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

23:39It will be the best gift. How long have you been married? 14 years. It'll be the best gift in 14 years. Okay. This is actually, thank you. This is very helpful. We are not investors. I have no claim. I have nothing to gain from this. It will be the best gift you've ever given him. Okay. Thank you, Jamie. I hope Jamie's not listening to this, but I'm going to get this. Okay, I love it. It's amazing. Okay. And like, okay, not for nothing, I'm not going to like make this a whole commercial, but if you sleep with different temperatures, like if you like it warm and he likes it cold, for example, it has different temperatures.

24:12Yes. You don't just have to like open the window, you know? Do you have the mattress cover or do you have the whole mattress? I got the whole shebang, but you can do both. Okay. And do the whole shebang, does it come with like a computer on the side that you can put It comes with a computer on the side. Okay. Yeah. They should put that in the marketing material. It comes with like a, like literally it looks like a computer. Right. Okay. Where do you put that? I put it to the side of the bed, like next to my nightstand. Okay. And it's also where you originally pour the water in because the water feeds pipes into the mattress.

24:39Okay. That then cools the bed. And by the way, it's dynamically cooling it. Yes. So in the middle of the night, as my temperature, my body temperature rises and falls, the bed is. Okay. Is. And can you hear the fan in the computer? No. You can't hear the fan? Okay. Nothing. All right. Well. Nothing. You should be a common advisor for that. I know. You need some. You need some. You need some. Some shares. Some shares or a cut of a royalty for every sale that you disinfluence. This is my 2025 holiday gift. That's right. Good. Well, it's expensive enough that if I got a royalty, I might be a rich man.

25:14Okay. Sleep. Got it. Okay. Saying no to more things. Fair. The year of no this year. Okay. But like, let's imagine, like, do you sit down with your EA every week? Yes. Every week? Every week. What time? What day? Fridays. Fridays? And you look out in the next week? Of course. And sometimes the next two weeks. And the next two weeks. And these days, how are you blocking time? Where does that time typically get blocked? Do you have like an amount of travel that you are basically tolerant to? Like, how do you think about all that? I mean, I guess yes, yes, and yes. Again, back to there are a lot of aspects of my job, as you just pointed out.

25:57So it's okay. Internal. So part of my job is spending time internally on these projects, helping people make decisions, weighing in. You know, I think that that's a big part of it. And then one-on-ones with the folks that, you know, are my, that I'm responsible for having regular one-on-ones. So that's like very internal focused work. And there's different rhythms of the business, I like to call it different seasons, like whether it's compensation cycle season, that's something that I'm involved in at Cloudflare. That's like a big lot of internal meetings with both our total rewards team, but also all the leaders of all the teams.

26:29I actually love that because you're like, that's like very operationally heavy, but so important. I actually think compensation is such an important topic for how companies do it. And we want to be really thoughtful about it. So these are examples of things where it's like during that season, we do that twice a year. That's like an intense rhythm of the business, for example. But we don't do that all year long. So that's kind of part of my week is internal sorts of responsibilities, both in groups or with one-on-ones. This next group is customers. I mean, I'd spend a lot of time with our customers.

27:00I love it. Back to my point of it's a perfect North Star. One of my board members, Mark Hawkins, he was very – he joined Salesforce when they had about$3 billion in revenue and was there through about$30 billion in revenue or beyond. which is an amazing, which is an amazing run, three to 30 billion. And we were about two billion. So we're at this stage. And Mark really, when he joined the board was just sharing with me, he's like how much time he spent with the customer and how that was just like such a, like it just, it, it just is so clarifying. And I cannot imagine, like Mark told me this and then I started to do it.

27:29And now I'm just like a huge evangelist for it. It's everybody should just be engineers, product managers, like a marketer, not, you know, it doesn't have to be every day, But just go sit in because all of a sudden the copy you're writing and debating about, you're like, actually, the customer doesn't like any of that. They describe it this way and you just get so much better. Like it's so much better. All this time we waste internally debating or trying to decide. It's just so much clear. It's like, let's just get it done. Like this is what they want. And so I love spending time with customers.

