Lee Holloway

Internet security and maintenance has never been more important than now. With most businesses and companies taking their markets online, ensuring that you have a great network is crucial to succeeding. It sure is a great time to be in the internet infrastructure business, and that is exactly what this company did right. They were in the right place at the right time and benefited from that immensely. Cloudflare, Inc. is a website security and infrastructure development company that provides various services. Here’s a look at how they shot up the ranks and got to where they are now.

Launching Cloudflare

In 2004, Matthew Prince and Lee Holloway built an application to analyze how spammers worked, creating Project Honey Pot. The project grew over the years and had participants from over 185 countries. All the websites which signed up requested the duo to not just track the villains, but also stop them. Fast forward five years, Matthew took a sabbatical to pursue an MBA from the Harvard Business School. Here he met Cloudflare’s COO Michelle Zatlyn. One day while talking, Matthew told Michelle about Project Honey Pot and she instantly connected with the idea. Soon the duo was working on a business plan to take the Project to the next level. A friend suggested the name Cloudflare as they were creating firewalls in the clouds, and the name stuck!

Heading West and Building the Brand

Meanwhile, Lee built the prototype and in 2009, Cloudflare won the Harvard Business Plan Competition. The trio then moved west and built their prototype. The company was formally launched at the 2010 Tech Crunch conference. In 2009, Cloudflare took help from Venrock and Pelion Ventures to raise over $2.1 million as Series A funding.

Two years later, they utilized New Enterprise Associates, Pelion Venture, and Venrock to raise another $20 million. A year later, the company ran into trouble for helping the hacking group LulzSec, with their website. They won the Wall Street Journal’s award for Most Innovative Internet Technology Company in 2011 and 2012.

In 2012, Cloudflare Inc collaborated with HostPapa, to bring into effect Railgun technology which boosts performance. Then, in 2012, the company raised $50 million via a Series C round adding Union Square Ventures and Greenspring as investors. Two years later, the company won laurels for mitigating the largest DDoS attack of the time. The attack peaked at 400 Gigabits/sec and targeted an undisclosed customer.

The same year, the company reported and mitigated another huge DDoS attack against independent media sites. The same year Cloudflare raised $110 million through Series D which saw them attract investors like Fidelity Investments, Microsoft and Qualcomm. Cloudflare acquired malware detection and removal software StopTheHacker in 2014. In 2015, Lee stepped down from the company due to Frontotemporal Dementia, which is a rare neurological disease.

Acquisitions and IPO

In December 2016, they acquired Eager to evolve their application platform. A year later, they acquired VPN startup Neumob. The company grew exponentially between 2015 and 2017 and provides services to over 12 million websites now. This year, Cloudflare raised $150 million via a Series E round, led by Franklin Templeton Investments. Their growth has been phenomenal as they add almost 10,000 new customers every day. The company went public in August this year on the New York Stock Exchange. They go by the ticker name NET and opened at $15 per share.

Controversies and Expansion

Cloudflare Inc provides DDoS mitigation, security, and domain server services throughout the world. Though headquartered in San Francisco, the company has offices around the world, including in Lisbon, London, Singapore, San Jose, New York City and Washington, D.C. Though they have faced their fair share of controversies, they have stood by the company and as a result, have been extremely successful. They did run into trouble in the late 2010s over supporting The Daily Stormer and 8chan. In 2017, the company severed all ties with The Daily Stormer. Two years later, Cloudflare stopped providing services for 8chan, helping to clear up their tarnished name.

In 2014, Cloudflare launched Project Galileo to prevent cyber-attacks against activists and human rights groups. The project allows such groups access to free services that help them protect their websites. Five years later, in 2019, they announced that the project now included over 600 users and organizations.

Since starting out as a prototype at a college fest, Cloudflare has gone on to launch several products and open offices in various countries. These efforts have helped Cloudflare improve its performance and reliability. The billion-dollar company now has over 250 employs and helps around 4 million websites. It will be interesting to see how this company grows further, pushing the boundaries of internet security.