2. Michelle Zatlyn, COO and co-founder of Cloudflare, Episode Debrief

01/13/21 • 43 min

First Pitches with Lolita Taub and Eric Bahn

In this episode, show hosts Lolita Taub and Eric Bahn along with show producer Hung Pham break down last week's episode with guest Michelle Zatlyn, COO and co-founder of Cloudflare, and share their reactions, thoughts, and insights.

Previous Episode

1. Turning Down a Seat on a Rocket Ship w/Michelle Zatlyn of Cloudflare

In a Harvard Business School commencement speech, Sheryl Sandberg famously said, “If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat. Just get on.”

This was advice given to her by Google’s then-CEO Eric Schmidt when Sheryl was contemplating taking a job offer at Google. This advice would hold true 6 years later, when Sheryl left Google to become Facebook’s COO.

While it sounds like a no brainer now, can you imagine being offered a seat on a rocketship and turning it down?

That’s exactly what our guest on First Pitches, Michelle Zatlyn, did. Michelle is the co-founder and COO of Cloudflare, a cybersecurity company with a mission to help build a better Internet.

While in business school, Michelle was given an offer to join LinkedIn pre-IPO. But instead, she turned it down to go build Cloudflare with her co-founders. Not only did she turn down a seat on a rocket ship, but she did so to start a business during an economic downturn.

While most people would see this as extremely risky, Michelle trusted her instincts, and today she is in a very small club of female executives who have founded public companies and the only one running one worth over $10 billion today.

You’ll have to listen to find out how the rest of the story unfolds.

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Next Episode

3. Following Massive Tailwinds En Route to a Billion Dollar Business w/Aaron Levie of Box

They say timing is everything but if that’s true, then what’s the value of being able to predict the future?

Millions? Try billions because, on this episode of First Pitches, we talk with Aaron Levie, co-founder, and CEO of Box, an enterprise software company with a market cap of nearly 3 billion dollars.

What started off as a college dorm room project, Aaron and his co-founders built Box into the company it is today by identifying key future trends and building a business on top of them.

But building a successful company isn’t just about innovation; you need to be disruptive. You have to make it such that the incumbent in your market can’t copy you because it isn’t attractive to their business model.

And if you can do that, well you might be on your way to building a billion-dollar business.

Want to learn how to predict the future like Aaron? Take a listen and find out how.

Get tactical tips on how to master your first pitch. Sign up for our newsletter at www.firstpitches.com