27:57And so on a weekly basis, it's a lot of it is either online, like emails that we're going back and forth with or setting up calls. And then sometimes it's in-person things, dinners, lunches, coffees, in-person meetings, executive briefings. Like these are these are words that are now part of my life where eight years ago as a founder or an EBC. I would have probably rolled my eyes. Turns out they're valuable. So I'm all for an EBC. And so so there's some and of course the you know, if it's a if it's a Google Meet or Zoom call, it's much lightweight versus which is, you know, there's like no travel time versus something that's in person.

28:32So those sorts of things kind of take up the other part of the calendar. And then there's some space, back to what I'm saying. And then there's the travel, which, you know, there's a lot of part of my job is to represent Cloudflare at events. So go do speaking things like this. You know, come speak to you. I mean, this is part of my job. Go represent us at that conference in Saudi Arabia, LEAP, which is the conference. Like, go and do that travel. And then how do you make a whole kind of itinerary out of it when I'm traveling? And so I pick and choose on what I'm doing from a travel perspective.

29:02And now we have a big executive team. So we actually have a tracker that shows, okay, here are all the countries. Cloudflare has kind of 20 countries around the world that we do like a lot of business in. Okay, which executive has been there recently and who needs to go next? And then, you know, I fit myself into that schedule. That's cool. Yeah, it's helpful. Is there like a, how do I say this? I'm only asking you because I think you'll shoot me straight. Okay. Because we're friends. Okay. And maybe you'll lie to me. That's fine. Okay. Have you had to ward off the allure of the sexy things of the job?

29:36Let me give you examples. Okay. And you tell me yes or no. Yes, yeah. Oh, Michelle, like, you know, you're a big public company executive now. Like, you need, you know, a chief of staff, an assistant, five people at home working on your behalf, like all the things that like the army of people. Yes. That's like one version of this. Yes, yeah. Okay. Another, well, you can't drive yourself. You need a driver. You're a big company executive now. You're a co-founder, whatever. Oh, Michelle, you're the co-founder of an$80 billion company. You need bodyguards. You can't walk around San Francisco. And I think like these are really like these are these are actual problems that it's crazy that you probably have.

30:19But you actually like these are things that you have to decide in a given day. And I talk to a lot of executives and they actually have to make these decisions. And I think on the one hand, the. The my observation. OK. Is that a lot of times they sound cooler than they are. Absolutely. OK. I agree. And but on the other hand, it's like the same thing. You're like, well, do I need security? I don't know. Like, geez, I've never thought about that before. Like, I guess if I am walking around San Francisco at 10 p.m., is it like the worst idea? Like or like a driver, like I'll be more productive. So you could talk yourself in any of these things.

31:03A company jet. Like, well, if we have executives going to 40 countries, like, maybe it makes sense to have a company jet. So these are like real actually like. So anyway, I just. Yes. Reaction. I don't think you're wrong. I think you're I think those are decisions people have to make. And and it's there's not a lot of places to look for inspiration for who's done it best. Right. And so actually, it's interesting that you brought it up. I actually think like you could just do like a whole blog post or, you know, comparison of kind of how different people do it and without even names and just kind of create like straw man's of here are the options here, how folks do it.

31:40Because I actually think there's there's not a lot of benchmarking around this and it's complicated to navigate. And most people are figuring it out for the first time. So I think you're exactly right on. You know, it's interesting what you're when you're describing it. And this is like a little bit maybe like one level up, but I do think it's interesting. So I was just back. So Matthew and I met at Harvard Business School and I was back there last week. And I tried to go back to the school. That school changed my life. And it really made a huge imprint on me. So I really give back to the school by going back.

32:10And so I get on the plane and I go and I talk to the students. And every time I'm there, I'm just left so inspired. But I reminded last week of something. And I'll just repeat it here. So it's interesting. Two things happened, both HBS related. So first, if you go to Harvard Business School on the last day of class, like the whole year you're doing these cases, you're putting yourself in these situations and trying to decide what you would do in that situation. So it's like good leadership training. But on the last day of class, they flip the script. In the very last day of class, the professor kind of gives you a life lesson.

32:39OK. And so I was second year. And again, I've always been like eager and love to learn. And this professor, his name was Paul Marshall. He took a class. I took his class managing in a turnaround. It was a very popular class. Hard to get into. He was a phenomenal professor. Phenomenal. And I remember on the last day of class, he said the following to all of us. He said, all of you are going to be so successful in your life that at some point you're no longer going to have to do the day to day things. You're not going to have to take public transportation because you're going to have the driver.

