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Cloudflare S-1

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Re: Cloudflare S-1

#181

Post by labawi »

_bxg1 wrote: post #146
dsl wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure you fully understand the problem. If I hit the big red button and just shut Cloudflare off, millions of websites drop off the Internet. It is a massive single point of failure, and as you point out, a vertically integrated service (DNS, DDoS protection, WAF, proxying, etc).

DNS is far from centralized and DDoS protection is something that small websites would have no ability to do on their own. It isn't just a convenience thing, it's a literally-impossible-without-scale thing.

DDoS protection is something that small websites should not need.

Current circumstances are a sad and unfortunate state of the internet.

Re: Cloudflare S-1

#182

Post by lhill »

empath75 wrote: post #109
JohnAtCC wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? If the service is WORTH paying for, then it SHOULD be paid for. The world of service, if proven magnetizable, should always be monetized. #FreeMarkets

It’s quite possible that cloudflare gains more value from the customers than they gain from cloudflare.

For instance? (Honest question)

Re: Cloudflare S-1

#183

Post by tolmasky »

whatshisface wrote: post #136
erikig wrote: post #129

Both CloudFlare and Zoom are pretty great products and as much as I applaud their team's IPOs, I'm worried that the vagaries of being a public company will result in the GOOG syndrome. That's where a company with a great product is forced to expand every quarter to the point that it becomes a frankenstein-ish hulking version of itself.

Why not just pay a dividend? That's what stocks are supposed to be, shares of ownership in legitimately valuable enterprises with return on investment.

Well, at least prior to 2003 there was a strong incentive to prefer gains from stock sale since it could get long term capital gain tax rates (15% now, 20% at the time) vs. dividends which would be taxed as normal income. Since then however, qualified dividends are taxed the same as long term capital gains.

Re: Cloudflare S-1

#184

Post by dylz »

alexnewman wrote: post #126
jorvi wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CloudFlare offers Privacy Pass where with 1 captcha completion you generate something like 20 tokens, meaning you can bypass 20 captchas after that. Sadly nearly every website just uses pure Google captcha which forces you to go through the ordeal every single time.

hcaptcha.com also supports privacy pass, and we contribute to the standard

Is this your product? If so, how can I cash this out into tangible currency rather than an ERC token, and is it possible to select the amount of labeling (ex: users I identify as bad have to go through 10+ pages, users I identify as OK go through 1)?

Re: Cloudflare S-1

#185

Post by big_chungus »

gen3 wrote: post #172
slim wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you mean I could copy a font as long as the resulting font file is different from the original one?

Yes. The file is the only thing with legal protections.

Actually, not necessarily. Drawing font glyphs is certainly protected by copyright (even if not filed, an implicit one) as artwork. You probably wouldn't get prosecuted because they probably couldn't prove if you copy-pasted, but it's still the work of an artist.

Re: Cloudflare S-1

#186

Post by windexh8er »

soup10 wrote: post #169
rvz wrote: post #83

> Today, our network spans 193 cities in over 90 countries and interconnects with over 8,000 networks globally, including major ISPs, public cloud providers, SaaS services, and enterprises. We estimate that we operate within 100 milliseconds of 98% of the Internet-connected population in the developed world, and 93% of the Internet-connected population globally (for context, the blink of an eye is 300-400 millisecond…

Only issue is that they don't have that much revenue compared to the amount of interest there will be in their stock so its going to turn into a speculation vehicle.

I'm not sure how that comment holds given what they've outlined. For the 6 month ending in 2019 they had roughly 75k paying customers. Now the interesting part, to me, is that only 408 of them are spending over $100k in annualized billings. Given that they have some runway to expand into organizations who are down a path of transition to cloud. In the S-1 they reference a lot of "band-aid" box vendors (Juniper, Checkpoint, Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Fireeye, etc) and so they seem to be positioning themselves squarely in the security space in competition for those budgetary dollars. I think this is the right play for them, especially because as cloud offerings continue to blur lines into hybrid architectures Cloudflare sits in a very nice position with CDN, security, VPN, services (DNS), etc. And security budgets are still flush.

But back to your comment... Given 408 customers probably generated the majority of the $100M GP over the first six months of the CY and they have another 74k and change customers they've landed and have potential expand opportunities with, I'm not so sure there's no revenue there to be had.

Now that being said I think the stock will likely float to ridiculous overvaluation at IPO and all the talking heads will argue how those "band-aid" vendors have staying power through brand loyalty and proven models... But, I personally, think CloudFlare will be around as a leader in this space for a long time, especially if they continue to keep playing their cards as they have.

Re: Cloudflare S-1

#187

Post by rolltiide »

tolmasky wrote: post #183
whatshisface wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just pay a dividend? That's what stocks are supposed to be, shares of ownership in legitimately valuable enterprises with return on investment.

Well, at least prior to 2003 there was a strong incentive to prefer gains from stock sale since it could get long term capital gain tax rates (15% now, 20% at the time) vs. dividends which would be taxed as normal income. Since then however, qualified dividends are taxed the same as long term capital gains.

Top US long term capital gain tax rate is 20% and there is a 3.8% tax on that

Re: Cloudflare S-1

#188

Post by djmobley »

big_chungus wrote: post #176
djmobley wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because a large number of people in society have a legitimate interest in the financial position of a company, irrespective of whether it is private or publicly listed. Cloudflare have around 75,000 paying customers (not to mention those on the free tier) who are dependent on their services, and would probably like to know if they’re about to go bust. As would their employees, suppliers, private shareholders, credito…

Then this sounds like a contractual issue between Cloudflare and such people. I don't see why financials have to be publicly available for this to happen. In any case, it is rare that a company goes under with no warning. Even if it's not "public information", it's usually evident if it's seriously strapped for cash.

Contractual assurances aren’t going to help you when a company is insolvent.

Re: Cloudflare S-1

#189

Post by zettatron »

_-___________-_ wrote: post #145
paggle wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

400ms must be when you're 5 minutes from falling asleep. Cloudflare said 300-400ms when it's really 100-400ms, effectively lying by 3x. It's not material to their business but still disgusting.

"disgusting"? Really?

I've noticed this is one of the internet's new favorite words. Following behind "slams", "narcissist", and "gaslighting"

Re: Cloudflare S-1

#190

Post by lhill »

dsl wrote: post #123
est31 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Centralization of the entire internet behind a single entity is a _bad_ thing They do the opposite. They enable small website owners to survive on the internet without having to use vertically integrated services like cloud offerings.

I'm not sure you fully understand the problem. If I hit the big red button and just shut Cloudflare off, millions of websites drop off the Internet. It is a massive single point of failure, and as you point out, a vertically integrated service (DNS, DDoS protection, WAF, proxying, etc).

I'm not sure you fully understand what Cloudflare does.
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