One of the biggest concerns today in technology is online security. While there are many different ideas on how to make sites more secure, Cloudflare Inc.’s unique approach is as a content delivery network. When a website is signed up with Cloudflare, its traffic is routed through an intelligent global network that automatically optimizes the delivery of web pages, as well as blocking threats and spam.

Michelle Zatlyn, co-founder and head of User Experience at Cloudflare, joined John Furrier (@furrier), co-host of theCUBE*, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during Girls in Tech – Amplify Women’s Pitch Night 2016, held in San Francisco, CA. They discussed the original ideas for Cloudflare, as well as “lessons learned” for startups and the importance of having women on technology teams.

Helping to democratize the web

Cloudflare was officially launched at the 2010 TechCrunch Disrupt conference. Furrier asked Zatlyn how the company got started.

“It was this conviction we had, where we felt we could democratize the web. If you were a business with something to say, we wanted to give you the same resources as Google’s technical operations team,” said Zatlyn.

The idea was, if you are a small business with content online, how can you be as fast and as safe as Google.com? Google.com is the fastest and most secure internet property on the net, Zatlyn said, so how can you make that available to anybody with an internet property? That was the question that the Cloudflare founders asked and the issue that the company was developed to address.

Startup lessons learned

The history of the company was also discussed, and Furrier asked about the biggest “lessons learned” that Zatlyn could share.

“A good litmus test is to ask, ‘Do I believe so passionately about this idea that I want to commit the next eight to 10 years of my life to it?’ Because that’s how long it is, eight to 10 years, if you take the average time of all startups, from start to exit,” said Zatlyn. She also said another critical question to ask is, “Can I attract all the right people to make it happen?” as team selection is a make-or-break for any startup company.

Regarding women on teams, Zatlyn noted, “There are more men than women in technology, absolutely. But there are a lot of women in tech, many working on amazing things in tech.” She said she hopes more of these stories can be told so that they can inspire the next generation of women.

*Disclosure: Girls in Tech and other companies sponsor some Girls in Tech – Amplify segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither Girls in Tech nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Girls in Tech – Amplify Women’s Pitch Night 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE