Building Cloudflare for the Next 50 Years | Co-founder Cloudfare Michelle Zatlyn

**Michelle Zatlyn** (0:00)
You look at the invention of the Internet, and then the invention of the AI. If it feels like it's everywhere and happening all at once, it's because it's faster than things we've seen in the last 30 years, and it makes sense. I think the best analogy for AI is like the invention of electricity. Could you imagine when they first brought out the light bulb to how you think about electricity today, where it's just everything? It's all tied back to the invention of electricity. So AI is going to be the same, it's just going to transcend every single thing. But it puts the business model at the web at risk. The way that all of these AI services work is they go crawl the web for all this content to feed their LLMs with to be able to go give you the answers. Before AI existed, what happened is, if you wanted something, you go search on a browser, you see something, you click on it, and you go to the website to learn about it or to buy something. When you go to your Proplexity or the OpenAI or the ChatGBT or whatever you're using, do you go back and look at the original source? No, you just read it right there. The original source isn't getting compensated. And so if you're a content creator and you're no longer getting paid for the what you're creating, what's your incentive to keep creating it?

**Joubin Mirzadegan** (1:08)
Welcome to Grit, I'm Joubin, partner at Kleiner Perkins, a show where we go beyond the highlight reel and explore the personal and professional challenges of building history-making companies. Today on Grit, we have Michelle Zatlyn for part two of Grit. Part one was a few years ago, and I would encourage everyone to listen. Michelle is the co-founder and president of Cloudflare, one of the most iconic and important enterprise software companies of our generation. We talk about a whole bunch of stuff. Michelle and I have become friends since the last episode, and we get to reflect on her ability to build an enduring franchise. We get to talk about some of the personal things that come with company building the usual. Enjoy the episode. You know what I was looking at last night?

**Michelle Zatlyn** (1:46)
What?

**Joubin Mirzadegan** (1:48)
Cloudflare is an $80 billion company. Are you kidding? What? That is, come on, let's just be honest for a second. That is absurd.

**Michelle Zatlyn** (1:58)
Thank you. So proud. We've done really well for our shareholders, which is maybe the best part, which includes our employees and investors who've believed in us. And we've driven really great returns. And so it's great. And you know, my very cheesy saying, but we're just getting started. I still believe that we're just getting started.

**Joubin Mirzadegan** (2:15)
But are you still getting started?

**Michelle Zatlyn** (2:17)
Well, OK, let me just say, so it's interesting. We just turned 15 years old about a month ago. We had our 15th birthday and I love a birthday celebration. So we marked the occasion. It was super fun. And we every week, every year during our birthday week, we give a lot of gifts back to the Internet, like a lot of products and announcements back to the Internet. But this year, we really celebrated with our team, which was so special. But guess who turned 50 in April? Microsoft turned 50 in April. And of course, they came first. And so we were able to watch how they celebrated and they brought their founders back and they had Steve Bulmer come and Satya.

**Joubin Mirzadegan** (2:49)
I remember that.

**Michelle Zatlyn** (2:50)
Yeah, it was really cool how they celebrated their 50th birthday. And I had this moment, Joubin, where, again, the last time I saw you, you kind of teased me for saying, we're just getting started. And I do get teased about it. But I'm like, one day Cloudflare will turn 50 years old. Like, I actually think, believe that's true. And so that's why I say we're just getting started, because we're 15 years in, so it's still early. Like, we have way more headway ahead of us than behind us. And so it's just kind of an interesting perspective, I guess. And so that's why I say it.

**Joubin Mirzadegan** (3:18)
Okay, you're inspired by those that came ahead of you. But like, okay, so Cloudflare is 15 years in. Yes. That also by default, considering, you know, like you were there from day one, means you're 15 years in.

**Michelle Zatlyn** (3:32)
Totally.

**Joubin Mirzadegan** (3:32)
So can I like pick apart those two things for a second?

**Michelle Zatlyn** (3:35)