33:08You're not going to have to go get groceries because they'll get delivered to you or you'll have someone to go get that. And he said, I recommend all of you. I encourage all of you not to lose touch with reality as you become successful in life. Now, I was a second year HBS student where I really did not feel like that was going to be me one day. Like, I just didn't think that that was I didn't even I didn't that was not where I'd come from, like at all. But like I still remember his words and I'm like, don't lose touch with reality. Okay. Now fast forward. This is going to sound obscene, but one of the other things I get to go to is the World Economic Forum in Davos every year.

33:46It's super interesting group of people, all the world leaders, the politicians, the media, the journalists, the business leaders from around the world. It's super interesting. Say what you want to say, but it's like super interesting to be there. Big honor to be invited. and Harvard had a reception there. And the dean at the time, Dean Norio, gave a little talk to the group. And this is before Cloudflare was public. We were still a pretty small company. And he, remember him saying, he's like, you know, and Harvard Business School is all about grooming the next set of leaders. They're committed to helping create the next set of leaders in the world.

34:15And he said, look, most people really applaud leaders in bad times. But actually, if you look at the research, most people do the right thing in a bad time. In a crisis, most people step up. You actually see a lot of people stepping up in crises. more than you don't. Of course, there's some examples, but you see it more. He's like, but what we don't talk enough about is when things are going really well, when that gets to your head as a leader. And I actually think there's something really to that. Like some of the things that like losing touch with reality, creating this whole other universe for yourself, you kind of lose touch.

34:46And it's like, and do you start to make, is that healthy or not? And so those things have really kind of spoken to me. And so I try to stay grounded in reality, Joven, and keep doing a great job as a leader of Cloudflare. That's a good answer. But like, do you not want to indulge? I don't spend that much time thinking about it because there's the higher value place in my time. But it's, again, I like to do a lot of great stuff and I try not to have FOMO. I mean, I guess fear of missing out. You try not, you kind of say, hey, what's important to you? What values are important to you? And I kind of have my values.

35:20And then you could try things. You can try saying, okay, let me go try that. I don't like that. I'm Is that an irreversible decision? Some of these things are not irreversible decisions. So you can go and you're like, actually, I didn't like that. And then you're like, actually, I feel pretty confident that other people might be choosing that, but I'm going to stick with what I chose. Yeah. So I don't know. Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. But you should do the benchmarking. Yeah. You should go. But you got to make it anonymous because I think that that would like more like blinded. Yeah. Yeah. It would be a, you know, it would be a fun exercise if I asked all of my guests, OK, who has a jet?

35:56A lot of them would say me. And then of you, how big is it? And then I'll start benchmarking. I think you should start asking a series of these questions and you can kind of draw a straw man. That would be awesome. Well, and it's so interesting. I actually have a lot to say about this. Just about first generation wealth creation because of technology, because of AI and because of crypto is happening so much earlier. I do not think people understand first generation wealth creation. First generation? A thousand percent. It is to move income brackets or socioeconomic brackets like I've done is very hard.

36:26And there are very few people around you to help you. And again, AI is only going to create more of this. And so I actually think there's a huge opportunity here. I hope someone solves it. Does it give you trust issues? Meaning like if I was just thinking like, OK, who could you go to? If you're like, all right, I have billions of dollars and I don't know what to do with it. And I didn't expect to have it. OK. What do I do with it? okay okay like i don't know you're gonna go to like a wealth manager and they're gonna like tell you like i take a fee to tell you like how do you like i like i like it's kind of a weird problem i'm coming to you where is your blog post i need i i don't know first of all i don't have that but i don't know like i really don't know and so and there's it's it is it is um i i actually think And what's changed is there's a lot more first-generation wealth creators, a lot more.

37:20A lot of the other wealth was family passed down, inherited, and the parents or the grandparents set it all up. So the owners now have inherited the structure that helps them manage all of it. Right. For first-generation wealth creators, there is an opportunity for people out there to create services and businesses to help that industry flourish. And so there you go. I'll tell you what, in San Francisco right now, there is probably every open AI and anthropic tender, a new wave of first generation wealth creators. A perfect example. There are others, too. NVIDIA. In NVIDIA. In NVIDIA, that's right.

