Blocking 190 Billion Cyberattacks Daily: Scaling Through Crises & Cold Winters with Michelle Zatlyn of Cloudflare

Episode notes

In this episode of Tank Talks, we’re joined by Michelle Zatlyn, Co-founder, Co-chair, and President of Cloudflare, a company protecting and powering a major part of global internet traffic. Cloudflare helps businesses stay online, load faster, and block threats before they reach the door. Michelle explains how growing up in Saskatchewan shaped her views on leadership and teamwork, and how that experience still guides her as Cloudflare scales. She shares how a hallway conversation at Harvard became the starting point for the business, how they raised their first round of funding without a product, and why they moved to Silicon Valley during a downturn with no connections. She talks through the pressure of going public, the spike in traffic when COVID hit, and how the team responded when customers suddenly needed help keeping their services running. She also walks through Cloudflare’s new AI crawler model, how it gives content owners more control, and why a new business model for the web is overdue.

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