Introducing The Cold Start: pitch your startup live at Cloudflare Connect

What happened

Cloudflare is launching The Cold Start, a startup competition giving five early-stage companies five minutes on stage at Cloudflare Connect. But on September 27, 2010, Matthew Prince and Michelle Zatlyn got on the Startup Battlefield stage and launched Cloudflare to the public. Cloudflare is an information and communications technology company based in San Francisco.

During the presentation, people started signing up. Sixteen years ago, Cloudflare was one of more than 1,000 startups hoping for a spot on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt.

Infrastructure is often invisible right up until the moment it becomes important. There are moments in the life of a company when somebody gives you a room, a microphone, and a small amount of time to explain the thing you have spent months or years obsessing over.