Cloudflare, The Most Important Company You’ve Never Heard Of

Nearly a decade ago when it was difficult for small sites to handle large amounts of traffic, especially from DDoS attacks, I remember stumbling on Cloudflare‘s first promotional video. At the time it seemed like magic. No hardware or software configuration needed, and you could ensure your site would stay up using Cloudflare’s infrastructure. Today, they are valued at over three billion dollars and are gearing up for an IPO.

I’ve talked about Cloudflare for some time now and championed their free to use privacy first DNS service and their suite of products and experimentation that are making the internet a better place. But for a company that powers nearly 10 percent of all internet requests you would be hard pressed to find them mentioned next to the cloud services giants of the world like Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, and Google- that is about to change. With reports Cloudflare is going to IPO at over a 3 billion dollar valuation, it’s prediction time:

Before 2030 Cloudflare will be valued at over $20 billion. This equates to an ~18% growth rate every year. – Twitter

Microsoft capitalized on software, Google on the internet, Apple on mobile, and Cloudflare will capitalize on cloud services. Unlike the other cloud services providers in the space who have added cloud services to their offerings, Cloudflare has been doing it from the beginning- it’s in their DNA. I’m always bullish on companies that are built to take advantage of a specific booming sector from the beginning- avoiding the pitfalls that come with trying to reorient their business to handle it. Let’s see what happens.