CJ Desai: Why I joined Cloudflare as President of Product and Engineering

I am thrilled to embark on this journey to run Product and Engineering at Cloudflare, driving forward the mission of helping build a better Internet. 

While I was a graduate student at University of Illinois, the university introduced the Mosaic web browser to students. In addition to being super easy to install and use, it displayed pictures next to text for the first time. This may not seem impressive today, but back then it felt like a magical step forward.

This simple but powerful upgrade opened up the once niche user base from academics to the masses, transforming the world wide web to become an Internet phenomenon. Since then, I’ve always sought to be part of teams that worked on transformational technologies, including Software-as-a-Service, cloud computing, and AI. Innovation is the life blood of every technology company. To this day, I’m inspired by building products and technology that get adopted at mass scale.

The world is in a very interesting moment for technological innovation: the AI landscape is uncharted and developing at an exponential rate; the urgency for enterprises to reduce tech debt and reliance on legacy applications is at an all time high; multi-cloud deployments are becoming a reality for optimal performance and global scale; and high performance connectivity is table stakes. Cloudflare finds itself in a compelling position at the intersection of these key themes. We are uniquely poised to drive disruption and empower customers to do the same as they transform their businesses, and I’m excited to use my experience to help move our mission forward.

In order to reach massive scale, platforms need to be extensible (i.e., they need to be able to grow easily). The best way to do this is by knowing your customers’ biggest pain points and improving the core experience while creating adjacent products that solve their most challenging problems. Combined with being obsessed with your customers getting value and having a deep understanding of how the technology landscape is evolving around you, it becomes a powerful growth strategy.

This was the approach that I took during my time at ServiceNow, and one of the reasons why we were able to build the product business from $1.5 billion to $10+ billion in annualized revenue.

Cloudflare’s connectivity cloud — an innovative cloud native platform of security, network connectivity, and developer solutions — provides a unique foundation for driving value, no matter the industry. I’m excited to help Cloudflare further grow and refine our product offerings, while ensuring they are purpose-built and scalable to meet the needs of our growing customer base. Together, we can create solutions that empower any organization to enhance its global online presence while maintaining security and performance at the forefront.

It was very clear as I met many amazing people at Cloudflare, including co-founders Matthew Prince and Michelle Zatlyn, that the team takes pride in solving deep technical Internet infrastructure problems while putting customers first. In addition to working with world-class product and engineering teams, I am looking forward to collaborating with the wider business, our partners, and our customers to realize the potential of Cloudflare's people, platform, and organic growth. I’m looking forward to helping build a better Internet with Cloudflare!