37:59Actually, there's plenty. There's plenty. There's plenty. And people are just kind of navigating it a little bit blindly. We can do better. You and I, whenever you and I see each other, it's in the city. It's always in San Francisco, grab coffee, whatever. Yes. And you're like kind of a, you like ride for the city. I do. I'm like, let's go SF. You're in the city. I live in the city. I work in the city. You raise your kids here. My kids are here. How do you feel about it right now? Oh, we're on the rise. It feels good, doesn't it? So feels so, I'm so happy. I think Mayor Lori's doing a fantastic job.

38:31Actually, it's just a reminder of how leaders make a big difference. None of the conditions have changed, but he is doing a fantastic job. So I'm excited about that. Nate Munson, I think he's doing a great job for the city. I'm here for our resurgence. I love it. It's getting better every single week. Obviously, we have a long way to go, but I follow him on Instagram. If you don't, you should. He does lots of little videos and goes and sees the small businesses and talks a lot. But just some of the data I've heard him say recently is like crime is down by 30 percent. Crime is down by 40 percent in Union Square.

39:06Commerce is up 12 percent year over year. Like they get the data from Visa. They can see spending is up. So that's great. These things are great. We have to go further. But San Francisco is such a special place. And the more that I travel the world, I love seeing the world. But I'm like, we're so lucky to live where we get to live. And San Francisco should be one of the best cities in the world. It was not the last decade because of the way the leadership ran the city. But I think we I think that we're on the right track. You know that you know that feeling when you're flying into SFO and you like you see like Salesforce Tower and you see like the water.

39:44Golden Gate Park. Yes. And it's like usually like pretty decent weather. And you're like San Francisco SFO is like a really nice airport. And you're just like flying and you're like, oh, yeah. 20 minutes from downtown. It's just so civilized. It's really now we have our problems, but it's just it's a really I do not think it gets the credit it deserves. Yeah, it's been it's been very good to us. And so I'm proud to call it home. I'm proud to call it home. Can I get your take on something else unrelated to some of this stuff? Was it today? Yesterday? I saw. I saw Amazon yelling at perplexity for using, and you are going to be able to explain it better than I can.

40:27So first explain it for us and then tell me what you think about it. But basically yelling at perplexity for their agents doing shopping on people's behalves, basically, within Amazon. Yes. And Cloudflare has a role in all of this. So like, let's put the Cloudflare role aside. Sure. Because I do think it just makes you informed about the topic. Yes. So tell us about the topic. I think it's very timely right now. And then what you think about it. For sure. Well, it's interesting. Okay, so AI, a big deal, like huge deal. So fun changing everything. Okay. And that's not going away. And if you just look, like if you look at like the invention of the internet and then the invention of AI or kind of the adoption, it's going five times faster than like mobile.

41:11Like, it's just 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. So I think the best analogy for AI is like the invention of electricity. And could you imagine when they first brought out the light bulb to how you think about electricity today where it's just everything, like even this podcasting system we're using and how you can now watch this stuff online? It's like 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.

41:35OK, so that's amazing and exciting. So what's interesting, and I think that there's, but it puts the business model at the web at risk. And what do I mean by that? So 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. Now, before AI existed, what happened is if you wanted something, you go search on a browser, you know, pick your browser of choice, Safari, Chrome, Mozilla, for those of you doing Mozilla. and you see something, you click on it and you go to the website to learn about it or to buy something.

42:09And there was actually a whole business model behind the scenes actually, like where it's like how those content creators got reimbursed for these sorts of things, for creating the content, the idea, like there's a whole business model there. But if the AI crawlers go crawl the web and get all the content, when you go to your Proplexity or the OpenAI or like whoever ChatGPT 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 what you're creating, what's your incentive to keep creating it?

42:46There isn't anything. And so the business model of the web is currently at risk with the rise of AI. And so AI is not going away. It's a good thing. But there's got to be a new business model. And so part of the idea, and this is what we're working on, is saying, okay, how can we help? And part of it is, OK, if you are that content creator, that publisher, that media company, should the AI crawler be able to come crawl all your articles and put them in their LLMs? Or should you have to pay them for that? The media company said, you need to pay me if you're going to use my content in your LLMs.

