Since CloudFlare launched to the public four years ago today, we've always considered September 27th our birthday. We like to celebrate by doing something nice for our team and also for our customers. Two years ago, for example, we brought a cake into the office and then enabled free IPv6 support for all our customers.
Saturday is our birthday this year, so we decided to celebrate it a few days later when we'd all be back in the office on Monday, September 29th. That actually corresponds to the day we presented at the finals of the TechCrunch Disrupt startup contest where we launched. We ended up coming in second. Mike Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch, said we were basically "muffler repair for the Internet."
Looking back, that's actually not a bad description. At core, CloudFlare's mission is to help build a better Internet by fixing its biggest problems -- its metaphorical rusty mufflers. This year, we thought it would be great to repair a big, ugly muffler that should have been fixed a long time ago.
This Monday, we'll bring a cake into the office. (It'll have to be a lot bigger as our team has grown substantially.) Then we'll give something to our customers to help fix one of the Internet's most challenging problems.
Looking at the statistics around this we know that the response to the announcement is going to be huge. So, if you're not already a customer, I'll just say this: now may be a good time to sign up. And, if you're already a customer, to get to the front of the queue for whatever it is we will be fixing, take a second and send us a Tweet (make sure you include the domain of your website).
So, from the whole team at CloudFlare, thanks for being a part of the last four years. Stay tuned, there are a lot of great things to come and on Monday the web gets a whole lot safer.
Finally, for people who like puzzles we've left a clue to our announcement right here on this page. With a little lateral thinking you may be able to figure it out.
Read through this page carefully and you may be able to discover what we've been working on for months. We're very excited about what this means for us and the Internet as a whole.
Everyone who uses CloudFlare will be a part of the announcement. And that includes free, Pro, Business and Enterprise customers. Because we have such a large number of customers that means a large portion of the Internet will suddenly be improved.
Everything CloudFlare does is about building a better web; Monday's announcement is no exception.