After receiving her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from McGill University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School, Michelle Zatlyn didn’t have any inkling that one day she would co-found one of the most prominent cybersecurity companies in the world, Cloudflare.
Though she had experience interning at both Toshiba and Google, the Saskatchewan, Canada native had no experience in cybersecurity when she embarked on her Cloudflare venture with her HBS classmates, Matthew Prince and Lee Holloway, in 2009. In an unusual turn of events due to the 2008 recession leaving her unemployed, Zatlyn was in the perfect position to help develop the new company.
“It was a fun social thing,” she explained to The Globe and Mail. “When we came up with Cloudflare, I knew nothing about internet security, but I care a lot about liking what I’m doing. I knew if I could help create internet security, that’s something I could work hard for and be proud [of].”
Over a decade later, the company has over 12 million domains,
165 data centers and more than 800 employees. Its 2022 revenue reached almost $1 billion. In 2017, Forbes included Zatlyn on
its list of “40 Under 40,” and in 2021, she was also included
in the publication’s list of “50 Self-made Women.”