43:19I think that that's a reasonable sort of business model. But then how do you do the exchange? And so there's a lot of technology behind the scenes that's happening where the groups are coming together, both the AI crawlers, the media companies, all the content creators, and then the technologists are coming to say, okay, can we create a new business model where as the AI crawlers come to my, come crawl the content, I can either say, no, you can't take my content. And they respect that. Like if someone says, don't crawl my content, whoever's coming and trying to crawl it should respect that. or they can say, actually, call my content, but then this is for this fee.

43:56I want you to pay this for it. Some sort of exchange of value that way. And so it's pretty cool. We'll go through all the details, but there's Coinbase and us helped launch a new protocol online called the X402 code, which basically says, yeah, you can take this content if you pay me something for it. And then it's like, OK, can you use something like cryptocurrency to help be the value store? Like a virtual gate for the agent to then pay the toll. Well, I don't like those words because gate and toll seem negative. It's more of a business model of saying you're coming to take this content that I created.

44:28You can take it as long as you pay me something for it. And maybe some people say I'm free. My content's free. Some people will choose that. Others might say, hey, it's 25 cents. And other people say, no, this value is content's really valuable. That's how the web works today in many ways. There's an exchange of value. It's just it's interesting in this new model. How do you go forward? And so I think there's a path forward there. There's a lot of it's interesting. The crypto rise the last few years has allowed the rails to be able to create the payments, the micro payments, because some of these payments are going to be small, like they're not going to be checks you're sending the small businesses or the content creators.

45:01But this idea of we I do think we want original content. I think that's something the world wants and craves and needs. Those people should get paid. The eye crawlers should be able to get it as long as they're agreeing to the business model. And what's Cloudflare's role in that? Well, it's interesting. So we have about 20 % of the web using our service today. So we have millions of publishers using our service. And this is kind of where we help see it. And you can just, I've heard spending time with customers, back to my thing is they've said, hey, look, I can see that on a daily basis, the eye crawlers are coming to my site 2 ,500 times to get my content every day.

45:38Now, there's a lot of wastage right now because it's moved so quickly. But by the way, in cloud computing, someone's paying for every request that comes to your site, whether it's a human or an AI crawler. Like that company has to pay for that request back to their cloud provider. And so it's expensive. There's just a lot of expense happening from all of this kind of extra crawling. And they're like, by the way, they're coming and they're calling me 25 cents and I'm seeing my traffic down because they're not sending traffic back. So my costs are up on the infrastructure side, but I'm not seeing the eyeballs because the eyeballs stay within the AI company's chatbot.

46:12So they're frustrated. And so they kept saying, now, our world is pre kind of all of this was part of what our customers hire us to do is to do cybersecurity for them. We make the internet faster for our customers, more secure and more reliable. And so our customers are saying, OK, they hire us to do cybersecurity. We help stop all sorts of online attacks, which, by the way, are at like all time highs. It's scary. We help protect employees who are getting phished. Also all time high, scary. But this idea of like, OK, there's been this rise of bots the last eight years, like before AI, just tons of bots roaming the Internet, trying to take contents, do malicious things.

46:49And so bot management is like a big term in cybersecurity land. But really what this is, is actually I want to know who's coming to my site and I want to be able to have access control. I want to have control as the content owner. Should that bot be able to access my site or not? And so we just help facilitate that. We help give the visibility. Here's everyone coming to your site. Is it a search engine? Is it a bot? Is it human? The visibility. And then you have the control to decide, yes, allowed. Yes, not allowed. and then now the next part is actually yes allow but pay me this and help help be the technology that can help facilitate it i think it's pretty cool and i don't know how it's all going to turn out but i love that these hard problems that are going to be a big part of the next 10 years of the web i think it's gonna be a huge part of the next web that we get a seat at the table to help figure out the solution yeah one of the things that this reminded me of i can't remember if we talked about it the first time we sat down for this was the thing that has been imbued in cloudflare's dna from the beginning that I really think highly of is that you have made something relatively unsexy, sexy.

47:52And what I mean by that is like, that's not like, that's a compliment, not an insult. No, I took it as that. So thank you. Like Stripe did the same thing. Yeah. Like, like there are certain companies that have been able to do this. And I think the core audience that you have made feel a really a part of, or you have really enticed to want to make a part of Cloudflare's story is technical talent. And it started with your blogs from the very beginning where you all were writing, correct me if I'm wrong, but engineering blogs. Yes, no, you're right. Basically, you were just talking about how hard the problems were that you were solving.

