Name: Most Powerful Women Summit 2019: Lessons Learned From Silicon Valley
Uploaded: 2019-10-22
Duration: 13 min 40 s
Description: Cloudfare COO Michelle Zatlyn on the complicated business of running a tech company.

So, first of all, just for the people in the room who aren't familiar with cloud flare, because you're not a household name like a Facebook or Google yet, just very, very briefly what is cloud flare do? Sure cloud player runs a global cloud platform. Our customers are internet properties, so your websites your apps or API's, Our customers come to us for cyber security solutions global performance reliability solutions. In the past, companies used to buy this through hardware boxes. But as more businesses are using a lot of cloud computing services and a lot of SAS companies, services like Salesforce or workday, they need something else. And that's what we do. We're about nine years old as a company. We have 2 million free and paying customers everyone from nonprofits like the women's global March or the Trevor Project to millions of small businesses around the world who need these sorts of services. And then 10 % of the Fortune 1000 are cloud cloud customers, including many brands in this room like Starbucks and Walmart and L'Oreal, and so We just went public five years ago, and I started the company nine years ago. Five years ago? Sorry, we went public five weeks ago. Thank you. [ LAUGH ] And we started the company nine years. Has it felt like five years? [ LAUGH ] No, no, actually it hasn't. Actually the whole experience was incredible. Okay. All right. Now that we have established that. So for For those in the audience who don't live and breathe Silicon Valley, give us a little bit of a sense of what the mood is like, what changed, what hasn't and it's like post Cambridge analytical, post [ UNKNOWN ], we work from weird S- 1 filing and whatever you wanna call what's going on. They're now So much has happened. I realize not all those companies are in Silicon Valley, but in tech and in Silicon Valley specifically. So what's the movement was? Well, if you think so 10 years ago, there were eight tech companies that had market caps over 100 billion dollars and today that's 25. And so what's changed is, technology companies have kinda grown up from the kids cable to being on the main stage and so there's a lot more scrutiny and a spotlight on how These companies are growing and those are companies with 100 billion dollars in market capital or more. There are so many that are in the pipeline trying to grow in that direction. And so it's a lot more spotlight. And what we've seen is that there's some really crummy behaviors or bad management from some small portion of Tech companies. It's definitely not all But I think it's the mixture of. Tech is, again, 10 years ago it was kind of the geeky corner no one really understood. But now it's really mainstream paired with the spotlight. So there's a lot of people holding people accountable for their behaviors. And I actually think that's a good thing. How do you see that manifesting itself, like in tangible ways in Silicon Valley, and in the tech industry? What are the conversations that you guys are having that you weren't having just a few years ago? Well, there's really. So, first of all, you take capital. A lot of these companies are venture back. So they've taken capital. And you have to be good stewards of your capital and let you see the companies who are bad stewards of the capital. It's not working out very well for them. And again, I think this is a good thing. And so founders and the investors are saying, hey, wait, we're going to reward good stewards of capital. And so even at Cloud flair, I mean, we've always been running our company like a public company for years. While we are private, you know, whether it's flying coach or how we allocate how we deploy these resources. It matters and and i think that the really great If tech leaders realize that. The second place we've around through the employees. If you wanna talk about competitive talent pool, try to hire in the bay area. There are a lot of great jobs there, and so employees are voting with their feet. They are saying I wanna go to a company that I believe in that's doing the right thing and they are running their companies the right way And actually, I think because of all the things that have recently happened, that's gonna become an increasingly important part of the next two years of hiring because people, I mean, you can read in the news about whether it's Uber we work or theranos. The people who really got the short end of that stick are not only the investors, but the employees. I mean people go work there. They are getting below market wages, usually in exchange for equity upside. And a lot of cases their equity is underwater. And so I think that's interesting. And then the third thing I've seen a huge shift recently is actually customers. Customers want to do businesses with companies that align with that they believe in and so cut customers are having a lot more scrutiny and deciding who they do business with. And so it actually shifted alot the last three years. Actually thinking all through cases for the better. Okay. Lets draw down a little bit in one specific that you guys grambled with I mentioned ealier you may be not be a household name like a Facebook or Google but you have to make some very tough decisions. Recently you power You help to power and you secure millions of different websites. Yes. A lot of them you probably don't agree with their values, but you typically in the past at least have not shut off service to any of them, and you've done that recently. And the most recent example of that is HM, which is this toxic message board and gathering place for white supremacists, among other things, and talk about the decision to cancel service to HM. Okay, we have eight minutes, I don't want to use eight minutes talking about this. It's so let me start by saying. In the next ten years, I think are all about policy, is the technologists in the policymakers coming together because there's a lot of angles around what's legal, what's not. And some of the laws that were pen 25 years ago did not take into account to what technology has democratized. And so there's a lot of work to be done on the policy side. And it's the policymakers engaging with the technologists and business leaders and the academics to help move that forward. And I think on the good side that the conversations are happening. So we'll start with [ UNKNOWN ] That's important. In our case, there's a whole stack that makes the Internet work. And [ UNKNOWN ] we provide infrastructure for internet properties. I like to joke, we're like [ UNKNOWN ] Plumbing is not that exciting sometimes when I say we build internet infrastructure, and people turn the other way, they're like, that sounds really boring. But it turns out plumbing is really important. You really want it to work. And and that's what and that's what clapper offers and We enable performance security reliability for internet properties. And we just don't think we should be deciding what content shouldn't should be online. Somebody should. It just probably shouldn't be infrastructure layer because it's very deep in the stack. If we make a decision that someone doesn't like how do