (Standard) or 25x (Premium) Uptime Service Credits, Network Prioritization, 24x7x365 Phone support, 2700 Cloudflare Rules + 1,000,000 Bulk Redirects, Mitigation for all bots with anomaly detection and custom CAPTCHAs, Advanced bot analytics, API schema validation for 10+ schemas, Custom pricing for API Shield, Layer-3 DDoS protection (Magic Transit), China Network Access, and Cloudflare for SaaS
Target Markets
- Individual developers and hobbyists
- Small and medium businesses (SMBs)
- Enterprise organizations
- E-commerce platforms
- SaaS companies
- Gaming companies
- Website performance and acceleration
- DDoS attack protection and mitigation
- Web application security
- API protection and security
- Bot management and mitigation
- Zero Trust security implementation
- SpaceX
- PhonePe
- IBM
- Discord
History & Milestones
Blocked monumental 7.3 Tbps DDoS attack, largest ever recorded
Named TIME 100 Most Influential Companies
Celebrated 15th anniversary with Birthday Week
Held first-ever global user conference, Cloudflare Connect
Reached 4,000 employees
2 AI Tools by Cloudflare
Cloudflare Browser Rendering lets developers run headless browsers in the cloud via Workers, enabling web scraping, screenshot capture, and browser automation at the edge.
Build and deploy AI agents on Cloudflare's global network with built-in state management, real-time communication, and seamless tool integration.