48:29And in the early days of Cloudflare, a bunch of great engineers that you probably didn't deserve to go work there, just became fascinated by the problems that you were working on. And you had somehow sexified these technical problems. I just make that up. I don't know if that's a word. If it is a word, I don't like it. But yeah, okay, yes, yeah, fair enough. You have made these problems more appealing. Yes, yeah, okay. And, you know, even now when you talk about it, it still sounds like that. Like it's still, and by the way, these are interesting problems. But the way that like you articulate it is it's very much it's been a part of the company's story for a very long time.

49:07You know, it's so funny. I laughed when you said we've made infrastructure sexy because I remember we launched way back when this is kind of makes me sound like a dinosaur. But we launched at the time at TechCrunch Disrupt on stage. It was like a big deal. And you probably wouldn't do that today. But back then it was like the hot thing to do back to it was the cool kids thing to do. And it was cool to be part of the cool. Now you would do YC for anybody starting a company. Now you would do YC. That's the new cool kids thing. But at the time, TechCrunch Disrupt, that was like a cool place to launch.

49:33And five years later, we went back to TechCrunch at Disrupt and they gave us like a muffler. And they described us as like muffler repair for the internet. And it was funny. I don't think that was meant as a compliment. But this point is like we build infrastructure with some people might describe as boring, but it's incredibly important. And when it works, it's magical, just like plumbing at home. But when it doesn't work, it's really a pain in the ass, but you normally don't think about it. But it's interesting. I heard Diane von Furtensberg speak recently, and she said in front of this group of business leaders, she's like, what she said in front of this group of business leaders, mostly men, was generosity is sexy.

50:10And I was like, wow, I can't believe you just got up in front of a group of men and said generosity is sexy. So I kind of like having this, oh my gosh, moment where you're like, infrastructure is sexy. You've made it sexy. And I'm like, oh, wow, I guess so. Yes, there we go. I'm not sure. I never thought I would have said that on a podcast. There you go. I think we've, it's, you know, sometimes I talk to founders who start businesses that want to start something that sounds cool. Consumer, like, especially like often consumer goods, something they understand. It sounds cool. And I like those are, there's so many great businesses like Snap and others that have done that.

50:45So it's not that they don't exist. But I'm also like, honestly, sometimes doing something that's boring can be like is actually a better business model. And so be smart. And what I always say is like, look, people are like, did you always want to be in infrastructure? Of course not. No one dreams that they're going to be in this. But I was drawn to the problem. And I was drawn to this idea of like, wow, if we can help make the Internet safer, we can help make it faster, we can help make more reliable. If we can help make businesses like operate in this modern world, I would be proud to be a part of that.

51:14And that's how I decided to start it. Like, that's how I decided to say, OK, I'm not an expert in this area, but if we succeed, I will be proud to be a part of it. And actually, that's where it's like, yeah, I'm proud to be a part of this. And we've turned something that maybe some people don't think about into being like, actually, this is pretty darn cool. And it's something every single startup needs, every single developer needs, high school kids need it. Small businesses, big companies, governments around the world, every single company, any Any country around the world, those companies can use our service.

51:45It's pretty darn cool. The reach, it's a very large problem that's horizontal. And whether you're sitting in Sri Lanka or Malaysia or the UK or United States, they all have the exact same problem. Well, Michelle, the public markets agree with you, which is why you're valued at$80 billion doing$2 billion of revenue today. Because there is a big problem that you're solving. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And so I, by the way, that's so awesome to hear. Thank you. Like hear you say that. I do enjoy meeting all of my guests, but I especially like it when I feel like the good people are in charge of the good companies.

52:25And so I feel it gives me the warm and fuzzies that you're at the helm. Thank you. I completely agree with you on your point of the like, the way that I describe it. Okay. Tell me. is like so many people that I meet today, especially today in AI, because like AI, everybody wants to be a founder, the whole thing, right? It's a good idea. Better valuations. Yeah, exactly. But they all have to go through the like metamorphosis of doing cool stuff to solving real problems. And I see so many, especially engineers, that are very infatuated by the next text to voice model, like by the tech. Yeah. And a lot of times they end up going through the metamorphosis of like solved a cool problem that nobody cared about.

