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Cloudflare S-1

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Re: Cloudflare S-1

#31
post #13

> We have a history of net losses and may not be able to achieve or sustain profitability in the future. I never got this... Why go public if you literally say you won't make money? Who would buy stock in something that will not return a positive? Are they starving for money and hope some public trading gets them a boost? Edit: It seems to be following the same pattern as the other tech IPOs recently, just to cash ou…

this is a normal sentence in every S-1 you care to name.

EXTREMELY SERIOUS WARNING (printed on a separate page, in red letters on a yellow background): Unless you are as smart as Johann Karl Friedrich Gauss, savvy as a half blind Calcutta bootblack, tough as General William Tecumseh Sherman, rich as the Queen of England, emotionally resilient as a Red Sox fan, and as generally able to take care of yourself as the average nuclear missile submarine commander, you should never have been allowed near this document. Please dispose of it as you would any piece of high level radioactive waste and then arrange with a qualified surgeon to amputate your arms at the elbows and gouge your eyes from their sockets. This warning is necessary because once, a hundred years ago, a little old lady in Kentucky put a hundred dollars into a dry goods company which went belly up and only returned her ninety nine dollars. Ever since then the government has been on our asses. If you ignore this warning, read on at your peril you are dead certain to lose everything you've got and live out your final decades beating back waves of termites in a Mississippi Delta leper colony. Still reading? Great. Now that we've scared off the lightweights, let's get down to business.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: We will raise [some money], then [do some stuff] and increase shareholder value. Want details? Read on.

Re: Cloudflare S-1

#32
It’s odd to have these IPOs in the middle of August, in the middle of a super volatile market. I can’t help thinking that there must be a sense of urgency, based on the perception that this is the last opportunity before a bear market and much more modest (realistic?) valuations.

Re: Cloudflare S-1

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s an interesting opinion. What about being publicly traded makes you think they’ll me more incentivized to censor? Facebook’s performance suggests that playing fast and loose is preferable

So far the CEO has twice bowed to public pressure and unilaterally removed completely legal websites from the service because he perceived hosting them made Cloudflare's brand look bad. As a publicly traded company the company is now actually accountable (rather than just in his head) to a slice of public opinion and to keep the brand as profitable as possible. That means not providing services for anything controver…

> completely legal websites

Are you referring to The Daily Stormer and 8chan?

Re: Cloudflare S-1

#34

Another unicorn strikes. Is it just me, or have all of these companies decided to do IPOs around the same time? I mean uber, lyft, we work, and now cloudflare. I wonder who's on the menu tommorow

Maybe trying to get ahead of the impending recession?

That was my first thought too.

Re: Cloudflare S-1

#35

Another unicorn strikes. Is it just me, or have all of these companies decided to do IPOs around the same time? I mean uber, lyft, we work, and now cloudflare. I wonder who's on the menu tommorow

I also thought "emergency IPO before they won't be able to get a good price for years" for all of these.

Re: Cloudflare S-1

#36

I mentioned it in the We S-1 thread, but it really weirds me out that the S-1 is the first chance the public has a chance to see a company’s financial status.

why would the public have a chance to see the financial status of a privately held company? alternatively, would you like to share your financial status with the rest of us?

Interestingly, in Norway citizens' tax forms are public, so you can see what anyone's salary etc is

Re: Cloudflare S-1

#37

The free tier of Cloudflare has been really amazing for small to medium websites. It gives you a basically unlimited CDN, SSL, HTTP/2, DDos protection and fast DNS servers with almost 0 effort... for free ... Thus increasing the stability and speed of many web properties that otherwise wouldn't pay for it. I'm afraid this could easily change once the company is public and is under the pressures that come along with i…

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

Re: Cloudflare S-1

#38

I adore, and extensively use, Cloudflare's free services for a couple of hobby projects. I hope they don't substantially change them post-IPO.

But tinbucket, I’m pretty sure you just loudly proclaimed you would be happy to pay at least $5/month!

Re: Cloudflare S-1

#39

Finally an IPO I want to buy into. Technical fundamentals matter. Edit: I mean that in the software/service way, not the economical way, in case there was any confusion.

I'm sure it's just in my head, but it feels like the first tech IPO in several years where there actually seems to be a viable business model.
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