What it takes to be a co-founder and COO of a multibillion-dollar company

Women founders are a rare sight in tech globally. Michelle Zatlyn, co-founder and chief operating officer of multibillion-dollar company Cloudflare, is one of the few who has successfully navigated the “bro culture” that Silicon Valley is known for.

Of the 239 venture capital-backed startups worth at least US$1 billion around the world, only 23 have a female founder, according to data from Pitchbook in May last year. While Zatlyn has been able to punch above her weight, it wasn’t without challenges, especially during the early years of the San Francisco-based firm, which specializes in internet performance and security.

Photo credit: Cloudflare

“There was a time when we were trying to raise money for series B […] a partner from a prominent venture capital firm said, ‘Women don’t belong in an infrastructure company.’ That felt like a punch in the gut. It was the worst thing someone could say, and it felt terrible,” shares Zatlyn, who recounted the story during a recent fireside chat at Cloudflare’s new office in Singapore.

Canadian-born Zatlyn looks up to cosmetics pioneer Estee Lauder, who built a profitable and iconic brand back in the 1950s. It was a time when there “really weren’t a lot of women in business.”

Fortunately, Zatlyn was able to rely on the support from her male co-founders: CEO Matthew Prince, whom she met at Harvard Business School, and lead engineer Lee Holloway.

As an entrepreneur, it doesn’t really matter if you don’t know a lot about the subject matter.

Founded in 2009, Cloudflare provides services that make websites load faster and protects against cyber-attacks. The company has seen massive growth since its inception, and it achieved unicorn status in 2012 after hitting a billion-dollar valuation.

“Before Cloudflare, it took about six weeks to set up better performance or security at an enterprise. With Cloudflare, it took (and still takes) four minutes and 48 seconds. We took something that had quite a bit of friction and made it just work,” wrote Zatlyn on Quora last year.

Before Cloudflare, she worked as a product manager at Japanese conglomerate Toshiba and interned at Google while she was getting her master’s degree.

A chemist by training with no technical background, Zatlyn had little knowledge of internet security when she decided to join forces with Prince and Holloway to start Cloudflare.

“Matthew was the visionary, Lee was the technical architect, and I was good at knowing what we need to do. It turns out we had the best founding team: we were all totally different but we covered a lot of surface area. So as a founder or entrepreneur, it doesn’t really matter if you don’t know a lot about the subject matter.”

Zatlyn describes using a Venn diagram as a framework. You want to cover as much surface area as possible, but also leave some overlap in terms of a shared vision in order for the partnership to work.

As Cloudflare grew to 1,000 employees, Zatlyn says her role as COO has evolved over the years.

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