The Grittiest Conversations of 2025: AI, Business & Beyond
In this recap episode, we highlight the best moments from our 2025 interviews and reflect on the ideas that defined the year.
Featuring:
David Rubenstein (co-founder of Carlyle)
Yamini Rangan (CEO of HubSpot)
Ben Chestnut (co-founder of Mailchimp)
Winston Weinberg (co-founder and CEO of Harvey)
Garrett Lord (co-founder of Handshake)
Aidan Gomez (co-founder and CEO of Cohere)
Michelle Zatlyn (co-founder of Cloudflare)
Evan Spiegel (co-founder and CEO of Snap)
Connect with Joubin
X: https://x.com/Joubinmir
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joubin-mirzadegan-66186854/
Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com
Follow on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/kpgrit
Follow on X:
https://x.com/KPGrit
Learn more about Kleiner Perkins: https://www.kleinerperkins.com/
Building Cloudflare for the Next 50 Years | Co-founder Cloudfare Michelle Zatlyn
Fifteen years in, it can still feel like “we’re just getting started.”
Michelle Zatlyn, co-founder of Cloudflare, returns to Grit with Joubin Mirzadegan to share how Cloudflare secures the internet for millions, with a vision built to last generations.
She also shares why staying close to reality and to customers becomes harder as success compounds, and how Cloudflare is helping content creators regain control in an AI driven internet.
Guest: Michelle Zatlyn, co-founder and President of Cloudflare
Connect with Michelle Zatlyn
X
LinkedIn
Connect with Joubin
X
LinkedIn
Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com
Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
#117 Co-founder & COO Cloudflare, Michelle Zatlyn: A Better Internet
“Think about the pandemic without the internet,” says Cloudflare co-founder and COO Michelle Zatlyn. The world’s sudden shift to doing almost everything online only worked because network engineers, IT administrators, and internet infrastructure companies like Cloudflare had done the work. Michelle says that, both personally and professionally, she’s fine being under the radar because she doesn’t need to be publicly reminded of the importance of her job: “It's like all the roads, the tunnels, the bridges ... when it works, it's magic. Really, you don't even know we exist.”
In this episode, Michelle and Joubin discuss the pressure of success, advice for founders, low-drama startups, the power of the Cloudflare blog, internet security, the cross-country U-Haul trip, sweating the details, San Francisco as a “power center,” helping the next generation of founders, “the airplane effect,” injecting tension, why learning is a superpower, and choosing to feel the bumps in the road.
In this episode, we cover:
Carrying the torch for women in infrastructure and “just getting started” (01:15)
Being under the radar and the over-glamorization of founders (07:19)
Why it’s so hard to hire & empower a great team (15:35)
How Cloudflare is building a better internet (22:08)
How Michelle, Matthew Prince, and Lee Holloway met and why they started Cloudflare (28:23)
“Losing” at TechCrunch Disrupt’s Startup Battlefield — and turning it into a win (34:10)
Building remote vs. choosing to be in the SF Bay Area (40:54)
“I don’t understand why anyone starts companies” (46:28)
How to run the best board meeting ever (55:31)
Why Michelle brought her kids to the New York Stock Exchange for “Mom’s Special Day” (01:00:51)
The skill that sets good founders apart from great ones (01:02:34)
How a back injury took away a year of Michelle’s life (01:10:16)
Links:
Connect with MichelleTwitter
LinkedIn
Connect with JoubinTwitter
LinkedIn
Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com
Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm
Michelle Zatlyn – Protecting the Internet – [Founder’s Field Guide, EP.11]
My guest today is Michelle Zatlyn. Michelle is the co-founder and COO of Cloudflare, a now $25 billion dollar business which she helped take public last year. Cloudflare helps businesses make their websites faster and more secure, and over 25 million websites are running Cloudflare today. In our conversation, we discuss the catalyst for starting CloudFlare, explore the layers of the internet and the future of distributed storage and computing power, and discuss how and why Cloudflare operates its network across 200 cities globally. We close with the importance of finding and working with great co-founders and partners as you build a business. I hope you enjoy our conversation.
DocSend is a document sharing platform that enables companies to share business-critical documents with ease and get real-time actionable analytics. With DocSend’s security and control, startup founders, investors, business development executives, and financial professionals can drive business outcomes that have a lasting impact. Start for free at www.docsend.com.
This episode of Founder’s Field Guide is also brought to you by NetSuite. Netsuite allows founders to centralize their payment systems, ditch old spreadsheets and Quickbook tools, and finally gain visibility and control over their financials, HR, inventory, eCommerce - all in one place, instantly. Whether you are doing a million in revenue or hundreds of millions in revenue - see why over 22,000 companies are using NetSuite today. Schedule your free product tour at https://www.netsuite.com/invest.
For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.
Sign up for the book club and new email newsletter called “Inside the Episode” at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub.
Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag
Show Notes
(2:52) – (First question) – Project Honeypot and how it started
(3:39) – What question was Honeypot solving
(4:59) – Working through the idea maze of Cloudflare
(7:30) – The first iteration of Cloudflare
(8:15) – An overview of the cybersecurity market and why more leaders need to pay attention
(10:33) – First big break for the company
(12:50) – Risks they help mitigate
(16:42) – Cyber weapons that Cloudflare protects against
(20:14) – Hardest part of the building process
(24:06) – Effective marketing lessons
(25:41) – The sharks vs mosquitoes concept
(27:53) – How do decide where to focus next
(31:34) – The Cloudflare workers program
(36:33) – Their scale vs other cloud providers
(42:21) – The finance side of Cloudflare and their relationship vs Wall Street
(42:40) – John Collison Podcast Episode
(44:47) – Relationship with their founding partners
(50:46) – What about the future is most excites them
(52:32) – Kindest thing anyone has done for her
Learn More
For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.
Sign up for the book club and new email newsletter called “Inside the Episode” at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub.
Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag
SaaStr 334: Cloudflare COO Michelle Zatlyn on The Top 10 Lessons Learned Starting Something Big During Tough Times
Hear from Michelle Zatlyn, co-founder and COO of Cloudflare. Michelle started the company during an economic downturn in 2009. Now, Cloudflare runs one of the world's largest networks that helps make the Internet more secure, fast, and reliable, with a market cap of more than $6B. Despite the challenges of uncertainty, money not flowing, and a generally dark mood, she was able to do it and learned a lot along the way. In this talk, Michelle will share how she made her business idea come to life and some lessons learned that can help other entrepreneurs—from solving a real, meaningful problem, to communicating in a crisis, prioritizing when there's a true lack of resources, and more.
This podcast is an excerpt from Michelle's session at SaaStr Summit. You can see the full video here: https://youtu.be/WplZkOLl-k4
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