you vote with your feet as a consumer to say that is a bad decision. I'm gonna go there. And it's not transparent because we're so low in the stack. And so, as a business we've always said we're a law abiding organization We definitely are a law abiding organisation but their laws are kind of outdated and so there's a lot of gray areas that have popped up and the pulse makers are trying to pass a law that works for everybody. As a society we're having those conversations but we're Switzerland. We kind of say, we're just going to provide service anyone whether I personally like it or not. So that's our stance and it actually works I think it's the right stands we've started through and if you ask the experts they agree with the right stands for the most part. Recently HN is this lawless platform it's much higher up it's places where people here converse with their eyeballs, their time and they were declared the lawless platform. And today we're doing good job moderating content on their site with a [ UNKNOWN ] in the world. And again we don't think is our job to decide what should be online or not, but we stop service to them. And it was the second time in that companys history that we stopped service without a court order to do that. We had done it onces two years ago- With Dairly Storman. With Dairly Storman another particulary terrible internal property and this is the second time. What was interesting about this decision is we did it without a court order everything else. We've take things off our network all the time, but it has gone through the court. There's been due process, which again, I think holds us accountable. But in this case, there is no due process. And when we do these things, even though we're not a household name. Turns out people pat attention. And I would say a lot of people applauded us saying thank you for taking that leadership, we know you don't have to do this. Thank you or giving us this terrible platform of the [ UNKNOWN ], particularly terrible. And some people think they are like it is creepy for Cloud Ford to be making these decisions, you should not be making these decisions without a court order. And so, one thing I will say is that two years ago we took discontinue service from [ UNKNOWN ] and then this year, this summer the conversation has changed so much. We've made a lot of progress. We talked to the policy makers here in the United States and in Europe and the the business leaders. People were talking about it, the conversation has evolved more, it's making progress but the really tough issues So people are working on it to figure out what the law should be and what should happen in these cases. But that's that's where we are. So and just for more context HN was associated with some of the mass shooting shooters. Yes. And some of the the most recent shootings including El Paso So what does this mean though for the future? I mean, I get what you're saying about policy not having caught up to what's really going on, on a lot of these platforms like MHN. And that a lot of That government regulatory bodies and obviously companies are struggling with this. But as long as there is that mismatch, I mean how do you, specially now as a publicly traded company with even more scrutiny, how do you draw the line? We're all talking about free speech but what is your role in this? How do you, it's so tricky to be the [ UNKNOWN ] You cancel what you allow? Right? Well, that'strue. Well, I mean, I think we've drawn one for a long time, and engage on it and we are incredibly transparent as an organization. We have transparency report or we report back to the world, just because we want to every six months of how we're thinking about this. We've read public blog posts that are Very random where we thinking we've written all [ UNKNOWN ] and sorts of media publications. So, in many ways I think we are very, we have [ UNKNOWN ] we said this is why we take this inspiration, this is how we think about what we are engaging in the conversations. So I think we have done a good job on that, and I invite more companies to take that similar approach, and I think Even whether you like what Mark Zuckerberg said last week or not, at least he's now talking about it publicly. I actually think that's a good thing to bring more voices together to get the issues on the table so we can move the conversation forward. The conversation is moving forward. But these are hard issues that there's no silver bullet, which is the kind of unsatisfactory answer, but there's The conversations are happening, and you know, even in Europe, there are a lot of agreement on the path, and here in the US, there is slowly becoming a path forward, so I think those are good that people are coming together to have a conversation, and again, I think we've been very transparent, those organizations were very principled, we've kind of stuck to that, we've explained why we're making these decisions, here's where's hard, here's where's not. And that transparency has helped us. It has been very helpful. So, again, I encourage more companies to engage in the conversation. And just to point out real quick that in the statement when you made the decision to cancel service [ UNKNOWN ], your co- founder and CEO, Matthew Prince Wrote in a statement we reluctantly tolerate content that we find reprehensible. But we draw the line at platforms that have demonstrated that they directly inspired tragic events and are lawless by design. And he also said that while removing a chain from our network takes, Heat off of us. It does nothing to address why hateful sites fester online. That is obviously, you know, a much broader conversation that requires a lot of coordination. And I have like a ton more questions for you. But I want to open it up to you guys. We very quickly probably have a question. Time for a question if there is one. Otherwise, I'm happy to keep going. Yes, Malin, let's wait for a microphone for you. Can you introduce yourself? Mallin Yen, with operator collective. Michelle, I've watched what you and Matthew have done so many awesome, amazing things. So this is a little bit of an easy question, but it's also a hard question because I know there's so many things. What is the thing that you are most proud of over these past nine years? Building [ INAUDIBLE ] Everyday we stop 44 billion cyber attacks on behalf of our customers. [ APPLAUSE ] And we make the Internet work faster for for 99 % of Internet connected population. And so We're kind of doing what we set out to do and we just helped built a better internet. There are a lot of flaws with the internet and technology, but the good outweigh the bad and it's gonna keep happening until the fact that we can provide these services to our customers and help make this internet services easier for everyone. I think I'm incredibly proud of and our whole team is really proud of and that's why we come to work everyday. Well Michelle thank you so much for joining us. And for making this your first public interview since the IPO 5 years ago. Yeah. [ APPLAUSE ] Thank you. Thank you. I'll see you back there. Yeah. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Most Powerful Women Summit 2019: Lessons Learned From Silicon Valley

Leadership

Cloudfare COO Michelle Zatlyn on the complicated business of running a tech company. 