Front Page: Cloudflare

I’m thinking of starting an ongoing series called “Front Page” where I do a high-level analysis of companies that have recently undergone an IPO. The purpose of this is to shed some light on the journey that companies embarked upon from their humble beginnings to the ultimate destination resort: the ticker of a stock exchange. This series will kick off with Cloudflare.

Cloudflare is a company that provides services around website security and acceleration. Its beginnings stem from one of the best known startup conferences: TechCrunch’s Disrupt, where in 2009, founders Matthew Prince (now CEO), Lee Holloway, and Michelle Zatlyn (now COO) attended the conference. Between then and today, they have expanded their product line to offer services such as DDoS protection, web application firewalls, authoritative DNS, public DNS resolvers, reverse proxies, and more.

Cloudflare garnered media attention over time for multiple reasons. For one, they were known to be providing services for various notorious groups such as LulzSec, 8chan, and The Daily Stormer. They soon stopped providing services for 8chan and The Daily Stormer, but not before they made it known about their staunch support of content neutrality and the First Amendment. On the flip side,

Cloudflare has many differentiators. They block on average 44 billion cyber threats on a daily basis. They’ve also generated a DNS resolver that uses the 1.1.1.1 IP address. This allows your web server to connect at a much faster rate than your ISP. Also noteworthy is their Apps platform, which allows developers to construct apps, deploy them to any CF customer, and get paid for any apps that are used. It’s very similar to Apple’s and Android’s version of the app store. This plays directly into their Developer Fund, a $100 million fund that allows them to invest in startups and projects that are built on the Apps platform. By doing this, Cloudflare essentially creates a flywheel effect that only churns out more innovation, similar to the way Amazon operates.

With respect to funding, Cloudflare has raised over $330 million in capital, spanning all the way to a Series E round. Investors of Cloudflare over the different rounds include Union Square Ventures, Microsoft, Fidelity Investments, and Franklin Templeton Investments. At the time of their IPO on September 12th, their stock shot out at $15 / share. They ended up raising about $525 million from the IPO, and received a valuation of about $4.4 billion.

Because of their strong stance for freedom of speech, Cloudflare launched two initiatives: Project Galileo and Project Athenian. Project Galileo provides free resources to groups such as artists, activitists, human rights groups, and journalists in order to improve their vulnerability to cyberattacks. Project Athenian is designed to make sure that government election websites, both state and local, receive top notch resources for free so that people can have access to things like election information and voter registration.

Cloudflare’s journey has definitely had its ups and downs, especially with public opinion on their support of certain unpopular online groups. However, it is their innovation in web security and infrastructure along with the fact they are one of the best at what they do that has allowed them to weather the storm and mark a big milestone by ringing the bell to announce their public opening.