53:11And they're like, OK, on the next one, I want to either start or join a company that solves a problem that people really care about. Because ultimately, what is sexy going to your point is solving customer problems. A hundred percent. Boy, is it really fun to actually solve customer problems. And so, you know, I think as we go through these technology shifts, this one being most profound, it does feel like people have to go through that metamorphosis. You know, you're reminding me of something. So you said that so well. And I remember, so we were those founders back in the early days. And, you know, in the Valley, we live in Silicon Valley.

53:51My impression is that the technology is what you get rewarded. That is what gets heralded and celebrated is the technologists, the engineers. It's like, what are you doing? What are you inventing? Okay. and so it's really when you're here like that's what the focus is on which is amazing because that's there's just so much value there but and i remember having this moment we used to think we kind of used to poo-poo sales like we like you know like oh you know like we're too cool for that a little bit this is early on obviously we don't think that anymore um i might get in trouble for telling the story but i promise we don't think of that anymore but early on we were a little bit like oh like oh like we just we kind of we poo-pooed sales yeah and revenue technologies We were just so enamored by our global network and the product.

54:37We were like, but we're just inventing the future and the patents we were filing. And I wish I had realized this earlier. So I hope maybe I helped one of the founders listening realize it earlier. Because I did eventually go through that metamorphosis and realized it. I just wish it had been earlier because we would have made even faster progress earlier. Actually, cool technology is absolutely cool. But you know what's even cooler? A great business model. And what you get measured on, it's actually impossible to compare technologies. Actually, you get no value for having better tech than someone else.

55:10What you get measured on is your revenue growth and your gross margins and actually the financials. And so as soon as we started to realize, well, actually, it's cool we have this, but what we're going to get measured on are the business metrics. OK, let's get serious about that. And thankfully, that happened when we were sub$100 million. And I still wish I had had that realization even earlier because I think we would have gotten to$100 million faster. That means we would have gotten to a billion faster and all the sorts of things. And it's just like, actually, the tech is cool. But what's really cool is also solving customers' problems and getting paid for it along the way.

55:43and whatever that means in your business is like even cooler. And that's how you're going to get measured. And even today, if you look at how we're measured in terms of a multiple compared to others, people compare us to other like high growth companies that we don't compete with. It's none of our competitors. We get compared to other organizations like Palantir. We don't compete at all. If anything, we're complementary. But it's like more about, OK, what's their revenue growth compared to your revenue growth? Because investors are trying to decide, do I put my money into the Shopify stock, into the Palantir stock, into the Cloudflare stock.

56:15They're not necessarily deciding. We've already kind of won our category. They're trying to pick between us and other high growth company opportunities. So it's interesting. And so I didn't really understand that when I was in the tech is the cool, where we have cool tech. So you need that, but what you really need is a great business ball on top. So don't run away from the numbers and you don't have to be the CFO. You don't have to be the head of sales either. You can hire great executives to do that for you, but appreciate what they're bringing to the value. Be a product led company, be an engineering led company, but appreciate the value that your go to market teams are bringing, your finance teams are bringing.

56:48That's a winning formula. Yeah, it reminds me of something that Evan from Snap said to me yesterday. I was asking him, like, you know, when you dropped out of Stanford, went to your dad's house with your founders, with your co-founders and your first engineers to like tell them about what you were doing. Were you like embarrassed to talk about like this thing that was like, you know, so at the time everybody thought gimmicky or whatever. And he was like, you know, we were growing like crazy. And he's like, so no, I've never been embarrassed by users. I've never been like I've never been embarrassed by users.

57:29And I was like, man, that's a banger. That's a great question and a great answer. Yeah, it's a great answer. So anyway, thank you for doing this. I appreciate you. Maybe, what was this, three years? Two, three years? It was 2022. Three, yeah, you were like, oh, Juben, what are we? Well, come on, it's like, we did everything the first time. I'm like, everything the first time? I could speak to you once every couple of weeks and have plenty to talk about. Oh, well, I will just say that I went back and re-listened to our conversation from 2022. And I was like, wow, there was a lot of great insights.

57:59I thought it was pretty good. So I was like, wow. It's pretty good. But this one was pretty good too, I think. It's pretty good. Pretty good. Thank you for doing it. I hope I get to see you soon. That's it for now. If you liked the episode, please leave us a review or go back into the archives where we've done more than 200 episodes with some fantastic folks. This podcast is a Kleiner Perkins production, and I'm Jubin. Thanks for listening.